HELP PLEASE?!! History or Legal?

[hf123]

Hey peeps,
Ok, so for the 100th time, these are my subjects for next year. I'll be in year 11

- Eng 1/2
- Chem 1/2
- Methods 1/2
- HHD 1/2
- Bio 3/4 or Psych 3/4 (still deciding)
- And my main problem: Eco 3/4, which I'm definitely going to change though. Because I hate it.
 My options are Legal Studies 1/2 or History 1/2

Which one is better?! Please let me know. What content is involved? Are they hard? Which one's more interesting/better?


Much Appreciated

[Scooby]

Well it really depends on what you're interested in.

Legal covers different types of law, including criminal law, how laws are made and the court system.

History covers significant events in the 20th century, including Nazi Germany, WWI (esp. the holocaust) and WWII, the cold war and towards the end of the year issues we are currently facing, such as terrorism.

Both involve a lot of writing and memorisation, but they aren't hard in terms of how difficult the content is to understand.

Have a look at the study design for each and you might get a better idea

[aes_999]

^I don't think history 1 & 2 goes over to 3 & 4 (to my best knowledge).
So if you choose history, you'd have to pick another subject for
the 3 & 4 in year 12 (perhaps Aust. history).

[Scooby]

If you choose 20th Century History 1&2, your options for year 12 are Australian History, Revolutions or Renaissance Italy. A lot of schools only offer Revolutions though. There's almost no overlap between 1&2 and 3&4.

[aabattery]

Why not legal??
If you're interested in understanding how the australian legal system works, do legal. I found it a great subject. 

[Iniquity]

I'd say Legal.

I did History 1/2 (20th century) this year. We covered a few different events, so there's bound to be something that you're interested in, but there's also a greater chance you won't enjoy some of the stuff. Also, History 1/2 doesn't help 3/4 in terms of content. You do learn how to assess the strengths and limitations of documents and to identify bias in historians' accounts, but the actual dates and events you learn for 1/2 are largely useless for 3/4. Like Scooby said, it's not a very hard subject, although you'll probably have to devote a lot of time to reading up on background information if you want really good marks. If you enjoy researching the causes and effects of significant events, you should give it a go!

Haven't done Legal 1/2, but I really liked the orientation sessions for 3/4. If you're interested in the court system and how laws affect society, then I'd definitely recommend it.

[louise_2012]

I did both subjects this year and keep in mind that my opinions may be a tad biased because I absolutely adore History.
When choosing my subjects last year I had an interest in both History and Legal theory? I'm not entirely sure what you would call it. I was in the fortunate position that I could do both so that's what I did. This is what I felt about both subjects:

History 1/2:
I absolutely loved it. It was one of my favourite subjects that I took. I'm not entirely sure if this is school specific though, but the History course that our school has in place gave us enourmas (sp?) freedom in the choice of what we wanted to study. Our school also chose to briefly cover the main events of the Russian Revolution (it was presumed that you would go on to do Revolutions) which I found incredibly interesting. We also covered WWII, more specifically, Hitler's Germany, the Vietnam War (Australia and America's involvement, the protest movement) and the Cold War. Outcomes involved film studies, graphic analysis, research essays and reports. We could choose our own topics for the research components, as long as they fitted within the time period specifies (unit 1 is 1900 - 1945, unit 2 is 1945 to present) and we were able to choose specific topics that interested us (I was even able to do WikiLeaks for one outcome). History itself wasn't that difficult per se, it just required a large amount of work. I found History incredibly interesting and gained a lot from doing this course and I'm incredibly sad that I'm unable to do it next year.

Legal 1/2:
Well.... I had a very different opinion of this subject (bare in mind I had a shitty teacher for Legal and an amazing teacher for History). Legal I found was a much more dry subject than History. To be honest, I didn't listen much in class so I can't recall all the topics we studied but the ones that I do remember were Criminal Law (principles of murder, manslaughter etc. and at the start of the year I think we did the whole 'what is a law' and how they are made etc) and Civil Law. In Civil law we studied things such as contract law, commercial law, briefly touched on human rights and a few others which I can't remember. Criminal Law I found bearable. It was relatively interesting, but some aspects we studied were just annoying ahah. Civil law I found unbearable. I hated contract law the most of all and well, I'm the type of person that if I don't like the content, I don't end up studying. Consequentially I did not study a bit for anything in Legal. I personally found Legal incredibly easy but I have a feeling that has more to do with being raised in a family of lawyers rather that the course content, as numerous other people in my class barely passed with copious amounts of study. So I guess it's up to the individual. I found Legal incredibly boring and as a result I quit it at the first chance I had.

So in summary, I would go with History. In addition to above, I feel that History is more useful to learn. Yes you learn about the Australian legal system in Legal Studies but the stuff that you learn (well that my class learnt) was hardly anything. If you really wanted to know about it, you could just google it. I found that it scraped the surface so little that it wasn't useful. Knowledge of History is always useful and I feel that it helps you understand how society came to be in the position it is today.

Thats my 2c

[Liuy]

Both require dedication, commitment and many hours of writing and perfecting exam technique.

Biased me says Legal, was going to do Revs but heard it takes a huge effort to score well.