As Kim noted on LP, last week Julie Bishop fell into an obvious trap, and gave lie to the History Wars obsession about dates and events, by not knowing the names of the first explorers to cross the Blue Mountains.
Graham Young rightly observes that hapless Liberal leader Bruce Flegg, campaigning with Julie Bishop in Brisbane, has been pilloried for not knowing who Brisbane was named after largely because the media are now looking to run with the hook of “Flegg’s disaster of the day”. But commenter at Queensland election blog Currumbin2Cook, wpd, is also surely on the money when she argues that it’s incredible that Flegg fell into this similarly obvious trap.
Flegg’s policy announcement of the day, and thus his main chance to appear on the nightly news bulletins, was not to support Bishop’s push for compulsory history for years 9 and 10 (though he did), but to declare that he would make English compulsory. But it already is compulsory. So the media, too clever by half, actually missed an even bigger clanger.
And Flegg’s performance has been such, as I have argued, that he must also bear a large part of the blame for the media focus on his far too frequent malapropisms and disasters.
It highlights the continued lack of good staff work on the Queensland Liberal campaign, as his apperance with Bishop talking about school education would surely have suggested the likelihood of such questions. It also highlights the ludicrous depths to which the History Wars have descended.
However, and my flatmate Michael will bear witness to this, I did yell “Sir Thomas Brisbane” at the telly before poor old Bruce admitted he didn’t know.
Correction: From what the Education Minister said today, it seems that over 98% of senior students do English. Though it’s not “compulsory”, as there are no compulsory subjects, apparently schools encourage everyone bar special ed students to do it. So the literacy argument from Flegg is still a stunt and a furphy.
can I suggest that you create an open thread and call it “Everything you need to know to fight in the History Wars” or some such (probably catchier) title. Then allow everyone to post the obvious stupid facts that this impossible idiotic government thinks we should know.
Whenever we need to know a stupid fact about history we can then just reference teh internets pipes and get a dump truck load of facts
I am sure it will be very useful for WAP enabled mobile phone owners when they are doing the “Stupid Bullshit History Wars” round of the pub quiz or trying to run for government.
Tell you what, it would raise the tone of Brisvegas if blokes got around in that sort of clobber on our mean streets these days.
Flegg deserves all he cops.
glen, it’s a cardinal sin to consult your mobile phone at pub trivia!!!!
I am a strong supporter of the view that historical concepts should be developed during the compulsory years of schooling. But I also believe that other concepts are also important. Students need to develop concepts and processes that traditionally are found in Geography, Politics, Economics, Sociology, Law, Psychology, Civics, etc.
SOSE was an attempt to satisfy that need. You may argue that it didn’t achieve its goals, but I believe the direction was the right one.
It wasn’t too long ago that politicians were bemoaning the fact that the youth knew nothing about government. What is next? Soon the business community will decry the standard of ????. Name your own.
I’d like to see a journo ask Flegg who he barracks for at State of Origin time. When I checked his bio he was in the army in Sydney, he qualified as a doctor in Sydney but his earlier years are missing.
OK he’s been here 20 years as a doctor and a couple as a politician, but I reckon he’s still in his innermost soul a Mexican and probably a closet cockroach supporter!
Well spotted, Brian.
I’ve emailed your questions to Crikey – perhaps they’ll ask Flegg if he’s really a QUEENSLANDER!
Or at least publish it in their rumours section and provoke a response…
I’m sure Morris Iemma’s staffers have been hitting teh Wikipeia this morning.
Clare Martin should be breathing easy though.
While approx 99% of senior students in QLD study English, I don’t think (am sure) it is compulsory.
Not history, strictly speaking, but i do know of 10 year old children in certain WASP primary schools of brisbane who didn;t know how whether they we aboriginal or not when required to fill in the front page of a test that asked Are you Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander?
Despite being told by the teacher that the question was asking about your family heritage, if you identified as indigenous, i.e are you decended from the original inhabitants of Australia before white people came, one girl child still sat puzzled until another child shouted out “well, are you Black or not?”.
English was compulsory when i went through in Qld in the late 80’s. No idea if it is still the case. I know its hard to believe in the face of my appalling spelling and typing…but i actually did get a VHA in Senior English. lol.
Now there’s a ladyboy pantywaist if ever I saw one.
Ignorant Banana Benders…
Everyone down here knows that Melbourne was named after the town in Florida.
Taken from the Studies Authority website.
I wonder if thats always been the case, and it is /was up to individual schools to
decide whether a subject was compulsory ?
Granted its been a while.. i m a bit out of touch with the education system, secondary or tertiary
Ahhh good old Corinda High, where names and dates were hammered in so deeply I still bear the imprint of the hammer.
I’m currently residing in Western Australia and the Education minister here suggested that students should just use google. I guess that is OK for facts but my understanding of history as a subject for education has always been that it was about more than facts.
Flegg really said he’d make english compulsory? Yup, libs picked a winner there.
wpd on compulsory English, I think the incentive is that you can’t get the certification you require for tertiary entrance or for TAFE without it.
I think it’s true that in Tasmania some years ago when they were concerned whether kids would learn about HIV AIDS they found that nothing was actually compulsory.
In NSW English is compulsory. However, in Yr 12 there are two core english gradations: standard and advanced. On top of that, for advanced students, there are two “extension” courses (ext 1 begins in yr 11, ext 2 in yr 12)… in the old system courses were conceived as units; most courses are 2 units, whereas the two extensions each account for one unit. I’m proud to say I did advanced english plus both extensions… which meant that by yr 12 I did twice the standard loading of english. Ext 1 english focused on ways of thinking and analysing texts… we examined Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in yr11 and Postmodernism in yr12 (reading the French Lieutenant’s Woman, David Williamson’s horrid play “Dead White Males” and watching a number of movies like Orlando, Run Lola Run, and Mulholland Drive). Extension 2 was not timetabled (which meant plenty of extra unsupervised free periods with which to develop a taste for nicotine), it required independent work on a major piece (mine was a suitably [for a 17/18 year old] self-indulgent short story about philosophers and religious figures appearing in a postmodern city giving advice to people and critiquing modern life. I pretty much fluked the bloody thing, never having read any of the primary texts attributed to the philosophers/prophets. I guess my examiners were as ignorant as I was.
… from what I’ve heard english in QLD is nothing like this. Is that true?
Back to the main issue on the thread… I kinda feel pity for Flegg… sure, he made some screw-ups that are inexcusable (i.e. having no real health policy)… but I squirm when the media stings politicians like this. It’s kinda petty… and plays to a tame variety of shadenfreude that is so often a characteristic of Australian attitudes to politicians (not saying I’m immune… but it’s kinda silly don’t you think? I mean I had no idea who Brisbane was named after myself!).
More on the history wars. I find it odd that people would think that simply knowing the dates and facts of significant events and figures in history would lead to a greater understanding of history. That may perhaps lead to a kind of monumental, or heroic, sort of history which (depending on the way the story is told) either inspires awe or boredom, and wins you bar tabs at Hotel trivia nights… but it leaves out the critical side of things. This, in a sense, suggests Howard’s motives. To see history as a string of events puts things in a temporal perspective for kids (which is important), but kids should also develop an appreciation for ways of conceiving causality, of understanding the importance of perspective, and of relating recurring themes in history to our own contemporary condition.
Howard’s intervention itself affirms the truth about history… that it is fundamentally about values. Howard knows that there is for all intensive purposes, no fact/value distinction in the human sciences (let alone science in general), thus his assertion of returning to the facts should be seen for the kinds of values it masks and seeks to promote. The current way of teaching history, by the same token, also serves specific values. It is interesting because the debate seems to me to be framed in the terms of Nietzches conception of the use of history… that it be put to use of life. The objective of history is not to better understanding of the truth of the past, but to sustain and orient individuals and communities in the present. It is directly implicated in the context and content of our conceptions of the good life.
From what the Education Minister said today, it seems that over 98% of senior students do English. Though it’s not “compulsory”, apparently schools encourage everyone bar special ed students to do it.
Brian you say:
I completely agree. The ‘market forces’ demand that everyone does English. Flegg’s announcement that he would make it compulsory is like saying that to live you have to eat, breathe and drink etc.
Students ‘know’ that English is ‘compulsory’.
It’s not just the OP, every single tertiary course makes Senior English a prereq. So even if you’re unsure whether to go to uni, you’ve killed all your options off if you don’t do English.
Last year our young bloke was tops in his maths/science and was struggling with English. It seemed he might not even qualify for a TAFE course. When we enquired we were told that TAFE would let him in on a concession, but it would have been a concession. If he did well there he may find a way into uni.
In the event he changed English teacher. She was a good’un and halled him through. He aced most of his other subjects and got an OP2. So now he can go through the front door at uni, when and if he wants to.
I really want to see the journalists catch on to this. i want to see every interview turned into a kerbside trivia competition. “Minister, minister, can you tell us when Governor Phillip actually arrived in Sydney Harbour.. who was Alice Springs named after? Can you name the Prime Ministers of Australia in order? Which battalions fought Kokoda? How many Australian aircrew died in the Vietnam War? What is a nullah nullah? Why did settlers’s huts in Tasmania have holes cut in the walls? Which country did Australia annex Papua from? Which harbour is protected by Lasseter’s Reef?
OH YESS..
I thought Lasseter’s was the hotel in Neighbours. Lucky I’m not education minister.
The most important context in history is time. So an understanding of chronology is important, even if you degrade the concept to “just dates”. It’s not the endpoint of historical study, but it is the essential beginning. You can’t understand the concept of, say, Plato’s republic or the Elizabethan Commonwealth, or the battle of Salamis versus the Spanish Armada, without first understanding their separation in time and space, and the separation of their time and spce from ours.
Sorry, but when has history been taught without reference to dates?
Another Howardite furphy spins emptily in space.
Gee, Rob, you missed a perfect opportunity to reinforce your and Birdy’s theme about how I’m turning into a stuffy conservative in my old age!
Look, I think again the truth lies between the two poles.
I was very taken by Greg Melleuish conceding to Robert Manne on Lateline that everyone at the summit had said his year 9/10 curriculum outline was far too much to get through even in a third year honours history subject at uni.
Now I have no idea what the battle of Salamis was, though I understand the two concepts, and I’ve read quite a few books on Philip II so I can probably tell you a lot about the strategy and politics of the Spanish Armada too – but that’s just because I happen to be fascinated by that historical period.
I don’t think in a way it matters whether or not someone understands Plato’s Republic was x years ago, and anyway I couldn’t say off hand when Plato was writing – was it the 5th century BC because I’ve actually been taught his work in a political theory context which I now see as quite ahistorical and doing violence probably to what he meant at the time.
I suspect your pick of those examples wasn’t neutral, because you want to tell the same sort of story Melleuish wants to about Western values and civ. But even though I’d want to complicate and balance that story, understanding it actually doesn’t hang on dates. I could tell you a heap about what Plato’s political theory says, but now I recognise that I know bugger all about what Plato said himself because I don’t understand the history because it was taught to me wrapped up in a narrative.
I’ve been interested recently to read some of the military historians who oppose Victor Hanson’s work who emphasise the total disappearance of many of the Greek virtues and arts of politics and war, and the discontinuity and breaks in history (and they’re not Foucauldians either!). A lot of what you’re calling “history” is actually all myth and narrative rather than history per se.
I don’t deny the value of studying it, on the Durkheimian principle of social facts – ie what we believe does have an effect in the world even if it’s not a fact. But I think you need to have another think.
My point (poorly articulated) was about the importance of “dates”, as indispensable markers of sequence and consequence in the great intermingling narratives of the human story — and the preservation of the past’s temporal and spatial specificity from other explanative, or discursive, contexts that seek to efface that those specificities, such as SOSE. But then I’m a Foucauldian in matters historical.
We couldn’t possibly be agreeing with each other, could we, Lefty E?
But see again part of my point, Rob. (You’re quite within your rights to ignore the broader argument, it’s late and I’m too tired to articulate it well properly).
I don’t know in exactly what century Plato wrote. I’d be buggered if I could easily pick out Sparta or Troy on a map, and I’m unclear when the Homeric era was. But I understand the concept of Plato’s political theory (with all the caveats I entered, but let’s leave those aside) and I understand where Homer sits in the history of letters.
And indeed to tired to say that properly.
Bed time for me!
Night!
Now, Kim, I only said at Birdy’s that you had mellowed out.
And it is, I think, indisputable that an appreciation of chronological sequence and spatial seperation is critical to any understanding of the human story. It’s not all of what history is, of course it’s not. History constitutes the body of variant (inluding both contemporary and contemporaneous) meanings read into the connections between chronological incidences and geographical separations. But you can’t make those connections in the absence of an understanding of specific their existences in time and space.
Which is an irritating postmodren way of saying you start of with dates and places, and move on from there.
Too tired to decide whether or not I agree with the longer Rob.
But what’s a date? Go tell a 13 year old – that’s how old kids are in year 9 if I’m not mistaken – Plato lived from c. 427–c. 347 BC (I googled the Plato entry in Wikipedia to find out). What do they care? What was happening then? Who was Plato? You have already started with values and interpretations as you try to inculcate the fact.
I thought you would like my hymn of praise to books and libraries, Rob.
Sorry, Kim, you always get in at least two comments before I’ve ponderously finished one.
… i just remebered still have a journal Greg Melleuish loaned me back in 1990 (he was a lecturer/tutor at UQ yes?) Ummah.
Yeah, but in English I think not history? But it’s a long time ago – I was at UQ then too, tanja.
Anyway, night, Rob, it’s way past my bedtime – big day at work today and another one tomorrow so I probably won’t have time to join in again.
Watch it, tanja, he writes for Q now.
Which will teach me to be less judgemental, Rob (though I have actually read his Quadrant article). I was favourably impressed, as I’ve said a number of times, with both his appearance on Lateline and the paper he wrote for the history summit.
I think I also had my suspicions about him because of his long campaign targetting Stuart Macintyre over ARC grants. I still think his facts are wrong there, and Macintyre’s response convincing (Macintyre incidentally is much more reasonable and scholarly than his rep from the history warriors would suggest). But hey, anyone who’s spent time as a postgrad or a staff member in universities knows that there are lots more reasons why academics have grudges against each other than politics.
Anyway, wtf am I still doing here! Must. Go. To. Sleep.
It was one of those Interdisciplinary subjects IDxxx Contemporary Australian History. I even kept one of the texts (Rebels and Precursers) – a rare thing in my impoverished days when i pretty much on sold everything.
Apparently I’m still here.
Was he a good teacher, tanja?
I got the sense he would be from his interview.
He was probably in the Australian Studies Centre which was based in the English Dep’t. Hence the ID code for the subject. There you go, now I’ve worked out that to my satisfaction, I can sleep the sleep of the fact-laden
Wheels within wheels in the Byzantine sage of the Qld hustings.
As Graham Young puts it, the blonde are leading the blind:
http://currumbin2cook.nationalforum.com.au/archives/001565.html
lol. Sleep well. I’m at work for a few more hours.
His lectures were very comprehensive, and the classes were small (20 – 30) so no chance to catch a few zzzz’s thats for sure. I think the subject relied heavily on Manning Clarke – tho i’d have to check that one( it was a text for something i did back then).
Personally I loved the Art history component – Modernists vs the Establishment – Angry penguins , Ern malley affair etc etc. buts thats just me.
I dont really have any strong recollection of him – i think he was quite passionate about his subject – disciplined and intellectual…
Paul Renoylds, on the other hand, scared the heck out of me.
Bit of a rant coming up – apologies in advance.
I studied History in Highschool – in QLD no less! – and got VHAs. I did a history double major for my undergrad degree – at UQ – and used a fair bit of history in my Masters degree. I even rely on that history knowledge in my work today. Yet even I don’t think there is some crisis in history knowledge in schools today, so what/who is this driven by?? Is it a harking back to a nostalgic past where everyone could name past Prime Ministers, and sat around the fire at night telling tales of valiant past explorers?
If we are so concerned about students’/society’s knowledge, why aren’t we lamenting the lack of science knowledge? (see Toowoomba and the lack of understanding about recycled water; see the current debates around stem-cell research which soon disintergrates into talk about ‘potential life’ and ‘mutant human-animal clones’). Or the fact that less students are choosing to study Science at a University level? Political parties of both persuasions bang on about us being internationally competitive, so why are we so hung up on learning dates of previous events and other such insular information?
I JUST DON’T GET IT!! Gold star to the first person who can make it clear for me.
It’s just politics, Megami.
Speaking of which, Beattie has executed one of his characteristic backflips. Stand alone history is coming to Qld schools for years 9 and 10, despite the opposition of the Education Minister, Rod Welford:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20222662-2702,00.html
Beattie no doubt is just trying to neutralise a potential issue, but I wonder if it’s really all that important electorally.
In other history war matters, Greg Melleuish writes of the attempts to impose an “official narrative” on the History Summit itself:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20219300-7583,00.html
On Rob’s points above: