Reporting of the initial proposals from the National Curriculum Board for directions for history teaching in schools is concentrating on the suggestion that Australian history be embedded within global contexts. Given that there has already been a predictable furore of confected indignation over the appointment of Professor Stuart Macintyre to chair the history panel, there’s no surprises in reading that Gerard Henderson fears such a focus will interfere with learning facts and Kevin Donnelly warns of a return to a “black armband” view of history. And Tony Abbott has written his own mini-curriculum:
History classes should start with the history of the Jews, then move on to the Greeks and Romans, then the history of Britain, Mr Abbott said.
None of this seems to me to be particularly informed comment, or worthy of the importance the history warriors themselves supposedly place on the issue. It’s clearly absurd to teach Australian history as if it doesn’t have a global context.
Stuart Macintyre’s views are outlined in this interview.
What surprises me, though, is that no one has picked up on the fact that Macintyre’s justification draws heavily on Anna Clark’s work in her book History’s Children: History Wars in the Classroom. Clark interviewed a large number of both Australian and Canadian school students on what they liked and disliked and would like to see in the teaching of national history. A world history context was a theme brought up by the students again and again. Some of Clark’s research is highlighted in this article in Overland.
A national curriculum be damned. Let schools set their own.
I was struck by a grab in the news by Professor Macintyre saying (roughly) “If we do it together, we can do it better.” What rot. This latest attempt to find the ‘right’ way to teach history (or anything, for that matter) may indeed be the perfect educational path to follow. However, it could easily be yet another soon-to-be-discredited fad. What odds it is unlikely to be the former?
There’s a danger with centrally imposed curricula – if they get it wrong, they get it wrong for everyone.
Much better to allow every school to try their own method. Let a hundred flowers blossom, etc. (Look at me, Ma, I’m quoting Mao!) That way if someone gets it badly wrong, only a few will suffer, and those that get it right will be successful and emulated.
Decentralisation FTW.
Mark, the money-quote from Abbott was why he believes that Britain is the next stop on the history curriculum – because it’s “where we come from”.
The problem with that view is:
1) It’s factually incorrect for a majority of the population.
2) It’s breathtakingly parochial, bordering on narcissistic.
For a start, the idea that we come from Britain would be news to a great many Australians who come from right here, or whose forebears don’t in fact come from Britain.
Then there’s the usual mixture, like my mother’s family are mostly from Ireland (the non-British part) and Germany. My father’s family are from Austria. So who’s “we”, English?
But the really deficient part of the reasoning is the assumption that we should learn the bits of history that are most “like us”.
I would’ve thought that many Australian kids today would benefit from knowing a heckuva lot more about the history of Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Japan and The Philippines: regardless of where they come from.
And yeah, take your point in general that really, what merit do the views of Henderson, Donnelly and Abbott have anyway? Golly gosh, I took some undergraduate history subjects too – can I have a nationally syndicated column now please?
I guess the newspapers have to fill those column-inches somehow.
If Australia were a house, its bookshelves are stocked from Europe and America. But the view out of its windows is of Asia.
We have made much of the books inherited from our ancestors. And I for one would be loth to chuck many of them out.
But our more urgent task is to take the shutters off the windows and even perhaps to open the doors a bit so that we establish constructive engagement with the neighbourhood.
The biggest task for the teaching of history to Australian children is to encourage them to see that knowledge of the past can be liberating or it can be a set of mental shackles, according to how it is done.
Question everything. Trust must be earned.
Katz [3]
Yep.
“knowledge of the past can be liberating or it can be a set of mental shackles”
Shackles, leg irons, the triangle and the cat o’nine tails are the defining images of Tony Abbott’s historical universe for good reason. As P J Keating remarked, these people are the ‘punishers and the straighteners’. The important element about history teaching for the Abbotts and the Hendos is that it be delivered as a single holy text, received but never questioned, learned by rote if possible. The preferred model for discussion of the curriculum is the Council of Nicaea, a gathering of Hendo thinkalikes* who would purge the curriculum of allegedly apocryphal texts and define for all time the elements of an official Australianism.
Curiously, these history warriors never make explicit – perhaps because they do not themselves understand – the location of their own world view in historical context. The reason subversive alternative histories (indigenous, women’s, labour etc.) and global context must be purged from the official curriculum (in my view) is that they challenge the colonial project. The ideology of colonialism requires that the colonisers are forever the acme of evolution and progress, thereby endowed with the right to exterminate the cultures, stories and indeed lives of previous inhabitants. To the colonial ideologue, this is nothing more than a natural process. By definition, any group challenging this inexorable march is regressive and mistaken. The process can be seen in its more muscular early life in contemporary Israel/Palestine.
*Is it possible to imagine a more turgid and depressing colloquium?
“A national curriculum be damned. Let schools set their own.”
Nonsense.
Firstly, ’schools’ do not have the resources, and most would not have the capacity to turn appropriate resources into curricula. ‘Schools’ in scare quotes because you are actually referring to already-overworked living-breathing teachers and library staff.
Secondly, I can imagine that enclaves of stupidity would emerge where P&C organisations had successfully lobbied their local schools to inoculate the next generation against any capacity for critical thought.
So what happens if and when the schools teach the most probable account of the origins of the ancient Hebrew nation (i.e. that it was established in the hills of Palestine by refugees from the collapse of the Canaanite coastal city-states at the end of the 2nd millennium BCE, and that there was no captivity in nor exodus from Egypt)? Will governments and education departments hold the line against faith-based demands that the Scriptural version (which contains many moving, powerful and insightful myths but which is not historical) be taught as historical “truth”?
For many years now Australian historians have talked about the idea of ‘cultural baggage’. For 18 Century Australian history this means primarily the ideas brought here by English and Irish immigrants. But as one progresses to the 19/20 Century this ‘cultural baggage’ extends to practically every country in the world.
Consequently to understand where we are all coming from surely we need to know as much about those countrie’s histories as we do about Anglo-Celtic history.
Not to mention Aboriginal history.
With modern history (ie from c, 1750 to the present, surely that is the path to go.
Nor should we forget that many of our ideas come from the Graeco-Roman. and, as much as I abhor some of it, the Judaeo-Christian tradition,(including the medieval and Renaissance periods),from the European and American Enlightenments (including the ideas of republicanism and democracy), from the post enlightenment period, (which includes the varieties of socialism, mercantilism and capitalism) and social and religious idea from the Asian region (some of which, such as Chinese legalism) are not particularly compatible with our concepts of democracy. We also need to consider the somewhat unique history of Africa (though it does have paralells elsewhere.)
In regard to Aussie history being boring – if you take the contoversy out of it, what else it is going to be. And the kids know this. After all, what is history but a study of different, and competing ideas, none of which are necessarily right, and usually interpreted through a contemporary lens, as Croce suggested many years ago.
What Glen @ 6 said!
I think it’s a great idea. We should teach all history from a British perspective. Then we can teach the kids about how a group of pagan clans were invaded and conquered by an outside empire, then formed in to an oppressive theocracy, before turning to capitalism and colonising the world. We can teach them how much the British fucked over the Irish, the African’s, the Indigenous Americans, the Indians, the Indigenous Australians etc.
Mercurius @ 2.
It would seem be to racist to assume that history is tied to ones genetic background.
After all, most “white” Australians would have almost no genetic link with the ancient romans, greeks or jews. Anglo-Saxons came from Northern Europe post the collapse of the roman empire after all.
That does not stop the classical past being part of the cultural inheritance, and therefore history, of all Australians. Indeed, the history of Australia, culturally speaking, is does indeed comprise in part the stories of the classical world, the bibical world (leaving aside believing in magical sky pixies), english history etc.
“Firstly, ’schools’ do not have the resources, and most would not have the capacity to turn appropriate resources into curricula.”
I disagree. On what basis do you make that claim?
“Secondly, I can imagine that enclaves of stupidity would emerge ”
Yes, possibly. And enclaves of enlightened brilliance would also emerge. Which method do you think will spread most easily?
Curricula should be set centrally. Far more efficient. Don’t give a stuff whether at state, national or regional level. But not at individual school level. They don’t have the staff for it. They can’t even cope with the stupidity of having to do lots of the stuff that got decentralised under the ideological hand-over to the autonomous local school community.
Makes me weep watching a group of willing parents and teachers try to implement IT infrastructure for example. Name another organisation that would try to operate this way? Talk about duplication, reinvention and loss of economy of scale.
