The funny thing about the debate over the teaching of history is that it's not actually much of a debate. Both sides fighting the so-called "history wars" agree that history is important, and that there are some basic facts that all Australian schoolchildren should know. The problem is getting agreement on exactly what the "facts" are that students should learn.
The "history summit" called by federal Education Minister Julie Bishop, which will be held in Canberra next week, will attempt to do a few things. First, it will consider why Australian history has fallen out of favour with both teachers and students. Second, it will inquire into what can be done to restore history teaching to classrooms. Finally, assuming that there is a consensus that history can make a comeback, it will examine the content of a future Australian history curriculum. This last challenge is the most difficult.
Part of the explanation for the decline of history, both in schools and universities, is that the point of learning history has been lost. Theory has replaced content. While history can lend itself to the application of various theories, and while there can be arguments as to what "really happened" the subject shouldn't be dominated by these issues.
The study of history, like the study of English literature, has fallen prey to academics who use these disciplines as vehicles to push various Marxist, and postmodern theories about class, gender, and race. In some of the humanities, it is almost as if students are positively discouraged from experiencing enthusiasm for the subject they are studying.
Politicians are also to blame for the decline of history. On the one hand, they complain about history not getting the attention it deserves in a "crowded curriculum". But on the other hand, schools are expected to provide information on an ever-expanding range of issues from health and nutrition, to money management, even to driver education.
This development is the manifestation of a much wider issue about the way in which we call on schools and teachers to fix every social ill. We can't have it both ways. If more time is devoted to history, some things now in the curriculum will have to go.
What often gets lots in the discussion about history is that there is an interest in history not just from students but from the public as a whole. The evidence can be seen in the popularity of works such as The Da Vinci Code. At one level the book is a well-written thriller, but it is also a story set against the backdrop of ancient history and the Middle Ages as well as the present. Its status as a bestseller is partly a reflection of a desire by people to know about the past.
There are a few relevant lessons from the success of The Da Vinci Code. What Dan Brown writes is fiction, not history, but history doesn't need a novelist's imagination to be made engaging. And if students don't have access to information about actual history, and their only exposure to the past is through fiction, there is the risk of an even greater danger than students suffering from a lack of knowledge. There's the potential that students will believe things that are simply not true.
When social experiments fail, those who suffer are the most vulnerable -- and experiments in education are the most dangerous. Those attending the history summit should acknowledge that the attempt to replace facts with theories has failed, and this failure has had a disastrous impact on history teaching. A generation of students will finish schooling and events such as the First Fleet, Gallipoli and the Battle of the Coral Sea will mean nothing to them.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister John Howard started the discussion on history when he said there should be "root and branch renewal" of history teaching. He listed a number of reasons an understanding of history was important -- it develops informed citizens, and encourages the recognition of the importance of parliamentary democracy.
By far the most important justification the Prime Minister gave for the teaching of history was that without knowledge of our past, "young people are at risk of being disinherited from their community".
If history isn't taught in our schools, the students who will end up being disinherited from their community are not those from Melbourne's middle-class eastern suburbs. Such students will probably learn history anyway. Such students will read newspapers and journals, they'll be taken by their parents to galleries and museums, and they'll watch documentaries on ABC television.
However other students, from less privileged backgrounds, might only get one chance to experience the joys of learning history. And the only place in which they will get that chance is in the classroom and from their teachers.
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