|
Article Excerpt
On 25 January 2006, on the eve of Australia Day--the day when the renegotiation of history in Australia is at its most symbolic and fraught--Prime Minister John Howard addressed the National Press Gallery. Halfway through his speech, Howard announced that the history wars, in which he had been prominent from time to time since 1996, were over. (1) The 'divisive, phoney debate about national identity', he reported, 'has been finally laid to rest'. (2) Fewer Australians, Howard contended, were now 'ashamed of Australia's past' than had been the case a decade earlier. In an unusually ironical tone, he went only a little way towards acknowledging the damage inflicted on Aboriginal society. Proper recognition of 'the Australian achievement', the Prime Minister briefly noted, had restored 'a better balance between pride in our past and recognition of past wrongs'. Having moved beyond an obsession with diversity, Australians, he asserted--meaning largely men--'are now better able to appreciate the enduring values of the national character that we proudly celebrate and preserve'. Essential features of that character are loyalty, patriotism, egalitarianism, hard work, law abidance, tolerance and a respect for the country's British heritage. For his critics, however, tolerance implied a need to tolerate differences, and the model Australian citizen had no guidance when faced with unjust laws or corrupt government.
Howard's Australianness was not shaken by the internationally reported outbreaks of racist violence at Cronulla in Sydney's southern suburbs in 2005. And he claimed that the values he espoused were underpinned by the Australian achievement: the supposed reconciliation during the twentieth century of a 'market economy with a fair [cohesive] and decent society'. In order to foster these values, Howard noted in his speech that the time was ripe 'for root and branch renewal of the teaching of Australian history in our schools, both in terms of the numbers learning and the way it is taught'. 'For many years', he commented:
it's been the case that fewer than one-in-four senior secondary students in Australia take a history subject. And only a fraction of this study relates to Australian history. Real concerns also surround the teaching of Australian history in lower secondary and primary schools. Too often, Australian history has fallen victim in an ever more crowded curriculum to subjects deemed more 'relevant' to today. 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 postmodern culture of relativism where any objective record of achievement is questioned or repudiated. Part of preparing young Australians to be informed and active citizens is to teach them the central currents of our nation's development. (3)
Reactions to Howard's speech were predictable and contradictory. Julie Bishop, the then-new Federal Education Minister, supported her leader, indicating that her preference was for an American-style of school history teaching that emphasised nationalism. (4) Historian Geoffrey Blainey said on national television that there are 'a lot of basic things that I think students should [know]' including the democratisation of Australian society. (5) Professor Stuart Macintyre of the University of Melbourne, interviewed on the same program, noted that 'we would all agree that we need to do more to restore history, but we need to make sure that that is open to diverse viewpoints and that it is not simply an exercise in indoctrination'. Instilling a particular point of view is certainly what the Prime Minister intended. Annabel Astbury of the Victorian History Teachers' Association told the program's interviewer that Howard's 'clear agenda' concerning the teaching of history in schools 'reveals that he really has no idea of what's going on in the classroom'. For Astbury, it was 'harking back to a time when ... learning in schools was about rote learning and memorising dates and ... that was ... the beginning ... [of] the end of history teaching'. (6) But this, too, was in a way political rhetoric. And Howard's notion of a structured narrative could not be reduced to rote learning and dates. He was advocating a single story, Whiggish in character, as the core of the Australian saga. Some regrettable things may have happened along the way, but 'on balance'--a key theme in his speech--this was a tale of progress to greater democracy and peaceful prosperity. Given the general marginalisation of history in Australian educational institutions, however, historians and teachers of all persuasions were forced to agree with the Prime Minister, even if, as Stuart Macintryre, they did so with reluctance. As in other countries (7), such a debate launched journalists into searches for members of the public who could confirm, in this case, Howard's grave doubts about the health of historical knowledge and therefore the nation, without questioning the very nature of that knowledge.
In recent years, public debates have emerged in many western societies about the role of history in national culture and society, the responsibilities of historians as interpreters of the past, and questions regarding ownership of and participation in history. Anxieties about levels of historical literacy often focus on formal education systems since, from the twentieth century, these have been one of the principal means by which societies pass on their cultural heritage.
To date, evidence relating to the extent of interest in and public knowledge about history in this country is contradictory. Between 1978 and 1995, there was a sixty-six per cent decline in the number of students taking Higher School Certificate history in New South Wales (8); however, syllabi in NSW and elsewhere have made history and civics mandatory in junior years. (9) Indeed, at the NSW Higher School Certificate (HSC) examination of 2006, Ancient History became the seventh largest course with 11,396 students, overtaking Modern History with 9,656 students. (10) And we are told that Australians know fewer of the 'facts of history' than they did in earlier generations, despite speculation and disagreement about the nature of historical knowledge and the interpretation of the 'facts' of Australian history. Yet popular venues where people interact with or make their own pasts are expanding. There is an increasing obsession with the personal and the public past, especially within political debate and in an increasing number of arenas in popular culture. (11)
Shifting or unstable histories led Prime Minister Howard to say in 1996 that Australian history was being 're-written' and taught 'as a basis for obsessive and consuming national guilt and shame'. He criticised a 'black armband' interpretation which he claimed was pervasively 'distorting ... the facts of history'. (12) His government insisted on a celebratory historical perspective that told 'the story of [all] our people ... broadly...
|
