Political debate Australia is starting to remind me of the balls that used to be held at uni halls of residence when I was a student. Rather than some kind of broad discourse we move from one topic to another with the media paying obeisance to an agenda set by the Government with a bit of routine speechifying and media releasing. When I was a student there was the Viceroy’s Ball and we were supposed to dress up as colonials.
Then there was a Revolutionary Ball, where I guess you were supposed to look like Lenin or Robespierre and then an Elizabethan Ball where you came in frilly collars and cuffs.
Likewise, the debate on the teaching of history hasn’t come up in any general debate about education (where it would make most sense) but because it’s come up as the government organised topic du jour.
At least it’s provided the occasion for John Hirst to talk some sense as he so often does.
Paul Kelly’s article in the Weekend Oz also gives a useful summary of Tony Taylor’s critque of current State history curricula, although Kelly’s article is a much more partisan effort than Hirst’s. Nevertheless, you can’t reasonably come away from them without concluding that Howard has a point about the parlous state of current teaching of history in Australian schools, nor can one reasonably conclude (as the federal ALP wants us to) that it’s just a Howardian beatup to impose a narrow conservative triumphalist “great men and lists of dates” approach to the teaching of history.
It may be that such a debate would be more usefully conducted as part of a more general debate about education, perhaps even a debate about a national primary and secondary curriculum. But those efforts haven’t achieved anything in the recent past, so maybe taking it one subject at a time will yield some concrete results where previous efforts at curriculum reform have been abject failures. I certainly agree that history should have a place as part of the middle school core curriculum along with English, maths and science, and that it shouldn’t just be part of some waffly SOCE subject (as is presently the case in many states and territories).
Teaching of history is important to nationalists though, it is where the permanency and strength of the state comes from and supposedly the nurturement of the individual’s cultural, social and national stems from too. So I am not prepared to discount the political aspects of it.
It also looks like the federal and state oppositions have completely collapsed. it should be state oppositions that are raising this issue. Since incumbents seem to have massive advantage in dictating the issues and media exposure, the political opposition to the states is now the federal government, not the state opposition parties. Same for the federal government, their main opposition is the states.
I think the fact that the federal government is Liberal and the states Labor coincidental. Political opposition appears to be structural rather that ideological.
Historians like Greg Melleuish like to put things into context. And I suspect that the context some people are using for this debate comes from Britain and the US. Maybe the context is overwhelming what’s happening here and now.
During the 1980s Margaret Thatcher was worried about the state of the history curriculum. She believed that:
But the National Curriculum people insisted on leaving out the dates and putting in fluffy things like concepts. Thatcher found this highly unsatisfactory.
It never seemed to occur to her that there were a lot of facts to choose from and that the way they were chosen and threaded into a chronology might be controversial. Why not, for example, construct a chronology out of all the worst examples of British colonialism?
Some of America’s neoconservatives and Straussians had a more sophisticated understanding of the politics of history. For them American history ought to be an almost mythological account of the nation’s founding. For them history becomes a kind of civil religion. And just as Sunday school teachers aren’t interested in looking at Old Testament from the perspective of the Canaanites or Philistines, these thinkers don’t want their history to drop the narrative thread by shifting to minority group perspectives or dwelling on awkward questions like slavery. The key ideas are the genius of the founders and the enduring value of American institutions. That’s how to decide which facts are in and which are out.
So here are two very different risks. The first is that history becomes a tedious list of names and dates to be learned by rote and the second that it becomes a compelling mythological/religious narrative complete with heroes, villains, climaxes and happily-ever-afters.
A satisfying and memorable narrative requires things that academically respectable history can’t always provide. Maybe that’s what’s making some people suspicious. They’re afraid Australian history will be turned into Star Wars in colonial costume or degenerate into a shopping list.
The issues are very subtle. Like most other people I guess, I have no problem for history as propaganda (so long as it’s not dishonestly so – ie if it needs some regard for truth). But I want it to be my propaganda. My propaganda would highlight the achievements of the West. It would be a Whig history with human achievment, dignity and liberty gradually rising out of the dust and the entrenched warfare of premodern life.
It wouldn’t be afraid of the black armbands we could all do with – the holocaust, the terrible treatment of indigenous people and the often lousy treatment of women, though the essence of history is to struggle against anachronism – to try as hard as possible to see things as others saw them, to understand in a sympathetic and imaginative way that other country where they do things differently – the past.
I think European history is far more important than Australian history to teach the Whig parts of the history. (I don’t greatly mind if it is European or British based, because I’m not concerned about the ethnicity, so much as the basic ideas, the travelling from ancient antiquity through the chaos of the middle ages and feudalism to modern times.
Australian history is a codicil to that story – how Western liberal modernity turned out here. And I’m happy for it to be part of our own propaganda too – the story we tell about what we are and what we value about that. Then there’s the history of our region, so we understand it and it’s people’s and our place in it a bit better.
But at school level, what matters more than all of this is the engagement of the kids. And my own (limited) experience both as a teacher and as a parent is that getting engagement of kids on these things in the age of Australian Idol and the Simpsons (I like both shows by the way – particularly the latter) is a big big ask. All the ideas I’ve posted up here are pretty adult ones. Quality of teaching, engagement of the kids, and some measurement of and accountability for that – that’s more important than all the theories and all the things the adults can’t wait to argue about.