Scott:
Indeed. I presume that remark is directed toward Tony Abbott, as it was he who suggested that we be taught British history on the grounds that it’s “where we come from”.
There are many excellent reasons to learn British history, but “where we come from” isn’t one of them.
In your remarks about ‘cultural inheritance’, you demonstrate exactly the amnesiac properties of so much of Australian identity. You see, my ancestors have a ‘cultural inheritance’ that includes Gaelic, Irish Catholic, German, Austrian and Yiddish songs, festivals, customs and folklore – yet somehow that is not deemed to be a bona-fide part of the ‘cultural inheritance’ that you ascribe to all Australians. Why not?
Because, over a period of decades, most of the people who came to this country, whose ‘cultural inheritance’ was anything but British, had a British identity asserted for them. Their names were Anglicised, their traditional holidays abandoned, their languages deemed inferior and superfluous.
But somehow I don’t think that’s the sort of “history” that Tony Abbott wants to see taught.
This process was repeated for successive waves of immigrants from many parts of the world, until it devolved to us today, where a smug thug like Tony Abbott can complacently assert that the British way of life is “where we come from”, and where folks such as yourself can blithely talk about ‘cultural inheritance’ as though it’s a self-evident truth.
The notion of ‘cultural inheritiance’ is nice as a self-fulfilling, self-sustaining, self-justifying prophecy Scott — but history it ain’t.
Cultural inheritance is real though, Mercurius. Some of it is inevitable created by what gets taught to kids at school. Much else is created by what they watch on TV. Lots comes from family, locality and ethnicity etc.
But the school bit will always be there – hence the permanent interest in this debate. We could teach them, starting next year, that they were all Chinese for example. Or Gerard Henderson, for another example, would teach them that Menzies is actually the Supreme Deity.
Schooling will have cultural content – and it must be politically fought over.
Yes, Tones Abbott, the man who so “comes from Britain” that person of his religion are statute-barred from being head of state.
What a douchebag!
I’ve heard some crazy sugestions, but curriculum decided by individual schools must be one of the most stupid. Anyone who makes such a suggestion:
A) Has no idea how schools operate;
B) Is a hopeless idealist;
C) Is a hopeless idealogue;
D) Has never stepped inside a school;
E) All of the above.
Mercurius @ 14.
I am not arguing that cultural inheritance is not a social construct.
I am arguing that it is indeed one, and a very necessary and important one at that. It is needed to ensure that being “Australian” has any meaning whatsoever.
Further, I would not consider cultural assimilation to be racist, as that view at least ascribes the ability of all people to fully experience the frame of reference culture. I am more concerned with the genetic determinism I thought I detected in your comments.
Fatfingers@12, I’m perfectly happy to provide basis for that claim! Its not the job of individual teachers to create curricula from scratch because they simply do not have the time, unless you’re one of those people who think teachers should have no life outside their jobs. Teachers are flat out understanding and then teaching the material provided to them, marking students work, mentoring and disciplining them, and carrying out the necessary bureaucracy associated with running a school.
Case Study: QLD has recently moved to a secondary science curriculum that requires more project, ‘real-world’ based projects for the kids to do. This is a great idea, but the specifics of how to do this have been explored in rather less detail, leaving senior science teachers at something of a loss for specific content. I’ve been involved in running workshops where ideas for content were provided to teachers by government scientists, which worked really well. The teachers were keen, and picked up the concepts really quickly. What we taught them has already filtered into senior science classrooms, and the program has won a couple of awards. Super-rad! But there’s no way in hell that that would have happened if it were left up to individual schools. They weren’t even aware of many of the environmental issues we discussed, and certainly didn’t have the time or resources to go investigating. And frankly, they didn’t have the expertise to put the material together from scratch either. Its far more efficient for those of us who are experts to give them a neat package of ideas and resources to work with, and its better for the kids.
As adrien@17 so succinctly points out, you don’t have a clue what you’re suggesting, or how disastrous it would be for educational quality. Your ‘centers of brilliance’ would be confined to a couple of very well-off, probably private schools, with the rest left to hang. I find your blase dismissal of a guarantee of a decent education to all our citizens appalling.
Hal9000 @ #5, arguing that the true rationale of the conservative viewpoint is to uphold the colonial project:
I think this is exactly right, with specific reference to Ratty. And Australian colonial history has an extra layer of complex anxiety in there, making it even more defensive against competing, alternative or multifocal views, in that Australia’s colonial origins were particularly squalid: the place was being used as an official garbage bin and its first few years were a period of almost unalleviated misery for the settlers. Australian historians and literary historians fretted and gnawed over the country’s convict origins until the 1960s at least, from various points of view, as discussed in a wonderful essay of Judith Wright’s from 1963 called ‘The Upside-Down Hut’.
That’s simply not true the 1999 census places the Angloe-Celtic origins of the population at almost 70%. The 2006 census concurs.
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Just sayin’.
Pavlov’s Cat @ 20.
I would direct you to John Hirst’s writtings on that topic. He points out, quite rightly, that the sucessful democratic society we have now, which followed the early colonial period, did not come out of nowhere.
Nor was it imported by non-British settlers in the 20th century, who mainly came from far less liberal countries than our own (i.e. such as in Asia and non-British Europe).
Good question.
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According to scripture Abraham came west from an ancient Sumerian city-state. There was a bit of ecstatic rapture in the late 19th century when archaeologists discovered The Epic of Gilagamesh with its own version of the flood story that seemed to back this up.
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Theologically Judaism can be seen as a reaction against ancient Sumerian cults like those of Innana/Astarte/Ishtar and the rest. Its patriarchal prohibitions on female priests and the like being a reaction against the sexual temple priestess cults of the aformentioned love-war goddess. And The Story of Isaac being a reaction of child sacrifice for which there’s quite a bit of evidence. Unfortunately the Abrahamic cults seem to’ve forgotten this basic tenet these days: you who build the altars now, your hatchets blunt and bloody, you were not there before…
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And so forth.
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One could also bring in the typically highly speculative thesis of Freud’s last book Moses and Monotheism which hypothesizes that Judaism originated as an extension of Akhnaten’s monotheist excursions. Naturally historically speaking this is probably a pleasant fiction because the Hebrews may never have been in Egypt in the first place. However as Freud’s textual analysis testifies the origination of the Hebrew state probably preceded the installation of monotheism as the second Book of Kings shows.
There’s a fair case that the impetus for Victorian democracy sprung from the most multicultural of all the settlements – Ballarat.
By contrast, the birth of the first franchise in Australian federal democracy was thoroughly entwined with the desire for racial exclusion.
QLD of course was as exceptional as always: it was pretty wedged into extending the franchise at state level by the rise of one man one vote at Commonwealth level – QLD tories didn’t want anything other than a property franchise as late as October 1900.
If we must have a national curriculum for history I’m in favour of a world history perspective. I don’t think this precludes Mr Abbott’s traditional Grand March of Western Civ preferences so much as places them within a larger context. The World History curricula originated in Australia with a course at Macquarie University taught by the Anglo-American historian David Christian.
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Civilization, for want of a better word, that is complex societies originated in four different places: the Middle-East, eastern China, northern India and Mesoamerica in that order. The establishment of a world system of inter-related trade across the Eurasian continent precedes this. It’s worth noting that such innovations as the invention of the wheel and the domestication of the horse probably came from pastoral tribes in central Asia.
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These mere facts along with many others in addition to the ecological determinism of Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel tend to displace the centrality of the Greece-Rome-Britain course of Western Civ as advocated by Mr Abbott. Abbott’s schema falls short even here. The real story goes: Sumeria – Egypt/Babylon – Egypt/Crete/Babylonia – Egypt/Greece/Persia – Rome – Byzantium/Caroligian France/Islam – France/Britain/Spain/Russia/Holland and so forth. Of course even that’s hyper simplistic.
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Western civilization was a series of catastrophes punctuated by occasional stability. India and China maintained civilization throughout many centuries in which ‘we’ tore ourselves new orifices on a regular basis. The history of empires that Abbott extols excludes certain pertinent phenomena. For example the contributions the Scots made to the formation of the modern world. The whole ‘alternative’ Western civ history as experienced by Eastern/Central Europe not to mention the menagerie of African civilizations and the tapestry of indigenous cultures.
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That said Abbot’s trajectory is important because it bears a direct relationship to the formation of the Australian polity. Greece, Rome and Britain are our political ancestors whomever our actual ancestors might be.
You’re not wrong. There’s a pro- and pre-federation cartoon from the 1880s, possibly first published in the then thoroughly racist Bulletin, depicting a gaggle of young women in late-Victorian (the era not the colony) frocks with sashes identifying them as NSW, Vic, SA and so forth. They are standing on the edge of a cliff forming a recognisable bit of the Australian coastline and attempting to crowbar a giant, ugly, predatory-looking caricatured Asiatic head over the edge into the sea. One of them is saying something like ‘Now girls, if we all pull together we’ll be able to get the job done.’
There’s a pub in the won of Wombat (the pub is the town) where I was told the White Australia policy originated. Nearby was a gold field and the old bushy ex-convict types wouldn’t let the Chinese into a new field until they’d gone thru it.
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Naturally as the Aussies were a bunch of lazy drunks the Chinese still managed to make more shifting through the leftovers. So they had a riot. But we’ve come a long way since then. Unless we work at the Booval Bowls Club that is.
It’s just not true that democracy arrived on the First Fleet. If you read Peter Cochrane’s Colonial Ambition (and Cochrane is a narrative historian, and not some raging lefty) you would be well aware that the British authorities in Sydney in the 1840s and 1850s were determinedly opposed to any popular participation in the legislative and executive processes, and tried to hold the line as long as they could – his stuff on the take up of ideas from the 1848 revolutions in Sydney is fascinating – and spot on in terms of Oz history in a global context. The only colonists the authorities tended to identify with were the most conservative squatters, whose influence was largely wiped out as the franchise was first granted then widened.
Let’s not forget also that Australia in many ways was decades ahead of Britain in terms of political rights.
Democracy is not some ethereal notion that arrives with the air of the Anglosphere or its predecessors – it is something that all peoples have had to fight for – and that fight has to be a continuous one because democracy’s hold – as a culture and a practice – is always much more tenuous than official ideology makes it appear.
Thanks Kim, v. interesting — I haven’t read the Cochrane (though I’m wondering why Scott @ 22 thinks I am in need of ‘direction’ towards John Hirst — a historian for whom I have great respect, BTW, even when I don’t agree with him). I’d be particularly interested to read the stuff about the 1848 revolutions, partly to make comparisons with what had happened 60 years earlier; equally important for the global context angle, there were of course ideas from first the American and then the French revolutions circulating in Sydney from the outset, something Thomas Keneally touches on in his 1967 novel Bring Larks and Heroes, which is about the very earliest days of NSW. Many of the British Marines who arrived with the First Fleet — including the real-life hero of Kate Grenville’s new novel, Lieutenant William Dawes — had actually fought in the American Revolutionary War a few years earlier and would have had some direct comparisons to make.
In NSW democracy, in the sense of direct particpation in elections, came about more or less by accident.
Before 1850, there was a £10 property franchise, enough to prevent the riff raff from voting.
The gold rushes stimulated inflation. By the mid 1850s more than 90% of white males could claim to have property exceeding the £10 limit.
Voila! Democracy through the back door, like much else in NSW.
In Victoria, on the other hand, Eureka scared the britches off British authorities. The prospect of losing the world’s biggest pile of gold was too horrifying for contemplation.
Landless and propertyless miners got the vote, and much else besides.
Gandhianism before Gandhi.
Kim’s right of course, but I would have thought everyone knew that. Seems I was wrong!
Australia was an authoritarian state for 50 years, up till the late 1830s – when the Redcoats leave and direct military rule is slowly replaced by colonial legislature with responsible (though not democratic) government.
Then the franchise is then extended over time, primarily through the struggles of political labor – that is, trade unions, often in alliance, its true, with “workingman’s friend” style progressive liberals – against colonial elites. I’m sorry if people dont like to hear that, but its just a fact.
So, unless you’re from the propertied classes, Australian trade unions brought you the vote, by demanding it from people who didnt want you to have it.
The QLD colonial parliament’s main disenfranchisement trick as they faced the tide of history in the late 1890s (up to minutes before federation) was to demand a permanent address.
This gave the ‘respectable’ working class (with homes and jobs in factories) the right to vote; but denied it to the ‘unrespectable’ itinerant workers like shearers, maritime workers, who formed the considerable proportion of the workforce that had to move around to make a quid.
The QLD colonial parliament’s main disenfranchisement trick as they faced the tide of history in the late 1890s (up to minutes before federation) was to demand a permanent address.
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The first of many.
Australia was an authoritarian state for 50 years
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Don’t you mean – jail?
The West Coast of Africa was the first choice of the 18th century English rulers for an external penal colony for its human refuse. In fact records show that several First Fleet convicts had previously been transported to Africa to be re-routed later to Port Jackson. Edmund Burke, among others, protested against the then preferred African slave trade stream option for British convicts before the rulers decided on Australia.
Democracy or any notions of liberty, equality, fraternity were not on the minds of any of these people, particularly officers of the first, second or subsequent fleets, FFS.
adrian @#17 is completely wrong, presents no argument, is straight out abusive, non-constructive and breaks several of the comments policy guidelines. No more response will he get from me if he continues in that vein. I will note for the record that I went to several schools in a couple of countries, including Oz, am a brother of a teacher and a friend of several more who teach or taught at Catholic and public primary schools, autistic schools, high schools and university.
Grumphy @ #19, your analysis suffers from bad assumptions, so it’s no wonder your conclusions are skewiff.
“create curricula from scratch”
No-one suggested this (though they could if they wanted to). Teachers and school administrators don’t operate in a vacuum. They wouldn’t be (as wbb also falsely and weirdly supposes) forced to reinvent, duplicate, or ignore work by others. The most likely scenario is a school makes small, progressive adjustments to what they’ve been doing already. You seem to think they should blank their minds and start over! How bizarre.
Your Queensland case study actually supports my argument – schools could outsource curricula development in whole or part. They could band together if economies of scale are actually a problem in doing so (and I don’t necessarily think they are).
You bring up efficiency, but ignore diseconomies of scale (such as would obviously be the case in a hypothetical global curriculum that took “efficient centralisation” to its logical conclusion). And what about my main point, that ‘efficiently’ imposing a bad one-size-fits-all curriculum would be detrimental to every student? Take Howard’s attempt at manipulating the teaching of history as an excellent example. You may like this curriculum, but what’s to stop a government really stuffing it up in the future?
“I find your blase dismissal of a guarantee of a decent education to all our citizens appalling.”
I find your logical errors and blinkered thinking appalling, not to mention your slander that I don’t want a decent eduction for all. It is precisely my desire for decent education for all that makes me oppose a federally mandated curriculum. I say again, where’s this mythical guarantee of quality?
I always have a quiet chuckle whenever anybody like Hendo or Tony “the nutcase” Abbott start banging on about teaching “Facts”.
“Facts”, or more correctly ones interpretation of what is observed, like everything, depend a lot on where you’re standing, and this applies especially in history, but the sciences are subject to “facts” changing over time as more is learned and previous data re-interpreted in the context of new information.
This is why we teach people to inform themselves and the spirit of enqiuiry, so they dont get fooled by some despot or other form of shyster selling them something as “fact” when it is actually “opinion”
I wonder who’s version of “facts” Hendo has in kind?
pre-dawn leftist, I must say I found it particularly appalling that Hendo was dissing the whole idea of critical thought.
Dr Cat @ 29 – Cochrane’s book is a very good read. Incidentally since one of the themes that always surfaces in these “wars” is teh narrative, he’s also proof that “narrative history” doesn’t equate to some sort of Howardian bollocks. I think it got mixed up there because they wanted also to oppose teh postmodernism, but for that matter, isn’t Henry Reynolds a narrative historian?
I think what they want is probably summed up by Tony Abbott’s “facts”. The whig version of history actually involves an enormous relativism in its sorting and discarding of any fact that doesn’t fit the story of “the facts”.
Scott – fair enough. I hope nobody ever finds any “genetic determinism” in arguments from me. That would be a peculiar disposition for someone whose grandfather survived the Holocaust.
Adrien – ahhh, yes, the stats, but therein lies our problem, yes? Demographers can mash together any old groups to get their numbers, which is how we ended up with Tony Abbott’s complacent proposition in the first place.
‘Anglo-Celt’ is about as meaningful an ethnic label as ‘African’. Anglos (and Saxons, and Vikings, and Normans) pretty much displaced the Celts from those territories long before modern Britain was invented.
Remember, I was addressing the specific claim of Tony Abbott that Britain is “where we come from”. That certainly doesn’t apply to the 2 million+ Irish descendants flagged in that table you linked to. And while politically Scotland is of course British, I’m sure there’s more than a few of the 2 million+ Scots in that table who’d get very loquacious about which ‘cultural inheritance’ they wish to claim first.
So, where does that leave us? The table you linked to shows English descendants number 43.61% of the population. In Australian cultural lore, you well know that what we think of as ‘British’ is usually a code for, well, English, innit? I mean, ask some Aussies what ‘British’ is and they’ll tell you about cricket and tea before they’ll mention kilts and whiskey.
Even allowing for your numbers and the political reality that Britain includes England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, I still think it’s a defensible claim that Britain is not “where we come from”, culturally speaking, for a majority of Australians in 2008.
None of which is a reason to turn away from British history or not to study it. But Abbott’s bone-headed ruminations on this topic really get my goat.
Those ABS table are interesting: specifically, as time goes by, a greater number identify as of ‘Australian’ ancestry – and not only declining %, but declining absolute number for all British Isles ancestry (except Scottish, for reasons to do with the 2001 survey not listing it). Despite population growth.
Id suggest that bears upon the “we’re from there” argument. It is trending away from that identification over time – even among Skips!
Yep, and some decades after the equation of the UK with “Home” from people who’d never been there disappeared.
I can’t help thinking that Tony Abbott, if he’d been around 50 years ago (when I imagine him as being a pugnacious DLP pollie) would have a complete hissy fit if someone used the term “Anglo-Celt” or started waxing lyrical about the British heritage. Ask the ghost of Dr Mannix what he would have said to all that! I suspect Tony is trying to paper over the cracks of his own contradictions at some level.
Yes, the whole British state is set up to marginalise or exclude Micks like you, Abbott, ya dimwitted Taig. Even Blair, in the year 2007, had to pretend he wasn’t leaning towards Papism.
Excommunicated for your fealty to enemy forces, croppy boy!
Obviously the proportion of Australians who trace their ancestry to Britain is declining. I don’t really understand why that matters: history is not genealogy. The fact (or ‘fact’, if you like) is that Britain was the biggest outside influence on Australia for the first one-and-a-half centuries after white settlement, in so many areas from politics to law to science to war to culture to …. So, surely, some understanding of British history is helpful in understanding Australian history? So I agree with Abbott on that one (and wow, doesn’t writing that make my flesh crawl!) Having said that, I definitely like the emphasis on world history in the new proposals. Popular Australian awareness of history is far too parochial and that just doesn’t wash in an era of globalisation.
Fair disclosure: I’m finishing a PhD in modern British history in a history department that now has no specialists in modern British history and teaches no undergraduate units in modern British history …
If I wasn’t drunk so now I’d say something smartarse about Australian history like reversing Saki’s line about the people of Crete making more history than they can consume locally.
Abbott’s history syllabus is based on the well-known truth that God was an Israelite before He became an Englishman.
Re the influence of early American democracxy (probably more properly republicanism) on the First Fleeters. Approximately 92 First and Second Fleeters were in one way or other engaged in the American War of Independence -the number depends on whether you also count European and Indian theatres or people in British home waters. The majority of them were naval personnel, and some marines. There were about 9 Americans most of whom were Loyalists, (not including 2 Loyalist wives), and one American who fought on both the British and rebel sides. Of those Americans (I’m not looking at my Gillen, so I can’t give the exact number) about 5 were ex-slaves who worked for and were given their freedom by the British. One may have been Native American. One, La Perouse, was French and on the American side (in Canada).
At that stage of our history its probably safe to say all of them, except possibly Jacob Nagle (the one who fought on both sides) viewed the Americans as “Those Damned Rebels” and were determinedly anti-democratic and anti-republican. This probably included La Perouse.
Paul B, you seem to know everything there is to be known about the First Fleet — got any tips on the best things to read (on or offline)? All suggestions gratefully received.
I agree.
There seems to be a presumption that one cannot study British history without having a fawning attitude to that subject.
It is true that until the 1960s British history was taught in Australia at school level with the explicit intention of inculcating a fawning attitude.
As part of the renegotiation of our culture that occurred during the 1960s British history was to a large extent shelved as a serious subject for study. The New Left, which exerted a large measure of influence over curriculum from the 1970s onward were thoroughly fed up with British history as it had been taught.
This is ironic, because the British New Left were revolutionising British historiography at precisely that time. Yet Australian students of history after the early 1970s were not exposed to new directions in British historiography until their tertiary education years, by which time most students had stopped studying any field of history.
Yes, interesting PB. People do tend to overlook forget the hell on earth that was the 2nd fleet. Where the first was a state-run naval mission, the second was a private fleet – death rates were enormous.
Which I suppose, primed us as a nation for the historical verity that privatisation of services formerly run by the state would forever be shoddy and 2nd rate.
“privatisation of services formerly run by the state,
would forever be shoddy and 2nd rate”
You don’t mind if I get that going as a rally chant some time do you LE?
“And what about my main point, that ‘efficiently’ imposing a bad one-size-fits-all curriculum would be detrimental to every student?”
Proof?
None.
The great benefit of having subjects with national content includes firstly creating a baseline of quality, secondly, promoting cohesive national building by enabling geographically diverse students to understand some basic content and critical skills, and thirdly frees up time for teaching and support staff to actually teach and not do the required research to design whatever amount of content for their courses.
I am currently working on a MA unit designed to give high school teachers some of the knowledge, skills and resources required for one of the HSC units. There is no way a normal teacher would even have the time required to learn everything I have learnt. They get a distilled version. This isn’t designing the curriculum btw, but teaching some skillz for how to teach the subject.
“I say again, where’s this mythical guarantee of quality?”
Logically think through what you are suggesting. Every school in Australia, every teacher and every student, who teaches or learns whatever will have to engage with the form and content. Compare that to isolated pockets of separatists being taught whatever without this mass of in-built quality control. (If the quality is going to be controlled, then does that mean we would need a centralised curriculum checker to check the quality of the ’school designed’ curricula? Why have the superfluous extra step and danger of relying on over-worked teaching and support staff?)
You tell me where the greater possibility of an insufficient education lies?
Maybe you can’t figure it out, so I’ll tell you: It lies with the separatist curriculum model.
It seems to me you are like a guard dog barking at moving cars; you clearly have an issue with the mode of organisation (centralist government whatever), but have little understanding of the capacities or function of contemporary high schools.
Its my lyrical bent, FDB.
Mike up and charge!
Not at all. The subsequent record of transportation was that privatised services subject to strong and effective government regulation were efficient and effective. Over 160,000 convicts were transported to Australia with an extraordinarily low mortality rate for a journey over such a distance at the time of less than 4000 convicts. They had a much higher chance of survival than those who took their chances on the one month journey on the unregulated coffin ships across the Atlantic in the 1840s.
PC,
I suspect a lot of this you already know and its a bit like teaching you to suck eggs.
All the First Fleet Primary Sources (Hunter, king, White, Worgan, Clark, Phillip’s Voyage to Botany Bay, Worgan, Bowes Smyth and Collins and Nagle and the Blackburn letters should now be on line at the NSW State Library, but I don’t think Vol. 1 of the Historical Records of Australia or Vol 2 of Historical Records of NSW are. Read carefully, these collections of official documents, by no means complete, are a mine of social, criminal, legal and political history and nowhere near as boring as they first appear. HRNSW is purchasable over the net and HRA can be photocopied in their entirety from any good uni library quite cheaply.
NLA has some good sites on the various First Fleet artists, especially Raper.
Most other on-line FF sites are, IMHO, a bit jejeune so I wouldn’t worry about them too much.
Buried Alive (ed.Jack Egan) is a chronological anthology of extracts from the various journals, mainly after their arrival at Port Jackson.
I’m not sure if Richard Johnson’s Letters are on line, but, given their slender size, they can be bought on-line for an outrageous price.Not all the Collins Papers are on line, but so far as I can work out they are all reproduced in the text of John Currey’s biography of Collins.
Other biographies worth reading are Frost’s biography of Phillip, and Mackaness’s biography of Phillip. The First Fleet voyages have never been dealt with satisfactorily in any secondary source as the voyages of Phillip and Hunter are lumped in together when they leave Capetown.
Absolutely essential reading, in fact the starting point once you’ve gone through the primary sources, are Mollie Gillen’s The Founders of Australia and Michael Flynn’s The Second Fleet. (some of the 2nd Fleeters were also 1st Fleeters.)
Of the secondary sources, Volume 1 of Manning Clark, Volume 1 of Alan Atkinson’s Europeans in Australia and Frost’s Botany Bay Mirages are good starting points. Cassandra Pybus’s Black Founders is good on the Afro-Americans, though I don’t agree with her about Black Caesar. It is also the only work published I’ve read that deals with the American Revolution and the FFers. (And that’s the subject of the book I’m currently researching.)
To be far, in an Australian context, when the word “British” had a meaning other than “English” (which it did not always), it was inclusive of the Irish.
Indeed, I understand that is why in Australia and New Zealand you had slogans like “More British” and “Better British”, as no one actually in the UK or Ireland than (or now really) considered themselves to be British rather than English, or Scottish, or Welsh, or some smaller part thereof.
A “British” identity and views in Australia had more to do with Australia and its society than it did with the views of actual people living in England.
PC,
The thing seized up. Re last para should say one of the few. From memory I think Atkinson mentions it. Using Gillen, you can go to Old Bailey On-Line and check all the court records of the Ffers who appeared there.Re the criminal cultural Baggage, Beattie and Peter King are probably the best starting points in their books and articles. Peter Linebaugh’s The London Hanged is a good Marxist interpretation, though most of the best writers on 18C Crime in England are centre or right inclined, I suspect.Peter Stanley’s book on the british Army in NSW to 1850 and Moore’s First Fleet Marines are good secondary starting points with the Marines, but the Ralph Clark absolutely mad, mysoginist journal is the best primary source. As you probably already know, he’s quite bonkers.
I’ll leave off now. If you have any questions will be happy to answer them if I can. (People tend to ignore the First Fleet for some reason.)
Paul, that is fabulous, thank you so much. I knew only the most obvious of these (including the bonkers R Clark as you surmise) plus a bit of the online stuff including the trial transcripts, specifically that of 5-greats grandma. Who wuz framed, of course.
Ho for the library, as Molesworth would, or would probably not, say.
GregM is correct.
The Second Fleet was a fiasco. But the British Government learned from its mistakes and contracted a very efficient and remarkably accident-free service.
The First Fleet was a government-run affair that was inordinately expensive.
Of course, after the collapse of plans and hopes for flax and timber, one wonders why the British government persisted with transportation at any price, at least until the rise of wool as a viable industry, which didn’t happen until the 1820s.
I guess that NSW was somewhat akin to the Vietnam/Iraq syndrome. Governments cannot afford to withdraw from a hare-brained scheme without fearing that they will “embolden” their enemies. In the case of NSW, the enemies were the parliamentary opposition who complained about the enormous costs of the NSW project.
If we increase the number of hours spent teaching history in the school classroom, it begs the question – what will these hours come at the expense of?
Isn’t it more important to spend those hours focusing on English literacy, numeracy, science, engineering, mathematics? If the biggest problems in the world today are climate change, energy and environmental sustainability, is reducing the attention given to science, mathematics and engineering to increase the time spent on history going to help address these challenges?
Then again, I suppose everyone has their own fields which they’re quite insistent don’t get enough attention in the school classroom?
Sadly for you, no. What will happen under your scenario is that curricula will simply stagnate in all but the most financially well-off schools. As has been said before, teachers have no time, little of the appropriate resources (do you really think they have access to things like journal databases? even uni alumni can usually only access those on-campus, which is no help at all if you went to school in Brisbane and now work in a school in Longreach), and often lack the base expertise to form up relevant, teachable additions and changes to curricula, particularly in the sciences.
Again, no. Firstly, its not outsourcing when you’re calling in one part of government to help another; that’s what we in the biz like to call ‘efficiency’. The program was a collaborative effort. Second, actual outsourcing would require a funds committment from schools or school districts well beyond their means, particularly when they desperately need to spend the money on things like textbooks and equipment (I never had a school text that was younger than me my entire high school career, and I wasn’t exactly in a poor area! If a school had to hire consulting experts to update their curriculums, and they would have to, their budgets would go right down the crapper).
If you’re as conservative fiscally as you are socially, why would you want a less efficient spending model in operation, particularly where taxpayer funds are concerned? You’re not exactly ideologically coherent here.
No, that would be you O_o
The ‘logical conclusion’ of an efficient curriculum is not ‘global’, it is ‘one that meets the needs of a relatively homogeneous group of people’. And I flat refuse to believe that kids in Bundaberg are so different from kids in Geelong that they need a whole ‘nother curriculum across the board, set locally. At best, schools with distinctive cultural demographics should be encouraged to incorporate some aspects of those local cultures in certain subjects, a notion which does not require a local-set curriculum. A federally-mandated history curricula, well-formed, would also allow room for local historical content, teaching the Big Concepts with chunks of history relevant to the kids in that area.
You keep saying this, but you also keep failing to elucidate how this ‘detriment’ would come about. Provide a mechanism or stop promoting vague boogeymen in place of actual argument, please.
The same things that prevent massive curriculum stuff-ups now – publicity, protest from teachers and parents and the general citizenry, protest from state governments. All of these mechanisms would be muted under a localised curriculum, because far fewer people care if 200 parents in outer woop-woop are upset that their local high school is now teaching creationism in the science class. Have you seen what local control of education has done to regions of the US? County-level school boards are havens of frightening stupid.
By the way, your distrust of curriculum-setters is just plain weird. Do you really think these people are out to get your kids brainwashed? Really?
Slander, my muscular buttocks. A gaping chasm in the quality of education between public and private, between rural and urban, and between blue- and white-collar neighbourhoods is the inevitable consequence of your ideas about curricula decentralisation. If you haven’t thought far enough ahead to realise this (and I get that it may be hard for you to work past the giant “FREEDOM AT ALL COSTS” banner that seems to be strung across your mental pathways, but do try), then maybe you need to modify your arguments somewhat? There’s no reason that fed-set curricula need to be rigid to the degree that you suppose.
Mercurious –
By ‘those territories’ I’m assuming you mean England yeah? The term ‘Anglo-Celt’ is obviously specifically Australian. ‘Twouldna go do’n ta well in Glasgee ‘r Doobln that’s fer fookn certain. It’s a way of addressing the ‘Aussie’ ethnicity from those others that make up Australia. To wit:
Yes and no. You’re refs to kilts/whiskey and tea/cricket are telling. Culturally Australia has been fundamentally influenced by Mediterranean and Asia cultures. Thank Christ! Culturally we’re a unique mix. America is defined by its WASP base but also its Irish/Italian/Jewish migrant influx not to mention the Africans. These latter are the basis of what we know as ‘American culture’ where would Jazz or Hollywood be without ‘em.
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I don’t agree with Abbott’s anglocentricity I merely point out that the so-called Anglo-Celtic peoples are significant in this country both culturally and politically. In term of political culture we owe quite a bit to the Greek-Roman-British lineage. And it does have a lot going for it despite the nefarious bits (for example a que). We Australians still retain certain vicissitudes of liberty including the concept of privacy which the Americans don’t seem to be aware of unfortunately. Bloody Krauts!
No. Altho’ being on my mother’s side the descendant of Irish immigrants who’ve come to love the Queen (retch) and considering Abbott’s own ancestry I’d wager you might get some disputes there.
Being a Scots immigrant myself there’s a distinction between the specifically Scots culture and the British heterogeny. The so-called British virtues are actually quite Scots.
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If ye think the English conquered the world yer talkin out yer arse. Those underpants wearing puritanical pukes couldna conquer a flower bed with a tank.
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Jimmeh!
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All I’m really saying is that the British heritage is one that’s pertinent to Australia. At the very least we receive our political system from it, our language, our humour and manners come straight from London’s East End. There’s no reason to exclude Oz’s Mediterranean and Asia heritage on this account. The opposition is an artifact of the Culture Wars and really should be dispensed with. (IMHO).
Paul Burns – Cassandra Pybus’s Black Founders is good on the Afro-Americans, though I don’t agree with her about Black Caesar.
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I have a personal interest in Black Caeser I’d appreciate it if you elaborated on your disagreements.
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Luke – Isn’t it more important to spend those hours focusing on English literacy, numeracy, science, engineering, mathematics?
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The idea that history is useless gets a certain cache these days. I strongly disagree for various reasons that I won’t elaborate.
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However just to make one or two observations.
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History aids English literacy. After all a lot of the skills deployed in the teaching of English are likewise deployed in history as well. Additionally history utilizes an assemblage of facts, there’s a certain scientific aspect to it. For that reason alone I think it worthwhile.
Luke – My recollection of school (some 45 years ago) is that we had plenty of time for history, English literacy and literature, mathematics, science, and a foreign language or two. I suspect (from observation of my own childrens’ schooling) that there’s a fair bit of fat that could be cut away, for instance IT (aka learning to use older versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint). There’s certainly no need to reduce attention on the sciences to fit some history in.
Of course, socialisation and crowd control were a bit more brutal when I was at school than they are now …
Yes – why they muck around doing Microsoft Powerpoint slideshows defeats me too.
Adrien @ 62,
Cassandra Pybus suggests John Caesar was an Afro-American slave, possibly from New York.I stress possibly The trouble is many black slaves were named Caesar and many of these were in New York and ended up in London circa 1783/4. Its just not possible to identify Black Caesar with any of the Caesars from colonial America definitively, which, if I recall, Pybus acknowledges.
I’m still inclined to go for Caesar coming from Madagascar unless there’s stuff published recently – (I haven’t done an article search at UNE for 1 and a half years as I’m not up to that in my schedule yet – will be doing it some time next year )other than Pybus’s work.
My romantic inclination is to think Caesar not only came from Madagascar but was of pirate ancestry, an ancestry of which I would like to surmise he was well aware. Madagascar was one of the main pirate havens in the early 18C. Of course, I have no firm evidence for this historical speculation, only the following tenuous historical connections : Madagascar as a pirate haunt in the era of Caesar’s grandparents + no conclusive proof Caesar came from colonial America + Caesar personal delight in his criminality. Working against these connections is the unreliability of Caesar’s background insofar as he revealed it to the authorities.
Please acknowledge this if you use it in academic work, as it is a pretty original hypothesis.
Lifeskillz wbb, lifeskillz…
Reducing what you’ve got to say to clip art and a few glib dotpoints is crucial in today’s outcome-oriented world. Moving forwards.
Paul – Cheers for that.
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I’ve read Black Founders and communicated with Pybus hereself.
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She makes it pretty clear that her speculations are just that. Caeser’s appearance in Kent after the Revolutionary War is an indicator (not, as you say, conclusive) that he was an American slave. This’d throw in to question his Madagascan origins (how did he get there from there?). Contemporaries said he was such however.
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My project is fictional not academic. And the idea that he was one of George Washington’s is too good to pass up.
Adrien,
There was recently quite a good book come out on Washington and slavery. You’d have to use both key words on Amazon to get the title. I neglected to buy it when I first saw it, and it was snapped up by the following fortnight.
Recommend Ferling’s Setting the World Ablaze, a group bio of Washington, Jefferson and Adams. Also Ferling’s magnificent military history, Almost A Miracle.
You might also want to try Ellis’s bio. of Washington, and his Founding Brothers, which is wonderful on Hamilton.
For Afro-Americans almost all of the works of Gary Nash have something to contribute, and some are specifically about Afro-Americans in the Revolutionary period. Sylvia Frey’s Water from the Rock is a masterpiece, and Benjamin Quarles’ The Negro in the American Revolution is basic.
Glad to be of help.
Well, no less a source than Watkin Tench himself attributes the awful carnage of the 2nd fleet to the use of privateers.
Just sayin!
Here we go: http://members.iinet.net.au/~perthdps/convicts/shipNSW1.html
I’m not sure quite what GregM’s saying: the record is quite atrocious until a review took place in 1801 – a full 14 years after transportation started; the exception of the first fleet, and 1793-6, which wasn’t a bad few years.
Specifically: The 2nd fleet was hardly better than a straight up Attica- style massacre; the Third and Fourth (1792) fleets were decimated (in the Roman sense); 1793-6 weren’t bad, its true; but then shocking mortality prevailed again 1797-1800.
I concede the introduction of surgeons improved matters thereafter, but were not just talking about the 2nd fleet here.
Decimated in the Roman sense means that they were split into groups of ten, asked to draw lots and then each person to whom the lot fell was executed by the other nine in their group. I find this difficult to believe, but then there’s probably a lot about the history of transportation that I would find difficult to believe.
BBB
Well, one in ten died, if that’s clearer!
Much!
BBB
And to return to my historicising, it only goes to show that ’self-regulated’ private enterprise is shoddy and 2nd rate, always has been. And so, back to my now slightly modified ncouplets:
“privatisation of services formerly run by the state,
would forever be shoddy and 2nd rate,
unless regulated to the eyeballs with the legislative equivalent of a piece of 4 by 2”
The facts speak for themselves. With the introduction of strong and efficient government regulation and the appropriate incentives (the shipping contractors were paid for each convict who got off alive at the end of the journey, not on who got on board at the start of it) privatised services will work. Shipping out such a large number of people, who were the least considered people of their society, and overall the unhealthiest, over such a vast distance and for such a long time with such a small mortality rate is a staggering achievement.
What I’m saying, LE, is that privatised services subject to strong and effective government regulation are efficient and effective.
As Katz points out with respect to your comment that “the historical verity (is) that privatisation of services formerly run by the state would forever be shoddy and 2nd rate.”
What’s been the problem with the current financial debacle is the lack of strong and effective government regulation to bring about a socially defined and socially useful purpose.
The government doesn’t need to own the service or deliver the service (see how many rent-seekers that will attract) it needs to regulate it efficiently and effectively.
Quite so! As I posted recently, yer modern Gekko money quote:
Regulation is good, regulation works.
Although it is true that private contractors delivered convicts to NSW at a price that was considerably less per head than the first govt-run exercise. And it is true that the Second Fleet was not the only enterprise that produced high mortality, my larger point was that the entire transportation exercise looked like an incredibly expensive way of dealing with prisoners.
The assignment system eventually reduced the running costs of transportation but assignment didn’t become a widespread practice until the 1820s.
Savings that might have been made by choosing private transportation contractors over government boats were only a small fraction of the overall cost of the entire transportation system.
While it may be productive of psychic solace for supporters of privatisation and supporters of government service to trumpet the relative efficiency of their preferred options, nevertheless, for the 32 years between 1788 and 1820, the entire transporation system looked like an expensive miscalculation.
Possibly true, Katz. But if it had not remained in government hands would it not have been, by your own observation, more expensive?
And the alternative? At the time it was to hang them, with 222 capital crimes on the Statute books, but wasn’t there the inconvenient fact that by the late 1700s juries were increasingly reluctant to bring down a verdict that led to a capital sentence (and wasn’t that one of the policy considerations that led to transportation as a solution) so they had the unfortunate tendency to acquit them rather than do that?
Then let us not forget the pernicious effects of of sentimentality on government policy in early 19th century Britain. Were these not the same people who outlawed the African slave trade in 1807 in defiance of their economic interests in the West Indies because of that slogan “Am I not a man and your brother?”
Then also when their sentimental reformist madness took them another step in the 1840s was not the evidence (before a House of Commons Select Committee) that it would have been much cheaper to continue to ship out convicts to the colonies than to build Pentonvilles and staff them in order to keep the convicts in Old Blighty?
It’s a mad old thing this use of government regulation to bring about a socially defined and socially useful purpose.
Katz, I should acknowledge your support of laissez-faire capitalism in giving approval to the recommendations of the Bigge Commisssion report when you say, with apparent approval, of the outcome of the policy adopted from the commissision’s report:
Enough of Macquarie’s socialistic government works programs which kept convicts away from useful, productive and profitable (for some-one else) labour.
Of course that did involve the ruthless exploitation of convict labour and brought Governor Bourke into conflict with the convicts’ masters/exploiters, but that’s another story.
Well, I for one think this has been a pretty enlightening and constructive discussion.
There does seem to a be a faultline in public attitudes towards history.
On the one hand, sensible voices suggest that history is about the dispassionate investigation of past events. On the other hand, there seems to be an ideological cadre whose idea of history is barely more than a parochial triumphalist tub-thumping exercise to assert why We Are The Best, Sucks To Be The Rest.
The best history is written not by the victors or the vanquished, but by the scholars.
Yes GregM, the rules changed after 1820 and the adoption of the Bigge Report.
And indeed it is quite possibly correct that the assignment system was cheaper than building a prison system.
I take this to mean that the reformists argued against economy in their opposition to the continuation of transportation.
While this is true, it is also true to say that they were voicing, at least indirectly, the rising opposition to transportation among residents of NSW.
Even if Whitehall had remained steadfast in the policy of transportation, it is likely that local opposition would have made transportation more and more difficult to impose upon NSW. Thus, the assignment system, liberating as it did the economic energy of NSW, helped to create a society that finally rejected the wellspring of its initial success. The artisans, tradesmen and labourers of NSW grew too numerous and too powerful to ignore as apolitical force.
Transportation had to end, not for reasons of English sentimentality, but for reasons of Australian dignity.
And the British could not avoid, finally, building their grim prison system.
Glen, you’re right, my fingers got away from me. ‘would’ should have been ‘could’, as I said in my first comment.
“firstly creating a baseline of quality”
Everyone keeps repeating this mantra, but despite my repeated requests, I’m yet to see the reasoning why it IS guaranteed.
“There is no way a normal teacher would even have the time required to learn everything I have learnt.”
I can’t tell if you’re saying teachers aren’t qualified to teach, or current teacher training is inadequate, or you’re somehow the Ubermeister. Let’s be generous and assume you mean that there’s a special knowledge and skill set required for the kind of meta-teaching that is curricula design and implementation.
I won’t disagree with that, it’s obvious. What I continue to find perplexing is the strawman (that you and others keep erecting) that teachers will be forced to do more than they are able to do (or capable of doing) under my decentralised model. I’ve already pointed out that no-one needs to start with a blank slate. I’ve pointed out that curricula could be bought ‘off the shelf’ – it’s not like it’s an unexplored area! Schools could devote more resources to designing their own if they thought it would get better results, just as they might choose to devote more resources to any other aspect of schooling – what’s the difference? And decentralisation doesn’t mean atomisation – schools can pool their resources if needed.
“you clearly have an issue with the mode of organisation (centralist government whatever)”
Just like you and everyone else, I view the world through an ideological lens. So please don’t adopt the pretence that you’re some sort of disinterested unbiased technocrat.
My main point remains unrefuted – a national curriculum has both the potential to be great, and the risk of not being great. It imposes uniform benefits if the former, universal detriment if the latter. Decentralisation and diversification are the rational methods to hedge that risk. Successful curricula can then be emulated, so there is a mechanism for better education overall, (one that has been hugely successful in other areas, hence my bias).
Grumphy, my response to Glen incorporates a lot of what I would say to you, so read that first.
“If you’re as conservative fiscally as you are socially”
I’m socially and economically liberal. Hence my preference for freedom and choice.
“its not outsourcing when you’re calling in one part of government to help another”
Actually, it is, and schools would have access to the more traditional kind too. And you’re missing an apostrophe.
“a whole ‘nother curriculum across the board, set locally”
Again with the blank slate argument. You deny this is what you are saying, but then you keep on saying it!
And I disagree that regional differences are immaterial, or should only be considered as an afterthought. Living Black last night had an interesting story on the Kaurna Plains Aboriginal School that you should look up. The transcript will be up later today.
“protest from teachers and parents and the general citizenry, protest from state governments”
Yet these are the very people you express fear of a couple of sentences down – teachers and parents and citizenry who disagree with you on what should be taught to their kids. It’s hypocritical majoritarianism.
“Have you seen what local control of education has done to regions of the US?”
I see your US, and raise you a Finland.
“By the way, your distrust of curriculum-setters is just plain weird.”
You are mistaking my distrust of one-size-fits-all schemes for some sort of personal animosity. I think that says more about your own mindset than mine.
“is the inevitable consequence of your ideas about curricula decentralisation”
Not only have you failed to describe a plausible mechanism for this phenomena, the evidence (in the form of studies on the subject) is against you. How minor differences just in curricula could account for any “gaping chasm” is hyperbole of the highest order. That you are so emotionally invested in the subject to the point of semi-hysteria is, as you say, just plain weird.
It’s pretty clear to me, Fatfingers, that you have been taken to task for positions you don’t really hold – and dealt fairly politely with it too. Could it be that, if what you’re talking about is local variations in focus or emphasis on a centrally disseminated core syllabus, I don’t disagree that it would work in the way you say.
One problem is in determining how much (if any) can be added or subtracted from the syllabus as opposed to matters of emphasis. At some point our government should be able to say “okay, you go knock yourself out teaching flat-earth, young-earth, Lysenko and Irving, The Economics of Graeme Bird etc etc, but you’re not getting our cash any more.” Don’t you think?
Another problem is one of intellectual property. In the competitive and innovative curriculum marketplace you seem to desire, what incentive is there to share materials sucessfully developed with the competition?
Sorry, para 1 is a wierd conflation of two paras. Fuck it.
What does the adoption of the IB curriculum at primary and secondary public schools (in Victoria, at least) say about individual school’s ability to choose and implement curricula that are not mandated by the Federal or state governments?
I’m also perplexed by Grumphy’s twisting and turning on the role of ‘teachers, parents and the general citizenry’ in maintaining high standards. Or is it just a certain type of teacher, parent or general citizen who can be trusted to care about the quality of education in this country? I’m not surprised that this kind of line is coming from someone who appears to be a member of the educational bureaucracy.
And this:
“…because far fewer people care if 200 parents in outer woop-woop are upset that their local high school is now teaching creationism in the science class”
is just shameless scaremongering. Australia is not the US, and never will be. Is the dark spectre of creationism a good reason to unwind the extraordinary degree of teacher-level autonomy in curriculum-setting in Finland? For sane people, I’d suggest not, but perhaps it is a live issue for deluded Education Department employees there. And if things like creationism in science do become a genuine problem in Australia, they can simply be prohibited. The list of truly bad things that school staff will actually want to do won’t be that long.
Anyway, to the extent that people are suggesting a ‘big-bang’ de-centralisation of the public school system will result in a decline of standards, they are right. The skill sets just aren’t there. It’s a transition that would have to be carefully managed over many years, if not decades.
BBB
There has been another reason given for the end of transportation, Katz.
That it didn’t work any more.
By the 1830s New South Wales had become a pretty prosperous place and, with the “ticket of leave” system, for a lot of England’s impoverished underclass living there was a lot more inviting prospect than living in the miserable conditions they had to endure in the Old Dart. So transportation began to lose its deterrent effect.
There’s no point trying to threaten someone with being shipped off to an environment where they will eat better and more abundantly, will enjoy a more agreeable climate, will probably have more personal freedom and will have have considerably more opportunities for advancement.
It is undoubted that transportation did lose its deterrent terror. Perhaps the government should have got back into the shipping business!
It’s not accurate or fair labeling Fatfingers as a conservative. It’s also a bit infuriating. Here’s the news: Just because you oppose what is supposedly the Mainstream Left’s and/or the ALP’s notions of Education Policy does not make you a conservative. Conservatives would approve a national curriculum (except perhaps out of federalist objections). They’d just approve a different one.
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I get tarred with this brush too. Being called Windschuttlian and such. It really burns me when I try to have an intelligent conversation and someone keeps assuming that I’m something I’m not.
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I don’t have an opinion about the validity of national curricula. At certain times centralization and standardization is necessary/desirable. Most often (IMHO) it isn’t. Standardized modes produce standardized minds. I tend to think this is just a salvo in the Culture Wars. It’s a dumb-arse move. The Coalition will get back in sometime and Tony Abbott’ll just change the fuckin’ content.
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Here’s an idea: teach technique, analysis, expression and facts – and let the students make up their own minds. They will anyway.
That it didn’t work any more.
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And/or they didn’t need it anymore. The Industrial Revolution had sucked up the Surplus Plebs?
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‘Straya, ‘Straya, ‘Straya we love youse. And we love Great Britain. We’re British and it’s ow-ah heritage? It’s who we were.
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Oi’m so proud!
Yes, only someone whose intellect was hopelessly one-dimensional would, on the strength of fatfinger’s comments here, label him/her a social conservative.
