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RYDE SECONDARY COLLEGE
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Curriculum / Courses
Ryde Secondary
College
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HISTORY Stage 4 - Year 7 & 8 Studying history is essential to the development of informed and active citizenship. Through the insights and understandings gained from a study of history, students are challenged to consider their rights and responsibilities and the contribution they can make in a civil society. History provides a frame of reference that students use to think critically and to develop informed opinions about contemporary national and international issues.
WHAT CAN HISTORY DO FOR YOU ? The skills that you will develop include: the ability to investigate and research issues; the ability to process, analyse and evaluate information; the ability to form your own judgements based on evidence and logical argument; the ability to communicate findings in both speech and writing. These are skills that will help you no matter what career you may choose to follow in the future.
The historian of contemporary Australia recognises the viewpoints of the different cultural, ethnic, geopolitical, social and economic groups in our society. Through this syllabus, students and teachers are encouraged to consider the differing viewpoints about the past held by these groups. For this reason, a number of perspectives are included for exploration and analysis when appropriate and relevant. These include Aboriginal, gender, local, national and international, multicultural, socioeconomic and religious perspectives. ‘History is a necessity. Individuals, communities, societies could scarcely exist if all the knowledge of the past was wiped out. As memory is to the individual, so history is to the community or society. Without memory, individuals find great difficulty in relating to others, in finding their bearings, in making intelligent decisions – they have lost their sense of identity.’
WHAT IS HISTORY ABOUT? History deals with change in human affairs.. Change is one of the most difficult challenges we must now face in our society... Such changes need all our resources of wisdom and balanced judgement ... The study of the past makes the present more intelligible
History is a process of inquiry into questions of human affairs in their time and place. It explores the possibilities and limits of comparing past to present and present to past. It allows students to develop their critical powers and to grasp the superiority of thinking and evaluation over an impulsive and uninformed rush to judgement and decision. It allows students to gain historical knowledge and skills and to evaluate competing versions of the past within a rational framework of inquiry. Through an investigation of history, students learn about the differences in human experience, allowing them to compare their lives with those of people of other times, places and circumstances and, in turn, to learn to know themselves.
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