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Book Review
| Anna Clark, Teaching the Nation: Politics and Pedagogy in Australian History, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2006. pp. x + 190. $49.95 paper, $39.95 e-book.
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| This book, a development of Anna Clark's doctoral dissertation, addresses an issue which is both current and recurrent. History is political. Just as historians worked out a very long time ago that the engine of history is power mediated through more or less unequal relationships, politicians with an eye to the future seek not merely to control the present but how it will be remembered. John Howard is unquestionably one of these. As a consequence, Howard has made History – the way that it is told and the way that it is taught – into a national issue. |
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Clark's book analyses and discusses this matter as it had unfolded up to the time of the completion of the manuscript. More has occurred since then, with a History Summit held in Canberra, a working party established to develop a 'milestone' narrative of Australian History, and a subsequent and much smaller group convened to review the milestones. At the same time, the Commonwealth's Department of Education, Science and Training has declared that 'History' is to be compulsory in Year Nine, and the States, who are actually responsible for the development and sequencing of curriculum and syllabus are responding. In one sense, it is regrettable that Clark chose to stop when she did. That is hardly a criticism, but more sensibly it would have been useful to have amended the subtitle so that the chronological coverage to 2004 could be made clear. This would not only have described the book better, but also indicated that the issue at its heart is ongoing and unresolved. |
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