Howard rethinks Australian history

Just as I'm away from my computer for 4 days, the issue of how Australian history is taught to high school students is thrust into the news. I wanted to absorb all the information I could, and start congealing my own thoughts onto this blog. But alas, I had to rely on the daily newspapers for my opinion-fill. I'm not sure where to start on all this. It seems appropriate that January 26, one of the most significant and contentious dates in Australian history, was chosen to fix the spotlight on history education. The story unfolded like this; John Howard used his Australia Day speech to call for a redesign in the way history is taught...

Too often, it is taught without any sense of structured narrative, replaced by a fragmented stew of themes and issues ... And too often, history, along with other subjects in the humanities, has succumbed to a post-modern culture of relativism where any objective record of achievement is questioned or repudiated.

In other words, it seems, students spend too much time learning about the implications of events, and how things fit together, instead of focusing on getting the dates right. Secondly, they waste time questioning history, instead of just being empty vessels to be filled up with facts. It seems pretty obvious that this is merely creating a populist stance to win a horde nodding heads on Australia Day. I can fairly concisely summarise my idea of the role of history: History is about putting the present into context. That said, teaching history should be about fostering a better understanding of the world around us, based on how things got this way. One doesn't achieve this without carefully examining and questioning the issues and thematic links between historical events and periods. Well, that's what I think, anyway. I'll post some more on this tomorrow, after I get through all the opinion pieces and editorials and blog-posts.