Economics is history

If any proof that history matters was needed, it has certainly been provided in the past week or so.

First, there was some vigorous historical debate between John Howard and Paul Keating about who contributed most to the economic reforms of the recent decades.  Both the former prime minister and the incumbent sought to claim as large a share of the credit as possible for reforms that have done more than anything else to shape modern Australia.

Then, a draft copy of the proposed new secondary school Australian history curriculum found its way into the media.

This document does not consider the fundamental economic reform of the past quarter century worthy of mention.  Yet, it does find space for consideration of cliched left-wing causes celebres such as protests against the Vietnam War, the Dismissal (of the Whitlam government) and the Mabo judgment.

While Howard and Keating may not agree on much, they would both agree that the process of economic reform has been a crucial development in Australia's history.

The question therefore needs to be asked why it is not included as a possible topic in the national history curriculum that has been drafted in the wake of the History Summit which the Howard Government held last year.

The revelations about the draft curriculum certainly make more sense of the recent announcement by Education Minister Julie Bishop that a four-person reference group was being set up "to provide advice on a model curriculum to be used as the foundation for the teaching of Australian history in Years 9 and 10".

In other words, they will provide some much-needed reworking of the draft history curriculum.

From what has been made public, the draft curriculum clearly fails to meet the Prime Minister's original stated aim for federal intervention to bring a "root and branch renewal" of history teaching.  It is probably an improvement on the Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE) subject taught in most states.

At least a new stand-alone history subject may be better than what one critic described as the "new aged and one sided" Queensland SOSE curriculum that was introduced in 1999.

However, the national draft, in its current form, does not bring back the sort of structured narrative that would make sense of the past for students.

Nor would it infuse in them the joy of learning history that comes much more readily in a narrative approach.

There also remains the overriding concern, which has not been properly addressed since this whole process started, of how the renewed focus on Australian history in Years 9 and 10 is to be placed within an overall history syllabus at other year levels.

The Howard Government now finds itself having to set up yet another reference group and having to defend itself from renewed attack from various elements of the history establishment and opportunistic politicians.  These critics have attacked the inclusion of Geoffrey Blainey and Gerard Henderson in the group.

The main gripe with Henderson being included is that he is not a professional historian or a teacher of history.  He has done a good job of defending his own claims -- a history PhD, a couple of history books, journal articles and so on.

However, Henderson's appointment has still attracted the same sort of sneering around the academic community that the choice of journalist Les Carlyon as joint winner of the Prime Minister's history prize has also generated.

What Howard and Bishop have attempted highlights the difficulty of top-down reform.  At some point, the Government has to let the curriculum leave the summit, or leave the reference group, and at that point it will be taken over by academics and schoolteachers.

These "history professionals" will want to ensure that all well-educated students leave school knowing that Australian participation in the Vietnam War was wrong, the Dismissal was an assault on democracy and that the Mabo judgment was one of the few high points in Australian history.

As for the economic reform of the 1980s, students sadly will be left to wonder what on earth Howard and Keating are arguing about.

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