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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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The book itself is arranged thematically in six chapters. In her first chapter, Clark clearly establishes the link between political discourse and the ways in which History is written and taught. She goes on to look at the politics of History in other English-speaking nations and establishes (but does not exploit) seductive parallels with the Australian situation. Her third and fourth chapters look at the debates and processes which have surrounded both the establishment of History syllabi in Australia, and pedagogies which have been employed in seeking to deliver those syllabi. She continues by an examination of History teaching in the context of the development of Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE) after the Hobart Declaration of 1989, and concludes with a critique of the emergence of 'active citizenship' as a major rationale for the teaching of History in schools. |
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One point that emerges is that the controversy over History teaching is nothing new. There has always been a tension between History and Social Studies (or its various versions). In part this has been about balance and content and rarely about pedagogy. The current debate is no different. John Howard and Julie Bishop have both referred to the 'crowded curriculum' and the need to clear a space for History as a stand-alone subject. But they have both gone further and advocated that History should be taught in a particular way, specifically, through the focus on an authoritative narrative. Both Howard and Bishop have criticised thematic approaches to the past. They would, for example, be deeply critical of a concept like 'Labour History', or for that matter 'Women's History', or any other form of social history. These, to Howard, would be cases in point of the 'fragmented stew of themes and issues' asserted in his 2006 Australia Day Address. |
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Another point which emerges very clearly in Clark's book is the consequence of flirtation with narrative. John Howard has, in the past, praised the former NSW Premier Bob Carr for his staunch defence of narrative History, and Carr's insistence that it be taught in NSW schools. What Carr then found was that while it was relatively straightforward to get teachers to teach a civic narrative, it was a much more difficult proposition to get students to learn it. |
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On the other hand, Howard has pursued the teaching of narrative, completely undeterred by the question of pedagogy. Such a dogged persistence with what otherwise seems discredited demands a degree of analysis. This is, unfortunately missing from Clark's book. What is it about conservatives that they privilege authoritative narrative? It is simplistic to draw the implication that it is mere nostalgia; erroneous to assert that it is merely a partisan championing of 'their' history. Clark quite rightly notes that the 'culture wars' battles over History in the United States have had the question of national identity at their heart. This implication is less clearly drawn for the Australian context, and analysis of the conservative rationale is missing. There is one, not so much in the writings of Geoffrey Blainey or Keith Windschuttle, as in those of John Carroll – also a 'Quadrant intellectual' – who has argued very strongly that the cultural identity of 'the West' is crumbling 'through want of a story'. |
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Communal narratives do provide identity. It is one such narrative that Howard wishes to be taught as History. Here Clark's analysis is sharp and ironic. The undoubted strength of this book is that Clark takes the issue of pedagogy seriously. She engages with both the practitioners and theorists of History teaching. She points out that, while it is more than possible to teach national narratives, this does not mean that students either want to, or will, learn them. That is a matter which has not been addressed in any of the debates, consultations, summits, working parties and reviews to date. So far it has all been about the content. The proposition that there is no teaching without learning remains an educational truism. As a result, conservatives will continue to fail in asserting the value of national narrative while students are disinclined to learn it. |
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| Edith Cowan University |
BILL LEADBETTER | |
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