Howard's History 101
On Thursday 17 August, a group of academics, social commentators and politicians will meet in Canberra to partake in the Australian History Summit. The brainchild of our noble leader, John Winston Howard, the purpose of the Summit is on the face of things, to discuss the state of history teaching in Australia and to determine a single cohesive approach.
There has been a great deal written on this already and I would assume this will only increase as the date draws nearer, which frankly can only be a good thing. History is nearly always considered, somewhat ironically, as a dusty relic of yesteryear's academic disciplines, no longer relevant or interesting to the 21st century's young minds, so to see it gain public attention in such a way is at least a step in the right direction.
However, as others have mentioned previously, it is difficult to wonder if there is not something more behind this than first meets the eye.
My own experiences of history at school fall into two categories. Primary school and secondary school. The first almost exclusively boring as batshit, the second imaginatively constructed and enthusiastically rendered.
Primary school history was all about dates and important men, Captain Cook, the explorers. "History" lessons were taught from what in retrospect appeared to be a sort of set-in-stone structure, a list of events and people to be ticked off and memorised. On the whole, this was utterly unhelpful and instilled from an early age that sense of dustiness and boredom that is so often associated with history and one that most people never have the opportunity to shake off.
Secondary school history on the other hand was an entirely different kettle of fish. History became a fluid, shifting, living thing to be interpreted and discovered, discussed and considered. Suddenly there were actual people involved, the rest of the world came to play and events were shaped not by an individual in a snazzy uniform and a flag on a stick, but by whole populations, economies and environments. As students we were encouraged to question, to push and probe, to look for our own answers among the complexities and contradictions.
Mark Bahnisch of Larvatus Prodeo is a Lecturer in the Politics, Economy & Society Program within the School of Arts, Media & Culture at Griffith University. In the unpublished article he wrote for Crikey on the History Summit, he questions the motives behind the call for such a meeting and notes the lack of academic firepower on a gathering stacked with opinion writers of a decidedly conservative hue. If this is to be the balanced and objective summit that John Howard and Julie Bishop insist it will be, then why not reduce the number of social commentators and increase the number of actual academics and educators. Surely if the purpose is to define a more cohesive curriculum, then the input of an opinion columnist such as the Sydney Institute's Gerard Henderson can't be particularly helpful.
Bahnisch argues and I can't help but agree, that the Australian History Summit is not in fact a genuine attempt to improve history teaching necessarily, but has more to do with John Howard's conservative agenda, a chance to make his mark on the History Wars that have become an increasing frustration to the conservative view of Australian history.
By establishing some sort of agreed narrative, Howard hopes that what he perceives as the 'negative' aspects of our history will be removed or at least softened, making way for a neater, nicer and I would argue much more boring Australian 'story'. A story in which capital-letter Facts are laid out in chronological order - a series of events not to be discovered, examined and questioned, but to be presented as the 'truth', the way things 'actually happened'.
Who decides on what these Facts will be? What events are considered appropriate for the Australian narrative? If the Australian History Summit achieves its stated aims, then these questions will be answered by Geoffrey Blainey, Gerard Henderson and (god forbid) Julie Bishop, handing Howard another victory in his quest to conservatise Australia further still, to produce a new generation of children bored with history and disinclined to question, explore and discover history for themselves. A generation of kids who know when Captain Cook landed in Australia for the first time, but who neither know, nor care about what happened to those who accompanied him, or to the aboriginal tribes he displaced in the process, or any of the other minutiae of our past sneeringly dismissed by conservatives as postmodern history.
The Australian history Summit is an attempt to change the way history is taught in our schools, not because what they learn now is uninteresting, but because it does not conform to Howard's interpretation of what history should 'be'. If Bishop and Howard are successful in changing the curriculum, then the current view of history as old fashioned and out of touch will simply become more prominent, secondary school history even less popular and tertiary history (apparently the bastion of the left) will more or less fade away until we are ultimately and depressingly left with the official version, Howard's Australian History.
Let's hope that the complexity of the task defeats the zealots and that Australian history continues to be taught as the frequently questioned, rarely static discipline into which it has evolved.
There has been a great deal written on this already and I would assume this will only increase as the date draws nearer, which frankly can only be a good thing. History is nearly always considered, somewhat ironically, as a dusty relic of yesteryear's academic disciplines, no longer relevant or interesting to the 21st century's young minds, so to see it gain public attention in such a way is at least a step in the right direction.
However, as others have mentioned previously, it is difficult to wonder if there is not something more behind this than first meets the eye.
My own experiences of history at school fall into two categories. Primary school and secondary school. The first almost exclusively boring as batshit, the second imaginatively constructed and enthusiastically rendered.
Primary school history was all about dates and important men, Captain Cook, the explorers. "History" lessons were taught from what in retrospect appeared to be a sort of set-in-stone structure, a list of events and people to be ticked off and memorised. On the whole, this was utterly unhelpful and instilled from an early age that sense of dustiness and boredom that is so often associated with history and one that most people never have the opportunity to shake off.
Secondary school history on the other hand was an entirely different kettle of fish. History became a fluid, shifting, living thing to be interpreted and discovered, discussed and considered. Suddenly there were actual people involved, the rest of the world came to play and events were shaped not by an individual in a snazzy uniform and a flag on a stick, but by whole populations, economies and environments. As students we were encouraged to question, to push and probe, to look for our own answers among the complexities and contradictions.
Mark Bahnisch of Larvatus Prodeo is a Lecturer in the Politics, Economy & Society Program within the School of Arts, Media & Culture at Griffith University. In the unpublished article he wrote for Crikey on the History Summit, he questions the motives behind the call for such a meeting and notes the lack of academic firepower on a gathering stacked with opinion writers of a decidedly conservative hue. If this is to be the balanced and objective summit that John Howard and Julie Bishop insist it will be, then why not reduce the number of social commentators and increase the number of actual academics and educators. Surely if the purpose is to define a more cohesive curriculum, then the input of an opinion columnist such as the Sydney Institute's Gerard Henderson can't be particularly helpful.
Bahnisch argues and I can't help but agree, that the Australian History Summit is not in fact a genuine attempt to improve history teaching necessarily, but has more to do with John Howard's conservative agenda, a chance to make his mark on the History Wars that have become an increasing frustration to the conservative view of Australian history.
By establishing some sort of agreed narrative, Howard hopes that what he perceives as the 'negative' aspects of our history will be removed or at least softened, making way for a neater, nicer and I would argue much more boring Australian 'story'. A story in which capital-letter Facts are laid out in chronological order - a series of events not to be discovered, examined and questioned, but to be presented as the 'truth', the way things 'actually happened'.
Who decides on what these Facts will be? What events are considered appropriate for the Australian narrative? If the Australian History Summit achieves its stated aims, then these questions will be answered by Geoffrey Blainey, Gerard Henderson and (god forbid) Julie Bishop, handing Howard another victory in his quest to conservatise Australia further still, to produce a new generation of children bored with history and disinclined to question, explore and discover history for themselves. A generation of kids who know when Captain Cook landed in Australia for the first time, but who neither know, nor care about what happened to those who accompanied him, or to the aboriginal tribes he displaced in the process, or any of the other minutiae of our past sneeringly dismissed by conservatives as postmodern history.
The Australian history Summit is an attempt to change the way history is taught in our schools, not because what they learn now is uninteresting, but because it does not conform to Howard's interpretation of what history should 'be'. If Bishop and Howard are successful in changing the curriculum, then the current view of history as old fashioned and out of touch will simply become more prominent, secondary school history even less popular and tertiary history (apparently the bastion of the left) will more or less fade away until we are ultimately and depressingly left with the official version, Howard's Australian History.
Let's hope that the complexity of the task defeats the zealots and that Australian history continues to be taught as the frequently questioned, rarely static discipline into which it has evolved.
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