History Without More Wars
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday October 3, 2007
PRIMARY school principals have long protested that their schools are asked to do too much - to make good all of society's deficiencies in children's upbringing, at the expense of what schools do best, namely teaching the basics. They are right: primary schooling is the essential foundation for more specialised education that children will receive at high school and beyond. Primary schools should concentrate on their basic task and not waste time compensating for deficiencies in children's broader upbringing. Those are problems for families to solve.
However, the principals' laudable proposal to get back to basics, set out in a charter on primary schooling, has run into criticism from the federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop. Ms Bishop questions their view of what constitutes the basics. The principals say these are English, arithmetic, science and something called social education. The last element - a combination of basic history, geography and politics - is the problem. Ms Bishop fears for the fate of history.Both Ms Bishop and the Prime Minister, John Howard, have strong views about any watering down of history teaching. Mr Howard devoted part of his Australia Day address last year to a call for "root and branch renewal" of the subject in Australia. It is a part of his more general campaign in the long-running culture wars with which many parents will agree. Ms Bishop organised a history summit to discuss a possible national curriculum. Most of this attention has been on high school history teaching. But yesterday, when the opportunity arose to talk about the primary curriculum, Ms Bishop took it. It is not clear why. Although it is apparent what Mr Howard and Ms Bishop oppose in history teaching practices, the public has been given only a vague idea of what they support. History is an important subject. In high school, it should not be watered down into an amorphous "people in their environment" curriculum. But in primary school, there must be room for teachers to seek to awaken children's interest in this country's story as part of finding out about the society in which they live. In this case, primary schools need not become another battlefield in Canberra's culture wars.
© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald