10,000 schools, one curriculum
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There have been humorous as well as shameful moments in a week during which there was the launch of the Rudd/Gillard draft national history curriculum. The comedy came in Tuesday’s wonderful headline in the Northern Territory News, ‘Reading, Writing, Bombing’. The sub-editor who dreamed that one up has got to be a front-runner for a Walkley. The shameful moments came when, uncertain how to tackle a curriculum that was being hyped as traditionalist — and while Tony Abbott was pictured crouched in earnest conversation with an Aboriginal elder — some Opposition MPs started to count mentions of Aborigines in the curriculum. Should there be a quota on references to Aborigines? Give me a break! How would I feel, I asked myself, if I were an indigenous Australian and yet again in the newspapers I read that my culture’s presence in the nation’s schools was unwelcome? When both sides of Australian politics acknowledge, with sincerity and generosity, the value and contribution of our indigenous heritage, the country will have truly grown up. Until then, we wait, but not with bated breath. There were other knee-jerk reactions, too. Gallipoli watchers were at work. Wilful misreaders were prominent. Conspiracy theorists abounded. SOSE educators, a vanishing breed, said the curriculum was too narrow. Conservative commentators, a stubborn sort, said, variously, it was too broad, too stodgy, too socialist and a bit too Asian. More generally though, the new history draft was well received. But it’s not the nature of a published curriculum that is likely to be the real problem, it’s in the implementation that a curriculum stands or falls. And at the risk of sending Crikey readers into a catatonic trance, it’s important to point out that there are four stages of curriculum design and implementation. First we have intended curriculum — the overt and covert aims of the instigators of curriculum change. Then we have stated curriculum — what it says on the paperwork. Next comes enacted curriculum — how it works at school level. Finally we have realised curriculum — what students have actually learned. For the purposes of this article, let’s leave intended, stated and realised aside and focus on the engine room — enacted curriculum. To begin with, the variables in enactment are beyond the understanding of us all. There are 3.5 million school students in Australia and almost a quarter of a million teachers working in 10,000 schools. Figure it out. From school to school, from classroom to classroom, from teacher to teacher, from student to student, from lesson to lesson, and from day to day we have a huge and varied kaleidoscope of attitudes and actions, perspectives and understandings, kindnesses and cruelties, moments of inspiration and moments of combined incomprehension and boredom — as well as efficiencies and incompetencies, all kinds of activities can only be partly moderated by any curriculum, local or national. And, in that immeasurable and constantly shifting kaleidoscope, there are two main ways of dealing with curriculum change. In the first case, experienced and skillful teachers will look at the new requirements and say to themselves, “Within this new framework, how can I teach what I enjoy teaching and have been teaching successfully for years?” And a process of highly localised modulation begins, which, if it works well, will meet the assessment requirements that ACARA proposes to introduce — and that level of autonomy is one of the joys of teaching. The second case involves beginning teachers. Their anxious question is “How can I successfully teach what it says in the paperwork?” And, if they have been well prepared at university and if they are capable, they’ll probably find out how to do it and move into the skillful category of capability — if they are prepared well. And that’s where we need to pause for reflection and a bit of analysis because this is where it gets really tricky. In Australian education faculties/departments/schools, too many of them theory-obsessed, there are only 16 secondary-level history classes with numbers more than 50. The rest have numbers well below that figure. Of those 16, 10 are in NSW. That means that the rest of the nation’s secondary schools will draw the majority of their new history teachers from a mere six decent-sized classes, a harmful legacy of the SOSE years. In the national total, we are therefore talking about a mere thousand or so newly graduated teachers of history every year to service almost a million secondary school students. This, in a national curriculum, where, outside NSW and Victoria, history is a new, core subject, and the arithmetic is obvious. We must have an army of newly-trained history teachers to service the national curriculum. But the arithmetic is depressingly simple: on current figures, we are not going to get that army if we have one additional new history teacher per year to teach a complex and challenging subject to one thousand secondary students. This, at a time when beginning teacher attrition rates in some states are hitting 25% after only one year’s service with almost 50% having left after five years service. Combine these figures with an ageing/exiting teacher population and we get one of those old maths problems. If the rate of entry of new history teachers coming into service is X and the rate of general teacher departure is Y, how long before we end up asking the caretaker to take Year 10 classes in the Russian Revolution? And that is not a new question. For the past 10 years, teacher union surveys have consistently shown that more than 50% of secondary teachers teach outside their area, which reminds me of an old US school joke — What do you call your new history teacher? (The answer is coach). But it’s not just secondary schools that are a problem. In primary schools throughout Australia, an emphasis on scheduling literacy and numeracy sessions has shoved history (and science) into the curricular margins, a situation not helped at all by some education faculty staff preparing their primary-level trainees by devoting themselves to slavishly catechising Gallic philosophers while others have been busily propagating generic social education, all at the expense of introducing primary teaching students to even the most basic understanding of history, a subject still despised by some 1980s retro educators. The history national curriculum solution, in part, has got to lie therefore in a turnaround in the attitude of many education faculties. A bit less Foucault (discredited scholar that he is) and a good deal more emphasis on the preparation of faculty trainees for careers as skilled, reflective and knowledgeable teachers of history. That would be a good beginning. Now it’s up to the federal government to make it happen. Tony Taylor teaches and researches at Monash University and is currently working as a consultant to the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). |
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34 Comments
For those of us interested in the future of our nation — because what we teach kids helps determine that future — and yet who are not deeply immersed in the politics of the education system, WFT is “SOSE”?
And while I do understand the history curriculum was a focus here, why does there always seem to be so much political emphasis on what we teach about the past, rather than what skills we teach for understanding the future?
future — and yet who are not deeply immersed in the politics of the education system, WFT is “SOSE”?
And while I do understand the history curriculum was a focus here, why does there always seem to be so much political emphasis on what we teach about the past, rather than what skills we teach for understanding the future?
[ as a parent and a grandmother if we know our past we can teach a better future}
simple i would say
SOSE is short for “Studies of Society and Environment”. It sounds like another term for what used to be known as “social studies” or “social science”.
“A bit less Foucault (discredited scholar that he is)”. How about “misused scholar that he is.
Stilgherrian:
History teaches us who we are, how we became who we are, and what we may yet become.
(with apologies to Manning Clarke)
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
(George Santayana)
The fact that we live in an age of towering societal hyperanxiety is entirely due to the fact that history has been colonized by ideology instead of politics.
(yours truly)
Oh I get that history is important. Forget the past, doomed to repeat etc. History is A Good Thing. I just don’t understand why we spend so much energy on the meaning of Gallipoli and so little on worrying that we’re seeing enough education in general critical thinking and analysis.
We all have memories of our own past in order to understand who we are, what we’re doing and where we’re going and the same can be said for communities and society. Studying history is one of the few ways we can get a better grasp on exactly why things are the way they are, otherwise we’re all just floating around in a vacuum. For example: Why is there trouble in the Middle East? Why did a group of Arab men hijack airlines are fly them into the WTC? Studying history is the only way to answer these kinds of questions to get beyond the obvious, surface-level answers.
— — — — — — — — — — — -
Why is Foucault a ‘discredited’ scholar?
“How would I feel, I asked myself, if I were an indigenous Australian and yet again in the newspapers I read that my culture’s presence in the nation’s schools was unwelcome?”
This is a very good point.
I’m more worried about the science curriculum. A subject called “Science and culture”? Teaching traditional remedies and chinese medicine under a science umbrella? What’s next, creationism and intelligent design?
I’m a defender of religious faith, but blurring the line between historical/faith based traditions and evidence-based scientific fact is not something I would recommend.
Stilgherrian no it is in the curriculum but usually embeded in other subjects. What it comes down to is how good your teacher is. Good teachers teach kids to think and question as the lessons unfold. All this curric focus is a distraction when the real game is teacher quality
Why history? It is general knowledge that is missing in our school curriculum. The programs should include local history, Australian history and other-than-Australian history as well as geography, chemistry and physics.
To my utter surprise, I just saw an American TV newsreader pointing at Galapagos stating: ‘and that is our Hawaii - safe from tsunami that affected Chile ‘. He was quite serious. No wonder, Americans bombed the wrong countries - if there is any ‘right’ country to be bombed.
Our daughter could not study bio-technology at the uni because ‘she had not had enough chemistry’ in her high school’.
Broad curriculum should give our students more choice and more options in their future decisions. This option in developing different interests should start in primary school. No uni can substitute a good primary school.
I do not believe that primary education should start with ‘safe sex’ and ‘child abuse’ awareness programs.
We already have a second generation of illiterate parents and under-qualified teachers in this country.
STILGHERRIAN
‘Critical thinking and analysis’ do not come from empty drums. They need sound basic academic knowledge in order to be able to compare and analyse things. Nothing comes from vacuum. That is why we should have more educated teachers, in the first place. ‘I believe’ mentality should be changed into ” I do know and can support my arguments with knowledge’ attitude.
The so called ‘wholistic approach’ should be abandoned altogether. There is no ‘one size fits all’ pattern in acquiring knowledge.
If in doubt - look at China and many European countries for education patterns - and their results.
Erm, people seem to be having trouble with my point.
Maybe I should say it again. I’m not saying “Don’t teach history” or asking “Why teach history?” or “Why is teaching history important?” I’m wondering why it’s history in particular which seems to be the focus of so much political attention. As Scott points out, for example, Science seems to geta raw deal.
The fact that Aboriginal Dreaming is considered a science subject is a joke; as is the study of Chinese medicine little more than a limp attempt at cultural relativism.
That a student has to wait until Year 10 before studying any real science should be setting off alarm bells all over academia, in particular inside those seats of learning and research who will see a significant dimunition in the quality of potential undergraduates who have little more than a cursory knowledge of any science subject.
More hilarious is the inadequacies of the educators themselves; vast swathes of current teachers who know little about grammar and numeracy.
Who is going to educate the educators?
Oh that’s easy, Read Denial: History Betrayed by Tony Taylor. It’s not a great book but it lays out in some detail the psychology behind why people deny historical events occured and the tactics they use to convince themselves and others of their point of view. Howard was at pains to deny how violent the occupation of this country actually was and that made history and it’s teaching politically contentious.
I was reflecting after my last post and remembered that when I spoken to or listened to leading educators they have stressed the need for more thinking tools and less content. The argument is that the jobs our children will have in twenty years time may not even exist yet and will use technology that has yet to be dicovered. Case in point in the mid 70s my big brother bulit an 8 bit Microbee computer and I spent days playing ztrek things moved on very fast from that point.
Somewhat ironically history, more than science, lends it self to teaching kids critical thinking in a scholl context.
Sorry, catatonia did indeed descend in the 5th para, and the comments didn’t help.
learn to read, write a grammatical sentence and do mental arithmetic - all else will follow.
For three years until the age of 16 Alexander was educated by Aristotle. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons. Aristotle was famous for knowing everything, however he was not a good instructor of youth, he had a tendency to wander, in the classroom and elsewhere. He wasn’t on the ball.
With a teacher like that, one’s values might well become warped. As it turned out Aristotle couldn’t help some people. As soon as he had finished reading the Nicomachean Ethics, Alexander began killing everything and anything that got in his way. Once home was taken care of and all meddlesome relatives done away with, he was now ready for his real career, so he decided to go to Asia. He also introduced eggplant into Europe! (yes it was his fault). Just what this distressing young man thought he was doing is anyone’s guess. Aristotle couldn’t get through to him and shortly after his premature demise Alexander’s empire fell to pieces at once, and nothing remained of his work except that the people he had killed were still dead.
What we teach today is not necessarily all that relevant tomorrow, what will be taught? Sorry day ? Sorry for what? Anzac Day? yes by all means. Climate Change? How will that be done? Who do you believe? I fear there might well be a lot of brainwashing going on and very little learning.
Johnjohnjohnnotofourearth -Sorry for what? In the words of a pint sized tv star of the 70’s ‘Whatchoo talkin bout?! As for your aubergineaphobia - perhaps your dislike of all things coloured is blurring your vision?!
whilst I have self educated myself and subsequently know a lot about aboriginal history and culture, it is sad that it has taken until 2010 for us to take aboriginal culture within school teachings seriously. It is certainly one of the most ancient and also one of the most beautiful cultures in the world.
As for Chinese medicine? pffftttttttt…. maybe as an elective in some irrelvant undergraduate degree, but not within our school system. IMO, chinese culture is already too prevalent in Australian society, we don’t need anymore.
My formal education started at a Catholic school, and then I transferred to a NSW state school. I discovered that the heros at one school were the villians at the other.
Each had a different method of teaching me to read; I could read before I started school, but struggling with these two methods almost unlearned me.
Result: I still don’t know who were the good blokes and who were the low life and I still cannot spell.
ALEXANDER BERKMAN: How do you come to that conclusion? Are you referring to people of colour? I’m married to a girl of colour and i like her very much. As for the sorry you mention, yes sorry for what? Where are all of these stolen generations? When the Spanish start apologising for the atrocities in Mexico and South America (remember that nasty fellow Cortez) and the Americans start apologising for their treatment of Native Indians, hey while where at it lets’ go way back and ask the Italians for an apology for the Roman empire! Nothing is blurring my vision in the search for the truth and when there is no evidence to be found, what are we saying sorry for?.
And this is to be taught in our schools?
why do white people always refer to “coloured people”? it is one of the worlds great questions.
I’m curious about this suggestion of teaching ‘traditional remedies and Chinese medicine’. Can anyone point me to a reference for that?
Napoleon, there a difference between ‘coloured people’ and ‘people of colour’
Johnfromplanetearth you should read more books. We’d be saying sorry for trying for most of the last 220 years to exterminate Aborigines. Different ways, different motives, different governments same ultimate goal. Saying sorry is a way of taking responsibility for what was done. It’s a grown up sort of thing. If you’re going to run a denialist line and say it never happened well that’s sad and it diminishes you.
Bernard nailed it without cant or bias when he wrote:
“When both sides of Australian politics acknowledge, with sincerity and generosity, the value and contribution of our indigenous heritage, the country will have truly grown up.”
@Stilgherrian Hopefully ‘good history teaching’ equips students with skills to think critically, analyse thoughtfully etc. Science teaching does this as does English, Maths etc. Teacher expertise and training is crucial to achieving ‘good history teaching’. No good having stories of millions of years if they donlt have the skills to question, analyse and critique them - skills which will help them in various ways ‘in the future’.
The public feel very proprietorial about history education - and expect too much sometimes. It’s almost as if they expect history teaching to be everything (turning out good citizens, making sure ‘our kids’ know ‘our story’ - whatever that is - making sure they know the entire environmental history of the world to make sure students ‘are prepared for the future’). You don;t get the same, very public discussion, about science education, which, in my opinion is just as important.
Tony - it sounds like a new history war with the mobilisation of your history teacher army
Seriously though, I agree with the need to treat this concern with some urgency. I visit so many pre-service teachers in my current role and one of the most common concerns raised by them to me, if they are undergoing a generic course such as a broadly labelled ‘Humanities’; or ‘Studies of Society and Environment’ is that they feel like they are not qualified to teach history because their undergraduate degree may have specialised in political science or geography.
I hope that the document is eventually complimented withe the resourcing that teachers and students deserve.
“…When both sides of Australian politics acknowledge, with sincerity and generosity, the value and contribution of our indigenous heritage, the country will have truly grown up…”
Already done.
Do we have to be continually reminded of it?
What more do you want?
Do you apply the same argument to returned servicemen Mama?
We hear about that at least twice a year.
Well people like you have to keep being reminded Pauline. And Sophie Mirralbella and Wilson Tuckey who had more important things to do that be sincere and generous to this nations original inhabitants. Once a denialist always a denialist I guess.
SBH: Our ‘sorry’ PM appears to hand these ‘sorries’ out willy nilly, he’s been working overtime on them this past week. So we will teach sorry day to our children neglecting to inform them that the Victorian State Stolen Generations taskforce concluded there had been no formal policy for removing children- ever!
Tasmania, South Australia and the Northern Territory all have the same result.
There is no evidence any Australian State Government had a policy for removing children just because they were aboriginal. So Krudd apoligises for what exactly? So we can feel all warm and fuzzy about our past? That should make everyone feel better about themselves now. And they want to teach this to our children? Would they like to teach that children were saved from bashings, being raped and sometimes killed by relatives and members of their own tribes? I’d say rescued was the more appropriate term to use here. It continues to this day unabated because Governments now live in fear of the Stolen Generations myth. I feel for the children who suffer now because we feel so good about ourselves for saying sorry for saving children in the past.
Well you just keep saying that John, won’t make it any truer.
To attempt to differentiate Victorian ‘adoptions’ from the forced removals that occured elsewhere is specious but also irrelevant to a National apology. Your lack of acknowledgement and continue to portay Aboriginal society negatively are at best graceless.
For those who want to read the stories here’s the link
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/pdf/social_justice/bringing_them_home_report.pdf
Of course as to the curriculum, I suppose some of you deniers have a reason for not wanting children to learn why Rudd said sorry?
For a somewhat more complete and honest understanding of what the Victorian Stolen Generations Taskforce think read the Between Two Worlds report on their website. Not surprisingly they have a different view to Johnfromplanetdenial
Just as Aleaxander had trouble grasping the thoughts of Aristotle the Left have just as much trouble grasping reality. The Left always have trouble in their search for the truth because they may not like what they find. Just what did Krudd say sorry for? It was an election promise that made everyone feel goooood. What negativity do you refer? My acknowledgement for aboriginal culture and society is very sound when i care very much what happens to children who are bashed, raped and killed. I want these children to have all the advantages a young life can be given. I won’t be brainwashed into believing something when there is no evidence to prove it really happened. So why teach it? I’ll leave the sorry’s to KRudd he’s good at them.
There should be a better balance struck between recongnizing the value and triumphs of European settlement versus suffering of the indigenous (though in my day at school, there wasn’t enough recognition of the latter). How many people know an Australian doctor first noted the value of vitamin C? And, that at the start of the 20th century, we were world leaders in the distance of railway guage per capita? This fact makes recent efforts in effecting good transport look bad.
The proposal for earnest reintroduction of grammar (the glue that puts the language together) is cause for celebration. At my son’s small “alternative” school, it never went out.
I would like to see more emphasis on spelling lists being grouped by similarity of sounds or letter groupings and/or in illustration of spelling rules.
I am aghast that the Periodic Table of elements would not be introduced until Year 10. My son’s school has given its usage in year 7 more clarity, by explaining one definition of the term, “periodic” is a repeating pattern. In this case, the pattern is the repeated increase in the number of protons in each element listed on the table. An element is defined by its number of protons (the later you go in the table, the more protons you find in the elements listed). I wish I had grasped that significance when I was at school. I had no idea why the elements were in table form at all. It would have made the table more interesting.
John you star. Why not talk about the children that were loved and cherished and taken? You won’t be brainwashed and you won’t believe the stories of people who were actually affected by our governments (ie our own) policies. sad
I believe Life Of Brian to be the best biblical movie ever made. For those who think it is sacrilegious for me to say that then have another look at it again with an open mind. I suspect the mind will still be closed of those unthinking people who create absurditites through politics or begin following or believing any story that will reinterpret history for their own purpose. No matter what political side of the fence you sit on, you will always read the historical evidence in your own way.
“He is the messiah, i ought to know, i’ve followed a few” Some people will believe whatever they wish to believe irrespective of the historical evidence put before them, William Randolph Heasrt once said “never let the truth get in the way of a good story”
As long as your own political point of view can become enhanced, then at the drop of a sandal myth becomes a reality, odd considering people who think that have a very loose grip on reality in the first place.
So the meaning of sorry day will be taught in our schools, will they also be teaching the creation? Did Eve really eat an Apple? The Bible says it was a fruit of the tree, what fruit? Was it an Orange, Mango, Apricot? Where did Apple come from?
In 1766 Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote of an incident in which a great princess (unknown) was told that the country had no bread. “let them eat cake” she replied. When Rousseau wrote this Marie Antoinette was 11 years old and living in Austria! 25 years later revolutiary propagandists reinterpreted these words for their own benefit.
A nice conveniant reivention of history.
Van Gogh only cut off a portion of his left lobe not his entire ear! He only painted for 8 years of his life. Not in the movie Lust For Life he doesn’t!
July 4th 1776 Independance day for Americans? Nope, it isn’t. Hostilities went on for another 7 years !Let’s try September 3rd 1783 when mad King George 111 and US leaders signed the definitive treaty of peace. I don’t see any national holiday in the USA on September 3 in any year.
Columbus thought he would go for a sail one day not to prove the world was flat, but to prove that Asia was closer than everyone thought. Since the 4th century BC almost nobody thought the world was flat, even if that was not the case, Columbus would never have set out to prove the world was round…because he didn’t believe it himself. Columbus thought the world was pear shaped ( little did he know that 518 years later he might be right) Oh, he never ever set foot on mainland America.
Columbus journey’s are taught in every elementary school in the USA.
They also teach that George Washington was the first US President, was he now?
Try Peyton Randolph first president of the Continental Congress, a convention of delegates that first emerged as the national Government of the United States during the American Revolution. Washington might be the 15th president not the first!
Depends on what book you read or what’s in the curriculum.
Myths, Legends, halftruths, reinterpretations which ever way you wish to look at history you will find another story attached to it.
The past is often reinterpreted to suit the requirements of the present, believe what ever you wish to believe, it is our right and as much as i disagree with most points of view on here i will defend your rights to have that view.
John Cleese when asked how to describe Monty Python replied “It’s all based on the absurdity of human behaviour”
Flying Sheep anyone?