The quest for a history that covers every angle

by Julia Baird

Sydney Morning Herald

July 6, 2006

IN 1888 the young poet Henry Lawson declared that more Australian history should be taught in schools. As John Hirst argues in Sense and Nonsense in Australian History, drought, strikes and depression had made Lawson both nostalgic and eager that his country be proud of its past.

A year earlier, his first, fervently nationalistic poem had been accepted for publication by The Bulletin - Sons of the South - which asked his fellow countrymen to choose between "The Land of the Morn and the land of the E'en/ The Old Dead Tree and the Young Tree green/ The Land that belongs to the lord and the Queen/ And the Land that belongs to you."

Now, 119 years later, our land still belongs to the Queen and it is not the republicans facing depression who are calling for more history to be taught, but politicians in a time of prosperity.

The announcement by the federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop, yesterday that the study of traditional Australian history should be reinstated across the country, so that every student "knows why Captain James Cook sailed along the east coast", is welcome.

In many states, history is sidelined and its teachers inadequately trained. Thanks to former premier Bob Carr, NSW already leads the charge on this front, with compulsory Australian history courses in years 9 and 10.

But it's not just any kind of history. The Government is eyeing the curriculum - Bishop said there was "too much politics in it, too much indoctrination and not enough pivotal facts and dates". Which means that these courses will need to comply with John Howard's concerns about a "fragmented stew of 'themes' and 'issues"' in school history.

The aim of elevating history in schools is admirable, even if the means are still uncertain - and the insistence on dates at all times potentially eye-crossing for students. Rote learning is boring. Themes like war, protest, gender, nation-building, identity and propaganda are what makes history spring to life for students, and lead to a more sophisticated understanding of how cultures are shaped, and why wars are fought.

History without analysis would be like a pie chart, or a graph.

But if we are to teach history to students better, why not make our politicians take a few lessons as well?

We could start with the desperate concern for racial purity in the 1800s which shaped much of our attitudes to the Aborigines. The strong linking of our identity to the "working man's paradise" in the 1890s. The gloriously defiant, and successful suffrage movement, led by women like Maybanke Anderson, who wrote in 1891 that: "It can be no more right or expedient for one half of our population to make laws for the other half than it would be right for the people north of the 34th parallel to legislate for those south of it."

We could move to the mottled success of our migration policy, from the Snowy Mountains scheme to the longstanding White Australia Policy.

We could flip from the 1820s in Tasmania, where there were vicious disputes between Aborigines and settlers, to 1979, when historian Geoffrey Blainey said that the Australian War Memorial should recognise warfare between whites and blacks "within the next 10 years", to Cathy Freeman winning Olympic gold.

One of the strains of history often criticised by politicians is that which includes those previously made invisible - women, migrants and Aborigines. Any mention of class or gender is derided as Marxist or feminist. Yet a simple scan of a syllabus such as that in NSW shows these groups have just been added to a traditional teaching of Gallipoli, Don Bradman, Charles Kingsford Smith and the construction of Canberra.

What we need to teach is simply a whole and inclusive history, which shows that we did not simply go to war and listen to white men talking about politics. We also fought for equality, were determinedly iconoclastic and irreverent, waved soldiers off then kept things going on the home front, brought pasta and souvlaki to Sydney, bumped Aborigines off their land by force, and developed a commitment to reform which was noted worldwide: the secret ballot, women's suffrage, the concept of a living wage, the establishment of aged pensions and unemployment benefits as well as free education.

This is history - ugly, inspiring, messy, conflicting, often inconclusive and baffling, but always illuminating.

There is ample reason for us to fight over what we have done, who we are and what we might become. As Russell Ward wrote: "The dreams of nations, as of individuals, are important, because they not only reflect, as in a distorting mirror, the real world, but may sometimes react upon and influence it."

When teaching history, it is not only important that we get our facts straight, but that the dreams and nightmares we record are those of all of us, not just a few.

jbaird@smh.com.au

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