subject selection: ancient vs modern history (1 Viewer)

[waxycuticle]

I am currently doing my Subject Selections at School. Right now I have chosen Maths Adv, Maths Ext 1, English Adv, English Ext 1, Physics, Economics. I am hoping to become a pilot and study Aviation (Flying) at UNSW.

I am 100% sure I want to pick a History subject for my final two units. I've no preference over one or the other - I have a big interest in the both of them, but I only want to pick one. The content is completely fine whether I do Ancient or Modern, but I'm thinking about what learning the content is like? Apart from the content are there any significant differences in Ancient and Modern? Which one would be better to pick? I'm very indecisive.

 

[mmmmmmmmaaaaaaa]

have you enjoyed one more than the other so far, from year 7-10?

 

[waxycuticle]

have you enjoyed one more than the other so far, from year 7-10?

Surprisingly no - Ancient History was mostly Ancient civilisations, which was really interesting. And I also liked the military history we did in Year 10.

Outside of school, I have a deep interest in both ancient and modern history. And the topics my school has chosen to do for both Y11 and Y12 fall under my fields of interest. So I've no idea

Do you know about scaling of the different history subjects? I'm so indecisive I might as well bring in other factors into it

 

[dav53521]

I am currently doing my Subject Selections at School. Right now I have chosen Maths Adv, Maths Ext 1, English Adv, English Ext 1, Physics, Economics. I am hoping to become a pilot and study Aviation (Flying) at UNSW.

I am 100% sure I want to pick a History subject for my final two units. I've no preference over one or the other - I have a big interest in the both of them, but I only want to pick one. The content is completely fine whether I do Ancient or Modern, but I'm thinking about what learning the content is like? Apart from the content are there any significant differences in Ancient and Modern? Which one would be better to pick? I'm very indecisive.

From what I know the hsc papers for modern and ancient are different because the modern paper has two short answers sections and two essays sections while the ancient paper has a different format

 

[waxycuticle]

I took a look at both papers. The paper structure doesn't faze me that much - source work in section I for both, and most of the extended responses are much shorter for Ancient.

I guess from here on out it's just a matter of scaling and difficulty to pick the subject. Which is technically meant to be the 'harder' subject and why? Which scales better?

 

[mmmmmmmmaaaaaaa]

Surprisingly no - Ancient History was mostly Ancient civilisations, which was really interesting. And I also liked the military history we did in Year 10.

Outside of school, I have a deep interest in both ancient and modern history. And the topics my school has chosen to do for both Y11 and Y12 fall under my fields of interest. So I've no idea

Do you know about scaling of the different history subjects? I'm so indecisive I might as well bring in other factors into it

I’m not to sure about the scaling for those subjects given that I didn’t take any of them … however as far as I am aware, I believe that modern history has better scaling compared to ancient history (someone can correct me on this)

 

[hscgirl]

I’m not to sure about the scaling for those subjects given that I didn’t take any of them … however as far as I am aware, I believe that modern history has better scaling compared to ancient history (someone can correct me on this)

yes thats correct, modern scales better than ancient

so if it ultimately comes down to which subject scales better, waxycuticle should choose modern i reckon

 

[carrotsss]

Ancient sounds cooler you get to learn about Ancient Rome and stuff like that

 

[yolo tengo]

Ancient sounds cooler you get to learn about Ancient Rome and stuff like that

ancient >>> modern

 

[Ksalu]

i was in a similar boat to you in the sense that I liked both histories but only wanted to do one. I ended up doing both at the start of the year to get a feel of which one i preferred. I ended up dropping modern instead of ancient because:

• Ancient has 1 essay in the hsc vs modern which has 2 essays
• I had a more experienced and overall better teacher for ancient
• I felt like modern you could still learn in your own time through news/youtube/documentaries as there are much more resources due to its relevancy to the current time period --> for ancient, I felt like I was less likely to learn the content outside the school so thats why i chose it
• from my personal experience (yours could be different), ancient had a lighter workload in comparison to modern

As for scaling and "difficulty", modern only scales slightly more than Ancient. A hsc score of 90 in ancient, has an ATAR contribution of 93.03 while a 90 hsc score for modern has an atar contribution of 95.14. However both subjects have atar contributions that go all the way up to 99.95 so scaling doesnt really matter too much as there is no "atar ceiling" like math standard which has a max atar contribution of 99.5 (pls someone correct me if im wrong about scaling and etc). If u want more information, i got his off of graham wright on tiktok.

Both are difficult in their own respective ways but are also rewarding. For both subjects, homework was mainly practice responses and essays. you could do something similar to me in the sense that I tried out both before on settling on one. Most schools have a 3 week period where changing subjects is fairly easy. At the end of the day, just choose the one you find that you'll enjoy more or perform better in.

Hope this helps!

 

[yolo tengo]

i was in a similar boat to you in the sense that I liked both histories but only wanted to do one. I ended up doing both at the start of the year to get a feel of which one i preferred. I ended up dropping modern instead of ancient because:

• Ancient has 1 essay in the hsc vs modern which has 2 essays
• I had a more experienced and overall better teacher for ancient
• I felt like modern you could still learn in your own time through news/youtube/documentaries as there are much more resources due to its relevancy to the current time period --> for ancient, I felt like I was less likely to learn the content outside the school so thats why i chose it
• from my personal experience (yours could be different), ancient had a lighter workload in comparison to modern

As for scaling and "difficulty", modern only scales slightly more than Ancient. A hsc score of 90 in ancient, has an ATAR contribution of 93.03 while a 90 hsc score for modern has an atar contribution of 95.14. However both subjects have atar contributions that go all the way up to 99.95 so scaling doesnt really matter too much as there is no "atar ceiling" like math standard which has a max atar contribution of 99.5 (pls someone correct me if im wrong about scaling and etc). If u want more information, i got his off of graham wright on tiktok.

Both are difficult in their own respective ways but are also rewarding. For both subjects, homework was mainly practice responses and essays. you could do something similar to me in the sense that I tried out both before on settling on one. Most schools have a 3 week period where changing subjects is fairly easy. At the end of the day, just choose the one you find that you'll enjoy more or perform better in.

Hope this helps!

graham wright is a legend

 

[nsw..wollongong]

i had to choose between mod hist and economics and tbf i don't know if i regret it..

 

[aulinia]

I do ancient history and honestly I really like the subject, it’s one of my favourites. Like other people have pointed out, it’s super interesting. One thing I will say though is that for ancient history you’re expected to develop your own perspective/stance on history through interpretation and support it with sources, rather than being more straightforward (?), if that makes sense?

 

[hscgirl]

Why don't you just take both next year and then drop the one you dislike?

yeah actually if ur that indecisive then u should do this
bc y11 doesnt count anyway so u can use it to test whether u prefer ancient or modern for urself

 

[Masaken]

two cents on modern, I really enjoy it and it's my favourite subject (with english). I was kind of stuck over picking ancient or modern, and I ended up picking modern. I'm also really interested in history outside of school, and I ended up picking the modern history course because I really love military and Soviet history (and cos I didn't want to do ancient china in ancient). modern scales higher but only very slightly so honestly there's not much difference.

I will say though make sure you really want to do modern. so many people picked modern over ancient in my school because the ancient class is mostly year 9s and 10s accelerating and they thought the course would be the same as the really fun history elective, but it ended up for them being so much work for topics they didn't enjoy (eg. War, revolutions, politics). like I'm doing the cold war right now and while it's my favourite topic so far a few people I know don't like it because the topic isn't really about war and conflict but more geopolitics

One thing I will say though is that for ancient history you’re expected to develop your own perspective/stance on history through interpretation and support it with sources, rather than being more straightforward (?), if that makes sense?

