Australian History Wars ... Now What?
Does your child know when James Cook sailed up the Australian coast? That's what Education Minister Julie Bishop is asking kids she meets. Hardly any have the answer, which is confirming the Government's view that Australian history has gone missing in our schools.
Governments like to call "summits" on every damn thing. Still, the August 17 one-day Australian History Summit might at first blush seem an odd enterprise. Not, however, if you are John Howard and your agenda includes fixing how Australia teaches its story.
It mightn't match his industrial relations obsession, but Howard has been preoccupied with history teaching, which he sees as part of the "history wars", for a long time. (Remember, Janette Howard is a former history teacher.)
Howard's most recent Australia Day speech urged "root and branch renewal". For many years, he said, fewer than a quarter of senior secondary students had taken a history subject, and only "a fraction" of those took Australian history.
And "too often, it is taught without any sense of structured narrative, replaced by a fragmented stew of themes and issues". As well, history had "succumbed to a postmodern culture of relativism where any objective record of achievement is questioned or repudiated".
In July 1996, lashing into Paul Keating for the "partisan reinterpretation of Australia's past", the new PM declared "we would benefit as a nation if there were a greater awareness of the historical forces that have shaped our development" and of individuals' contributions. The past needed to be understood "on its own terms", not judged by "our own contemporary standards" (a reference to the "Stolen Generation" argument).
Bishop is running the summit but Howard, expected to drop in, is keeping a close eye on it....
Read entire article at Michelle Grattan in the Australian Age
Governments like to call "summits" on every damn thing. Still, the August 17 one-day Australian History Summit might at first blush seem an odd enterprise. Not, however, if you are John Howard and your agenda includes fixing how Australia teaches its story.
It mightn't match his industrial relations obsession, but Howard has been preoccupied with history teaching, which he sees as part of the "history wars", for a long time. (Remember, Janette Howard is a former history teacher.)
Howard's most recent Australia Day speech urged "root and branch renewal". For many years, he said, fewer than a quarter of senior secondary students had taken a history subject, and only "a fraction" of those took Australian history.
And "too often, it is taught without any sense of structured narrative, replaced by a fragmented stew of themes and issues". As well, history had "succumbed to a postmodern culture of relativism where any objective record of achievement is questioned or repudiated".
In July 1996, lashing into Paul Keating for the "partisan reinterpretation of Australia's past", the new PM declared "we would benefit as a nation if there were a greater awareness of the historical forces that have shaped our development" and of individuals' contributions. The past needed to be understood "on its own terms", not judged by "our own contemporary standards" (a reference to the "Stolen Generation" argument).
Bishop is running the summit but Howard, expected to drop in, is keeping a close eye on it....