Gregory Haines: Can't we just teach serious history in the classroom?
[Sydney high school history teacher Gregory Haines, in Quadrant magazine, laments the state of his profession.]
ACADEMIC history has been under threat and perhaps in decline for some time. In part, this is due to an overall decline in arts faculties and a consequent search for relevance, funding and position in enterprise universities which are increasingly geared for vocational training rather than broad education.
But there are other factors at work. The rise of postmodernism and theory in arts faculties, later in Australia than elsewhere, where the decline has commenced, has discredited what little education there is on offer.
Australian history has become particularly problematic for the academics. After a flourishing period from the 1960s to the '80s, when academic historians such as Manning Clark gave a strong lead in publishing, now, frequently, it is the non-academic writer who captures the market.
Perhaps the best example of this is Robert Hughes's Fatal Shore, but also the work of Peter FitzSimons. (Most academic history books have a brief shelf life, and even in the US it is unusual for an academic monograph to sell more than a few thousand copies.)
The lack of confidence, and the disarray and decline, affect students: they seem fed up with many of the courses on offer, especially history from below, politically correct history and the current fad of historiography.
Students, it appears from a number of surveys, prefer history courses of substance dealing with the grand themes, courses which are educational as well as informative and which open them to diverse cultures and times.
But history has been too long the bride of fashion. From at least the '50s until after the '80s, the fashion in almost all fields of historical study and teaching was Left-liberal secularism with analysis usually favouring some form of Marxist class conflict. This politicisation of history probably reached its peak during the Vietnam war.
The real tragedy has been the academy has shown itself singularly unable to censure, for unprofessional conduct, those who on their own admission falsified and fabricated. Instead, with very few exceptions, academic historians whose field is Australian history have fallen in line to shoot or vilify the messenger ... An associated tragedy is the new history itself.
ACADEMIC history has been under threat and perhaps in decline for some time. In part, this is due to an overall decline in arts faculties and a consequent search for relevance, funding and position in enterprise universities which are increasingly geared for vocational training rather than broad education.
But there are other factors at work. The rise of postmodernism and theory in arts faculties, later in Australia than elsewhere, where the decline has commenced, has discredited what little education there is on offer.
Australian history has become particularly problematic for the academics. After a flourishing period from the 1960s to the '80s, when academic historians such as Manning Clark gave a strong lead in publishing, now, frequently, it is the non-academic writer who captures the market.
Perhaps the best example of this is Robert Hughes's Fatal Shore, but also the work of Peter FitzSimons. (Most academic history books have a brief shelf life, and even in the US it is unusual for an academic monograph to sell more than a few thousand copies.)
The lack of confidence, and the disarray and decline, affect students: they seem fed up with many of the courses on offer, especially history from below, politically correct history and the current fad of historiography.
Students, it appears from a number of surveys, prefer history courses of substance dealing with the grand themes, courses which are educational as well as informative and which open them to diverse cultures and times.
But history has been too long the bride of fashion. From at least the '50s until after the '80s, the fashion in almost all fields of historical study and teaching was Left-liberal secularism with analysis usually favouring some form of Marxist class conflict. This politicisation of history probably reached its peak during the Vietnam war.
The real tragedy has been the academy has shown itself singularly unable to censure, for unprofessional conduct, those who on their own admission falsified and fabricated. Instead, with very few exceptions, academic historians whose field is Australian history have fallen in line to shoot or vilify the messenger ... An associated tragedy is the new history itself.