It is well-known that the students in Hong Kong need to study so many subjects in their primary or junior secondary school life. For examples, sciences, mathematics, liberal studies and history. Most of those subjects are aimed to train students’ thinking ability or can be used in their daily life. However, some people may argue that studying history is less relevance nowadays when they found that it is useless in their life in this business oriented city. I agree that studying history has little relevance for young people today. The following arguments are that history may not useful in peoples’ daily life; increase the workload of students and it can easily be replaced by the other subjects.
First of all, Hong Kong is a business oriented city so history may not be useful in peoples’ daily life. Truly, some of the students may become a historian but most of their works are related to business. Also, Hong Kong and China have changed a lot in these recent years, those history in thousands years ago may not be necessary for the young people. Although history has brought the past experiences to students, however, the young people only need to know the basic concept of them but not studying it in detail. It is very time consuming and useless when the skill is thousands of years ago. Therefore, it is suggested the young people only need to learn the basic concept of history in order to know more about their birth place instead of learning this in detail.
Secondly, some of the subjects are needed to be cancelled in order to reduce the heavy learning workload of the students in Hong Kong. Nowadays, students in Hong Kong have a heavy workload. Not only are they busy academic but also busy on the extra-curricular activities. As we all know, children need a happy childhood, a heavy workload will be a big burden for them. Therefore, those time-consuming subjects just like history should be included in the other general subject like General Studies or Social Studies. Students only know the basic concept but not studying it in detail. Also, young people such as the junior secondary students should start to find out their interested subjects and focus on it. Start to prepare their future studying plan, not only studying lots of things but nothing is well-prepared. Therefore, if the students are interested in studying history and planned to be a historian, they surely can go for it. If not, history will become useless.
Thirdly, it is no doubt that the students can practice their critical or analytical ability by learning history especially when writing essays. However, it can easily be replaced by the other subjects like Liberal Studies. Therefore, history can be included in this subject as topics in order to play its role. In this case, students can practice and the history knowledge can also be leant.
In conclusion, in a business city like Hong Kong, learning history may be less relevance for the young people nowadays. It doesn’t mean that it is not an important thing for us but it can be known in a briefly way. However, history may not useful in peoples’ daily life; increase the workload of students and it can easily be replaced by the other subjects. Therefore, it is suggested that this subject is needed to be considered by the government in order to have some changes to coordinate with the changes of society.