Social Studies – How is it useful?

I’ve often faced boredom and frustration while memorizing paragraphs about cities and kings, or what the government does and have frequently asked myself – What’s the point of this subject? Or, is it important at all?

Now I’ve been wondering about this, just as much as any normal student would. Why is this subject important? How is it a part of our curriculum?

Mainly – History.

History has always fascinated me, and I usually love reading and watching videos on about pre-human history, how we humans evolved (of course, that would be partly science as well), how language developed and many times, I find the diversity of cultures in our world very interesting. But I’ve also wondered- How will learning about an ancient king or revolutions and rebellions help me?

Secondly – Civics.

Civics, even if less interesting than history (at least for me), I think is more essential for a person to learn about, than history.  Civics is basically learning about one’s rights as a citizen, what the government does and (in a democracy) how our actions during election times affect the nation, as well as ties with others.

Thirdly – Geography.

Geography is sometimes interesting for me, and is also pretty important in helping all living beings adapt to the environment. It also helps us in times of naturals disasters and knowing more about different countries.

But, I’ve always found memorizing bits of information (mainly in history) didn’t seem very interesting. So why should we learn it?

Well, (naturally), I googled it. I first tried – how is learning about kings useful?

And my results weren’t very pleasing.

After trying a variation, I found that a common reply to the question – Why should we study history?

• Is that history enables us to develop better understandings of the past, therefore helping us figure out the present, thereby making us have a much deeper appreciation for the events that we see today.
• According to Deakin University, there’s more to history than knowing when and where certain events occur. They say that historians are more interested in the ‘how’ and ‘why’ part of history, and that ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘where’ questions are just the beginning.
• And it does seem useful to learn about certain history, especially in jobs,              for our own benefit as well.

I also realize, that writing this post actually made me understand why the subject of Social Science is important, for, even though I’ve been thinking about it every time I get bored of studying, I never really tried answering my own question!

So I must thank you – readers, for making me motivated to think of something for my next post, and therefore also making me answer I huge question I never really bothered about!

I almost forgot, if you’re interested in fun videos about space, humanity, medicine and such – visit my page Video of the week which will be updated every Thursday with a new video about something interesting!