History or Biology?

[Keanumoreira]

I personally love History, but what do the people of Nexus think? :confused:

[grannywils]

If you're referring to high school subjects, when I was in high school I loved biology and did quite well in it. At the time I wanted to be a doctor or a marine biologist. I hated history, and managed to pass but did not pay nearly enough attention. Today I regret that lack of attention every single day of my life. No subject fascinates me more now than history. All history; world, ancient, American, European, the history of almost any nation or people. I don't think there is anything we can do that we can't do better without a knowledge of history and what makes us tick. By the way, I never did become a doctor, and an inner ear problem prohibited me from the marine biology gig; but I still find that area of science quite fascinating. Not that you asked, but my best subject was English, and I guess my reading interest and skills were what helped me to get through history even without the interest that I have now. So if you are still in high school, my advice would be try to think of history as your own personal past and a pathway to your own future and not just "a bunch of dried up old facts and dates". It is truly amazing and wonderful stuff.

[Keanumoreira]

If you're referring to high school subjects, when I was in high school I loved biology and did quite well in it. At the time I wanted to be a doctor or a marine biologist. I hated history, and managed to pass but did not pay nearly enough attention. Today I regret that lack of attention every single day of my life. No subject fascinates me more now than history. All history; world, ancient, American, European, the history of almost any nation or people. I don't think there is anything we can do that we can't do better without a knowledge of history and what makes us tick. By the way, I never did become a doctor, and an inner ear problem prohibited me from the marine biology gig; but I still find that area of science quite fascinating. Not that you asked, but my best subject was English, and I guess my reading interest and skills were what helped me to get through history even without the interest that I have now. So if you are still in high school, my advice would be try to think of history as your own personal past and a pathway to your own future and not just "a bunch of dried up old facts and dates". It is truly amazing and wonderful stuff.

 

I am, and I agree with you. History has been my passion for five years now, and it is growing stronger by the day. I'm in Ap Euro (Europe) which is one of the highest and hardest history classes in my school. It is intresting, funny, wierd, shocking, and over all the best class I've ever taken. :happy:

[Vindekarr]

Biology is something I've had to take outside of regular schooling.

 

As far as I'm concerned you're better off studying biology and history on your own rather than through schooling. If you do it via schooling then you only ever get a single perspective. For example, in australia you only EVER get the western perspective, with a massive emphasis on militaryb history of the australian defence force. For example an entire year was devoted to world war two, with blatantly racist tyrades against the turkish and axis. The teacher constantly talking up the "heroism under fire" of the "heroic" australian legion. The history class I got from my mainstream education was racist *censored*.

 

In australia students get almost no conventional biology class. You get a little bit of basic training, but there is no biology as a full subject in any of the schools I went too. Likewise there is literaly no sex education. Because it would ofcourse be illegal to talk to "children" that are 17 years old, have a criminal record, and are the same height as their parents, about what's in their pants.

 

I nonetheless took biology when I quit school. Most of my education was via a public institute, I was expelled from my high school after a savage argument with a teacher who had called the celtic equivalent of the "N" word in front of the class. Ofcourse here, the child is wrong and the teacher is right-I saw first hand that same man give a thirteen year old girl a black eye for standing up to him in class. And seeing that the corrupt vermin was going to get away with it, I chose to be a man and walk away in disgust.

 

If I had to pick between the two I'd choose history, because you'll eventualy achieve an understanding of a genus' bio systems. But history is endless and constantly being written.

[evilneko]

Yikes, sounds like the education system in Oz is worse than here in the States. I had biology exposure twice in public school. Once as a dedicated class, and once in a more generalistic "life sciences" class. I also took biology in college, and lately have a particular interest in evolutionary biology.

 

I tend to also be partial to history though, if only because consistently throughout my education, my history teachers have always been the most memorable and engaging (I can still name most of them, too). History was usually my best subject in public school because of this.

 

So, in short: both!

[brokenergy]

No, it is only bad in Victoria and the rest of the states (Australia is starting to have a national curriculum). If you go to New South Wales, the education there is way better and the teacher gives a observers perceptive (my history teacher was great). In fact the new curriculum is based on the NSW system. You can't blame for there be so much importance in the military Vin, because you and I both know that Australia has no modern history (there is nothing to learn about a 200 year old nation, the only fun thing was the Eureka stockade and Constitutional crisis of 75 with one being studied at year five year five and the other optional!!!). Sorry Aussie loves but that's true and you know it (BTW I'm born in Australia, so thanks for asking).

 

As for your question Keanu:

 

Biology is good in NSW and I'm studying Micro-Biology at Uni and year 11/12 biology really related to the stuff taught at Uni, so I was able to fit (even I never did biology at school). It's physics that isevil I tell ya (11/12 physics has nothing to connect with the Uni equivalent).

 

As for my final years I did Modern History (history is split into modern and ancient counterparts in Aus) and it was really fun as we focused of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky and Vietnam. It was fun and we debated a lot about the concepts and essay writing. There was never a dull moment in that class.

 

Up and all it all depends on how your school teaches those subjects. My advice is to check the latest subject curriculum of those two subjects and base your choice on how good it is. Also if you want to go to Uni for a degree check on what subjects you need to cover in prerequisites so you have covered all the bases and don't go to summer school to catch up. I'm telling this to my brother but he doesn't seem to listen but I hope you take my advice with good consideration before making your choice.

[Vindekarr]

I may live in victoria, but I was raised in queensland (no racism please, not all residents of queensland are inbred barbarians, only some.)

 

And the queensland curriculum is just simply disgusting. In primary school I was, despite being registered as completely non religious, forced, like everyon else, to sit through mandatory, sometimes daily, hour long "theology". Now, in this class we had two Bhuddists. Four Muslims of various beleifs, One catholic, And six aethiests.

 

And that wasnt even a bloody religious school, it was 'secular' so why the hell did I have to listen to a bloody priest all morning eh?

 

But all of us were forced, often daily, to sit through an hour long speach by a christian evangelist, who would often barrage the non cristians among us with abuse simply for not conforming. Not, when that was over, the bastards sat us down and gave us sheets of either sums to fill out, or form like piles of word problems. There was not a right or wrong answer, but a wanted answer. Answer correctly via the wrong means, and you got an F.

 

Highschool in queensland was worse. No sex ed, not for girls, and not for boys, of any year. And accessing as I know a friend of mine did, any other form of sex ed was... dangerous. She got suspension from school for a month and a permanent loss of on campus privilige, for "accessing homosexual pornography (wikipedia article: human reproductive system) Now, biology, that was over in three weeks. Week one: constant warnings against drugs, smoking, alcahol, lack of exercise, fast food, and "filthy habits" which were never explained, so most of us simply assumed it was habitual filthyness, whatever that meant. week two: the same constant barrage of "dont do this kids!" this time it was constant indocterination towards abstainance. They claimed that any and I mean ANY sexual contact was a vast disease risk and that even taking your clothes off was potentialy fatal. Week Three: last week, a mix of warnings about the horrible consequences of masturbation, premarital sex, and any sort of generalised enjoyment, eg, video gaming, drugs, alcahol, exessive TV, "bad" food. And that was it. No look at the inside of the body, just three weeks of being told by the chaplain what his god would do to me if I took a girl to bed without marrying her.

 

History? that was just "anzac legend" *censored*. I remember at times getting pretty angry in history. Both my great grandfathers served, and I read my father's father's father's journal, and it was truly a wrenching experience. Now, to hear the teacher extolling the virtues of heroic death to protect your country, after spending a month reading a harrowing account of how a real man had lost almost everyone he ever knew, and watched his own brother literaly blown to scraps of meat by a mortar, really started to make me rethink their grasp on reality.

 

And Australia is NOT 200 years old Brokenergy, it is several thousand years old. What you seem to forget is that the indigenous people lived here till my ancestors slaughtered them all and stole their land. How about some of their history eh? not everyone here is white, and despite everyone's best effort, a few Aborigenes are still alive to tell it.

 

Im not going to hear excuses, it's important to keep an open mind, but despite that I am not going to be able to accept that these people could not have done better.

 

Kudos to you if you actualy read all that. Double kudos if you actualy read it and listened.

[Kazakovich]

I just can't choose, really. Both are equally important and interesting to me. I think since they're so entwined with each other, you can't really understand one without the other. The world as it is today is, after all, a reflection of what's happened in the past to shape it like this. It's also quite interesting to imagine 'what if?'-scenarios, like, for example, if the mongols hadn't destroyed Baghdad and all the ancient knowledge inside it's libraries and universities? Or if the mass-extinction between the Perm and Trias-period hadn't occured? Or what would happen if you travelled back in time to the Carbon-period? The possibilities are endless!

 

Another effect of studying both subjects (or rather, one subject divided by direct involvement of or direct effect upon humankind vs natural history) is that you'll really start appreciating the planet we inhabit. Well, at least it did to me. :)

[brokenergy]

I may live in victoria, but I was raised in queensland (no racism please, not all residents of queensland are inbred barbarians, only some.)

 

And the queensland curriculum is just simply disgusting. In primary school I was, despite being registered as completely non religious, forced, like everyon else, to sit through mandatory, sometimes daily, hour long "theology". Now, in this class we had two Bhuddists. Four Muslims of various beleifs, One catholic, And six aethiests.

 

And that wasnt even a bloody religious school, it was 'secular' so why the hell did I have to listen to a bloody priest all morning eh?

 

But all of us were forced, often daily, to sit through an hour long speach by a christian evangelist, who would often barrage the non cristians among us with abuse simply for not conforming. Not, when that was over, the bastards sat us down and gave us sheets of either sums to fill out, or form like piles of word problems. There was not a right or wrong answer, but a wanted answer. Answer correctly via the wrong means, and you got an F.

 

Highschool in queensland was worse. No sex ed, not for girls, and not for boys, of any year. And accessing as I know a friend of mine did, any other form of sex ed was... dangerous. She got suspension from school for a month and a permanent loss of on campus privilige, for "accessing homosexual pornography (wikipedia article: human reproductive system) Now, biology, that was over in three weeks. Week one: constant warnings against drugs, smoking, alcahol, lack of exercise, fast food, and "filthy habits" which were never explained, so most of us simply assumed it was habitual filthyness, whatever that meant. week two: the same constant barrage of "dont do this kids!" this time it was constant indocterination towards abstainance. They claimed that any and I mean ANY sexual contact was a vast disease risk and that even taking your clothes off was potentialy fatal. Week Three: last week, a mix of warnings about the horrible consequences of masturbation, premarital sex, and any sort of generalised enjoyment, eg, video gaming, drugs, alcahol, exessive TV, "bad" food. And that was it. No look at the inside of the body, just three weeks of being told by the chaplain what his god would do to me if I took a girl to bed without marrying her.

 

History? that was just "anzac legend" *censored*. I remember at times getting pretty angry in history. Both my great grandfathers served, and I read my father's father's father's journal, and it was truly a wrenching experience. Now, to hear the teacher extolling the virtues of heroic death to protect your country, after spending a month reading a harrowing account of how a real man had lost almost everyone he ever knew, and watched his own brother literaly blown to scraps of meat by a mortar, really started to make me rethink their grasp on reality.

 

And Australia is NOT 200 years old Brokenergy, it is several thousand years old. What you seem to forget is that the indigenous people lived here till my ancestors slaughtered them all and stole their land. How about some of their history eh? not everyone here is white, and despite everyone's best effort, a few Aborigenes are still alive to tell it.

 

Im not going to hear excuses, it's important to keep an open mind, but despite that I am not going to be able to accept that these people could not have done better.

 

Kudos to you if you actualy read all that. Double kudos if you actualy read it and listened.

 

Australia's modern history is 200 years old Vin. Australia's ancient history spans over 45,000 years but that differs between which nation you go to (and there is over 200 indigenous nations in Australia, last time I remember). Modern history starts around the American/industrial revolution which is ~1775 and beyond so that's why I said Australia is 200 years old, as we are taught about modern Australia (1775-onwards). The new national curriculum at least acknowledges the fact indigenous Australians were the first and will highlight their side of the story in modern Australia but if you want to know more about ancient Australia, then it is difficult as you can't bring all the indigenous nations together and state that it is one nation, it is difficult and tiresome (tiresome in the way of where you have to account for all nations not just the bigger ones). Besides I could also say that Australia as a nation is 200 years old but the nations within (depends on which nation) is much older than the settlement. And if by "Anzac legend" you mean WWI and the uselessness of Australian troops in a European conflict then then yes you have every right to say that it was stupid, but if you are talking about WW2, where Australia was in real danger, then that's really different.

 

Since you are from Queensland, which I didn't know, then you must know how bad the education over there is. I know people who went to Queensland and came back because of that and I also know that in Australia, Queensland is last or almost last when it comes to education. In NSW the people are nice and when the scripture came both in primary and high school, you have the choice to participate or not (and I should know because I'm a Muslim). The chaplain in my high school was really nice to me and really respected me and my views. That being said and I don't want to go down to a religious debate, the point is it really depends on what school you went to and you Vin can't speak for all of Queensland's schools just as much as I can't talk for all of NSW schools. One school can't sum up the whole state and one teacher's experience can not justify that all teachers are like that, which sounds like a backlash from my previous statements but it isn't. You (and anyone else in future for that matter) need to be really careful when it comes to my views as I maybe implying something that is hidden.

[gormonk]

bio...ive always liked how the human boddy ticks