I'd argue that it's similar with modern, especially when modern focuses more on judgement and critical thinking because unlike ancient, the narrative is established so it's more about making your own conclusions about the narrative (unlike with ancient where you have to develop it with sources and stutf). ofc, there is that with ancient but modern focuses way more on making assessments and judgements

 

[waxycuticle]

Why don't you just take both next year and then drop the one you dislike?

I want to take 12 units. In my school, there are more privileges for those with 12 units than 13 (like going home early twice a week).

And I like English and Economics too much to swap them out. So I only want to pick one history.

 

[waxycuticle]

Yeah but you only need to take it for a few weeks to make up your mind, you don't need to take it for the full year. It's hard to determine which one you'll like more without experiencing the subject yourself.

I was planning to make a more final decision not now but much later (it's only the expression of interest right now, the final form is next term), but I am reading through the Modern and Ancient textbooks to see if anything's significantly different. And I don't want to miss out on any of my other subjects at all just because I swapped them out with a second history in the first few weeks.

 

[waxycuticle]

two cents on modern, I really enjoy it and it's my favourite subject (with english). I was kind of stuck over picking ancient or modern, and I ended up picking modern. I'm also really interested in history outside of school, and I ended up picking the modern history course because I really love military and Soviet history (and cos I didn't want to do ancient china in ancient). modern scales higher but only very slightly so honestly there's not much difference.

I will say though make sure you really want to do modern. so many people picked modern over ancient in my school because the ancient class is mostly year 9s and 10s accelerating and they thought the course would be the same as the really fun history elective, but it ended up for them being so much work for topics they didn't enjoy (eg. War, revolutions, politics). like I'm doing the cold war right now and while it's my favourite topic so far a few people I know don't like it because the topic isn't really about war and conflict but more geopolitics


I'd argue that it's similar with modern, especially when modern focuses more on judgement and critical thinking because unlike ancient, the narrative is established so it's more about making your own conclusions about the narrative (unlike with ancient where you have to develop it with sources and stutf). ofc, there is that with ancient but modern focuses way more on making assessments and judgements

Thank you. I personally think that judgement thing might be more interesting than just developing and making conclusions, what kind of significant judgements do you need to do in Modern? And what's the difference with the amount of source work? I hate sources - but not historiography - so I'm not really interested in doing more sourcework than I have to.

And war and politics is entirely fine by me. It's really interesting.

 

[BOS101]

Take a look at the syllabus for both subjects on NESA. It will tell you the content you'll be learning about, and the options for various studies. As for scaling, modern is better. I believe modern to be more academically vigorous (well at least in my school; more people do it and smarter people as well)

 

[Masaken]

Thank you. I personally think that judgement thing might be more interesting than just developing and making conclusions, what kind of significant judgements do you need to do in Modern? And what's the difference with the amount of source work? I hate sources - but not historiography - so I'm not really interested in doing more sourcework than I have to.

And war and politics is entirely fine by me. It's really interesting.

there is still developing and making conclusions from the narrative in modern, just 'less' than ancient in a way because there's more of a focus on the judgement (which is prob why people say modern is 'harder'). for example, in the cold war we know everything about detente - why they did it, what happened. your job isn't to develop the narrative of detente, but rather form an opinion on what you've learned like a real historian does. you make a judgement on whether detente was successful or not, and why. you have to make judgements on its impact on the cold war (did it help to end the cold war? or did it lead to a renewal/exacerbation of it?) and for the ussr, for example, we know all the details of what the bolsheviks did with their foreign policy - they'd originally planned to go completely for international socialism but then things happened and it culminated with the soviets signing an alliance with an ideological enemy (the nazis). then you have to assess that foreign policy and ask yourself about the application of communist theory into bolshevik practice - did they follow ideology or were they pragmatic, and why? how did they fluctuate between ideology and pragmatism (and you bring in the narrative to support it).

in modern history, sourcework is only confined to the core study. the sources range from a whole lot of forms but it includes speeches (eg. from hitler), political cartoons, and extracts from historian's books. i believe in ancient sources are used as evidence as well as historiography in the other sections (correct me if i'm wrong, this is what my friend said to me once and she accelerated it?)