And I don’t much like the way in which all the adults have decided that there should be ‘more’ Australian history – like they’re forever deciding that there should be more everything in the curriculum. More civics, more Asian languages, more English, more maths and science, more sex and hygenic education, more education for business, ‘personal development’ and on it goes.
Nicholas
I agree entirely with your comments about the importance of European history (and that Australian history is essentially a footnote, albeit an especially relevant one for us mob). However, my general understanding is that Year 11 and 12 modern history in most states concentrates on European history. I think I would make senior school modern history part of core curriculum as well (although I’m not expressing a definite conclusion to that effect), and coverage of Australian history in years 7-10 is a logical precursor to it. I don’t think you can equate the teaching of history with civics (although history well taught would encompass aspects of civics anyway, as your rant about Whig history suggests), Asian language, personal development etc. They should properly remain elective subjects. A reasonable level of knowledge and understanding of history seems to me to be more critical to a real, rounded liberal education than any of those subjects, and almost as indispensible as English, maths and science. Irrespective of what job a child is going to do, she needs to make sense of our culture and current events, and how can she do so if she doesn’t know where we came from or how we got here? Of course, you learn some aspects of European history from studying English literature if taught competently, but it’s fragmented and somewhat incidental.
Yes Ken, you’ve said nothing with which I particularly disagree. I wasn’t saying those other things were more (or less) important than history or that history should teach civics. But they all crowd in, and it’s so easy for people to say there ought to be more of this or that. That really should be expressed in some comparative form. Did the history summit deliberate on what should be taken out of curricula if it is appropriate to put more history in?
On the topic of engaging the children, there are two strategies that could run in parallel with whatever is decided about the core curiculum.
1. Some input from local history societies.
2. A family history by each child. This could start in primary and continue to year 12 to grow with the sophistication of the child and their ability to tap sources such as on-line records in foreign lands.
As for engaging the teachers, there is the ever-present problem of the politicised and obscurantist teachers unions.
Nicholas
Why do you think it’s incumbent on the federal government to dictate to the states and territories how they must arrange the rest of their timetabling to accommodate history as a core subject? Does being prescriptive about one subject necessarily require being prescriptive about all of them? If we assume a timetable where a school has 8 x 40 minute periods per day, and that each nationally mandated core subject is taught for 4 periods per week, then adding a fourth core unit in history to maths, English and science just increases the number of periods devoted to core subjects from 12 to 16, still leaving 24 periods for all those other subjects you mentioned (or from 15 to 20 still leaving 20 for other subjects if core units are taught for 5 periods per week). Surely it’s OK to leave decisions about which other subjects are taught, and with what intensity, to individual states or even individual schools. They could either decrease the number of other subjects taught, or keep the same number but teach them for a lesser number of periods each week, and various other options e.g. teach a thinly timetabled smattering of lots of subjects in Years 7 and 8 and then let students specialise to an extent and choose a smaller number of electives in years 9 and 10 that are each studied for more periods per week. That’s how it was all arranged way back when I was in high school and it seemed to work quite well. But there are lots of ways of approaching it, and none of them need to be dictated by the federal government as part of a plan to make history compulsory at middle school level.
I really don’t understand what point you’re making. Clearly some people are nervous that Howard has an agenda to impose a history curriculum consisting of a “tedious list of names and dates to be learned by rote” and/or a “compelling mythological/religious narrative complete with heroes, villains, climaxes and happily-ever-afters” (to quote Don’s succinct summary). I would certainly be worried if it appeared that this was what was in prospect, but both Hirst’s and Kelly’s articles seem to indicate that this is not what is being proposed.
Rafe
I doubt that teaching family history or local history is what either Howard or any of the summit participants had in mind. While I think there’s a powerful argument for making both European history and the big events, questions, themes and narratives of Australian history compulsory for the reasons outlined earlier (it helps students to grapple with and develop some better informed ideas about why our culture, society and political institutions are the way they are), I don’t think those factors apply with any great force to local or family history.
Ken,
The points I’m making are fairly self contained. I’m only commenting on aspects of the debate and am not supporting the idea of the Federal Govt dictating the agenda. Like I said, I think the whole way it is being done with a specific circus being put on about history rather than some more general discussion of education reminds me of putting on a ball – the budget gave us the bread and now we’ve got the circuses.
Since I’m discussing history, I thought I’d add that I’m quite sympathetic to the views on history being put by conservatives like Hirst – and even Howard to some extent. His speech last summer on history was (if I recall correctly) pretty mild and OK and made some worthwhile points. But that’s not a comment on which level of government is responsible for implementing those views, nor even a comment on whether they should be ‘implemented’ at all one might be happy that we’ve had a debate and help schools reflect it in their teaching.
I’m specifically indicating my sympathy for the idea that timetabling all the requirements on schools is difficult and that one important problem for schools is a kind of ‘issues’ inflation, where various social movements and politicians come out and say that there ought to be more emphasis on . . . but they rarely say what there should be less emphasis on. Deliberating on the teaching of history with a substantial agenda for expansion of the subject without deliberating on that seems a bit suss to me.
Thanks for the clarification, Nicholas. I’m approaching the issue from a rather different standpoint. Darwin has always had a very mobile population, so we tend to be more aware of the great disruption caused to kids’ educations when families move interstate, because state-based curricula both at primary and secondary level are so widely divergent.
However, I also approach such things as a moderate federalist. Nevertheless, there are areas of activity where harmonisation of law and practice is desirable if not essential. Hence we don’t seem to have had much difficulty arriving at harmonised commercial laws and practices in Australia, but achieving any reasonable degree of standardisation in school curricula and standards has for whatever reasons proven impossible. I think it’s an area where Commonwealth leadership is well overdue. At the same time, my federalist instincts suggest that Commonwealth leadership should be confined to identifying subject areas to be regarded as core disciplines, and then encouraging or coercing the states and territories into harmonising their curricula in those areas. Regional diversity and choice at state and local level should remain otherwise undisturbed.
I doubt that many people would argue that maths, English and science should not be compulsory to year 10, and I think there’s a strong argument that history should be similarly regarded. Nevertheless, perhaps whether history should be part of core curriculum is a debate we should have had in a more fulsome way before Howard simply proceeded to a summit to decide how the subject should be taught. One could certainly argue that understanding of Australian culture, society, political institutions etc. can also be gained from learning subjects other than Australian history.
Your reference to “circuses” suggests that you think the “history in middle schools” issue is just a Howardian diversion to distract public attention away from other issues less congenial to the government. That’s a fairly standard argument employed by Howardian opponents whenever his government comes up with just about any policy at all, and sometimes it’s no doubt true. However it isn’t obvious to me why Howard would feel a particular need to create a distraction right at this moment. Sure there’s a bit of upward pressure on interest rates and inflation, but not to a drastic extent. And the Telstra privatisation looks to have fallen into a hole, while the AWB saga staggers along seemingly without end. But neither looks likely to become a big negative for Howard with the great mass of voters. The same goes for the Iraq fiasco as long as Australian forces don’t sustain major casualties. I don’t see any plausible basis for positing a machiavellian explanation. Howard reckons history should be taught in all high schools, and also reckons it’s important enough to weigh in with some federal leadership. I agree with him. Even if one doesn’t agree with Howard (as is clearly the case with you), that doesn’t lead to a conclusion that he necessarily has a covert agenda unless one’s default assumption is that he should always be presumed to be a lying rodent until proven otherwise.
Ken,
I’m not sure how much you’re using what I’ve written as a springboard to express your own views, and critique ‘Howard Haters’. But my last comment said this “Since I’m discussing history, I thought I’d add that I’m quite sympathetic to the views on history being put by conservatives like Hirst – and even Howard to some extent. His speech last summer on history was (if I recall correctly) pretty mild and OK and made some worthwhile points.”
I’m hardly a Howard Hater on this. If I have to pick a side I’ll pick the conservative side on the history curriculum, though I’d rather Hirst was my conservative than Howard.
On compulsion of students (not which level of govt does it) I’m more agnostic. It’s certainly an easy thing for a pollie to call for more study of Oz history. I don’t have a problem if that’s thought through – and the first sign of that would be some couching the ‘need’ for more of something in opportunity cost terms – ie what can we do with less of to make way for more history.
I don’t see a lot of that in this debate. In that sense I think it’s typical Howard. I don’t think it’s a diversion for him. I think he sincerely believes what he’s arguing and with a few reservations I agree with him. But it’s typical in that it’s tokenistic, opportunistic not really thought through. Why now after ten years in government?
Sounds like Howard in other areas. His like economic or foreign policy for instance! Now I’m aware that I’m arguing both for and against Howard in this comment – and throughout this thread, but I don’t think there’s any big contradiction.
Nic’s spot on here – there’s no recognition of opportunity costs in this “debate”. And knowing Howard’s fondness for indirect methods we are also right to be sceptical of his denials that he’s not out to get his pet verson of history enforced.
Of course it’s not surprising that a summit of historians would call for more history in our schools. I suspect a summit of badminton players would call for more badminton.
dd – and a summit of bloggers or blog commentors?
A good piece by Peter Craven – here.
I meant to find time to agree with DD about the opportunity cost. No luck – so just a short bit to say that after a few years as a president of a local high school council I’m concerned that everything seems to get plonked onto the school curriculum.
In reality – it’s plonked into a school day. Something always has to give but no one talks about that.
Anti drugs – plonk it into school, sex knowledge – plonk it onto school, vocational training – plonk, civics – plonk, how to vote – plonk, sose – plonk, more science – plonk, how to use computers – plonk, history – plonk……..
To add to the excitement we have just had one of members of Brendan Nelson’s 2004 national inquiry into literacy teaching, Yvonne Myer, sue the school because her son couldn’t read properly. Can’t say she was all talk and no action.
I can’t help but wonder what sort of spray she would have got from the presshad she been a single mum on the welfare who sued her local state school because her kid couldn’t read.