BBB
only someone whose intellect was hopelessly one-dimensional
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The headline of every Help Wanted Ad put out by political parties the world over.
Adrien, Katz and I have had a very civil discourse on an aspect of Australian and British history, involving issues of social and economic concern and policy of the time, hoping to address contemporary issues raised by LE, but doing so in a friendly and lighthearted way which is hopefully amusing to our readers.
We could have had much the same discourse on many other topics, which have nothing to do with Britain and Australia, as we have many times before, which you will find if you review the LP archives. History and economics, and their relationship, are our passions.
And that is your response?
Perhaps you should reflect on your comment:
and ask yourself where there was anything in your response to Katz’s and my conversation which was in any way intelligent.
Fascinating discussion …. but why on earth have most of those who commented on this topic at Larvatus Prodeo ignored the overwhelming influence of TV – and especially Hollywood-type TV – on the attitudes of young Australians towards history, towards the lessons that can be learnt from history and towards their own cultural heritage?. My own wild guess is that most young Australians now get 95% of their “history”[??] off the idiot-box and only 5% of their History at school. Then there is the serious issue of the deliberate falsification of history on TV and in movies for commercial or ideological purposes under the pretext of it being “Art”. If young people have blatant propaganda, dressed up as “historical fact”, drummed into them day-in-day out how can they then grow up to make informed choices as voters, citizens, customers and parents? Furthermore, when was the last time you saw an active engagement with history presented as something positive in a movie or a commercial TV show?
History is exciting and inspiring – and sometimes, if you are caught up in historic events yourself, too exciting. However, if History is seen as “bland and uninspiring” [as Anna Clark reported] I suggest we turn this attitude around by having ….
[1] Timelines – not lists of kings or prime ministers or battles but an ordering of important events and changes …. at local, national and global levels. What happened when and where and to whom and what were the results? Keep it simple but comprehensive …. and no more than two or three lines [not pages!] on each. …. just enough to give basic information and, perhaps, stimulate curiosity and further interest.
[2] Emulation stories – of heroes and pioneers and role-models. Rollicking good yarns about wonderfully interesting people and what they did. Grace Darling rowing the open boat through the storm to save shipwrecked sailors [courage]; Che Sheng studying by the light of fireflies [tenacity]; Saint Vincent de Paul taking the place of a sick slave on the king’s galley [compassion]; Tenzing Norkay and Edmund Hilary climbing Mt Everest [teamwork]; the travels of Marco Polo and of ibn-Battuta [endurance and adventure], etc.
[3] “Self-defence training” in History. Teach the students how to protect themselves against manipulation, exploitation and imposed ignorance. Show them all the dirty tricks in the misuse of History by dictators, religious fanatics, dishonest businessmen, dishonourable academics, lying celebrities, ruthless activists and all sorts of other evil-doers. There is no shortage of examples.
What harm can possibly come from having a rising generation that does not believe without question every bit of lying propaganda or self-promotion pretending to be history?
This argument cannot be sustained Adrien. the heart of the issue is whether the Home Office continued to wish to transport convicts to NSW after the rise of significant opposition to transportation in NSW itself.
The Whigs had abandoned transportation in 1840. But the Tories reintroduced it in 1846. The arrival of the transportation ship Hashemy in 1849 caused a furore in Sydney. The politics surrounding this event were murky, but suffice it to say that the British government thought better of it and decided to abolish transportation to NSW for good.
And don’t forget that the late 1840s were a time of crisis and starvation in Britain. There was plenty of surplus labour rampaging through the streets or starving in ditches that had very little prospect at the time of being turned into “proles”.
Graham Bell @ 94.
Movies – The History Boys.
Paul Burns [96]:
Thanks. Didn’t know such a film existed.
So there’s hope for the world – and History – yet.
Katz [95]”
Errrr …. didn’t Transportation to Western Australia carry on for quite a while after that?
An informal type of Transportation did continue, after a fashion, with the stongly “encouraged” migration of “undesirables” ….
Everyone:
Talk of any pure or even majority “British” origins of Australians reminded me of the pure “German” origins of the Prussians …. and not a mention of French Hugenot refugees, Flemings, Venetians and other Italians, Dutch – lots of Dutch, French migrants, Poles, Bohemians, Cassubians, Wends, a few stray Scots, Swedes [by choice and otherwise], the odd Lett or two, etc., etc.
Also Tas. This discussion was about NSW only.
‘K. Starting here, working backwards to t’other post.
Then I apologise unreservedly, both to you and those offended by my assumption. I spend a lot of time arguing with american types elsewhere, and the desire for educational decentralisation is very strong among the conservative crowds there. Seems that doesn’t generalise too well!
I have to continue disagreeing here. Its somewhat semantical, but still: getting parts of government to help each other out is very different from hiring external private-sector consultants. My experience is largely confined to the sciences, but our in-house guys and gals have tremendous expertise to offer at a far cheaper price than anyone else. Its efficient to have them on hand, cheaper for the taxpayer, and good for education. We’re both arguing for freedom and choice, but I happen to believe that those qualities can best be provided in education within a framework that guides teachers.
Well, no. Look, you started out with a couple of short posts that were hard to interpret as anything else than calling for complete local control, and subsequently seemed to backtrack only when called on it. You’re still, far as I can tell, arguing for that. I don’t think anyone here seriously believes that a blank slate situaton will occur, just that the degree of independance that would be afforded doesn’t track with the ability to take advantage of that independance – and indeed would cause more problems than it solves in many areas, especially regional ones.
There’s no reasons that a federally-set curriculum, or a state-set one, can’t be flexible enough to accommodate these needs.
I’m sorry, “fear of”? Certainly not. Fear for kids whose educational options will absolutely be narrowed if their locally-set curricula fail to meet the standards required for further training elsewhere, whether in vocational or uni contexts, or fail to equip them well for life if they don’t pursue either option. An example: there’s a lot of women starting small businesses these days. Heaps and heaps, and its good for the economy and good for families. But if you come from somewhere where the locals are a tad backwards and their locally-set curriculum allows them to push girls away from math and business studies, the odds of you getting the freedom and choice to try something like that are pretty slim. I get that a lot of people might like to think that wouldn’t happen here, but I’m not nearly so confident as they. And its just as likely to happen to boys, being pushed away from ’softer’ studies, and the aboriginal kids you’ve mentioned being pushed away from…well, lots of things :/. Hell, probably more likely, sadly. So maybe I sound like a snob, but if promoting equality of opportunity in areas that don’t appreciate it makes me a snob, I guess I’ll have to deal with it.
By the way, I’ve got a real problem with the way a couple of people here appear to have lent false equivalency to creationism vs science. That’s not cool D: Tell me I’m misreading!
90 seconds on wikipedia shows that the curriculums in Finland are flexible, but federally set – by the Ministry of Education and the Education Board. I don’t think your example shows what you want it to show.
Given the degree of condescension and quote-picking I’m getting from you, I think you’ll have to forgive a couple of assumptions about your state of mind. And for what seems like the millionth time, I have to advance the argument that a curriculum set at a high level absolutely doesn’t have to be ‘one size fits all’. Its a terribly simplistic assumption.
Lies! Time, expertise, resources. Especially in the comparatively disadavantaged areas I’ve mentioned. Teachers do a great job adapting set curricula, as your Finland example shows, but they shouldn’t be expected to have to do more than that. In terms of efficiency its roughly on par to expecting us all to grow 100% of our own food no matter where we live. Its a rad idea to have a veggie patch or some herbs on the windowsill, but beyond that things just get silly, logistically.
No who’s not providing any evidence? Citation needed.
Ah, can’t possibly get involved in a debate out of interest! Its just not cool to care. Except for you, you get a free pass to be super-involved while labelling those who disagree with you emotionally unstable. What’s next, are you going to call me shrill?
Apologies to those who’ve already seen this – History Today
Damn! No, start with this one, it’s the first & best.
I’m kind of boggled that you need that, honestly. Even in a decentralised system like the one you’ve finally outlined below (still don’t like it much, but it sounds better than your earlier comments here), there’s got to be minimum requirements. I don’t think a state or federal curriculum realistically stands any chance of placing standards stupidly low.
I also don’t have faith that the educational equivalent of the invisible hand of the free market would cause schools to adapt to what industry and higher-ed institutions demand of their attendees and then raise quality. I worry that in a decentralised system concepts like creating good citizens first and good workers second would fall further by the wayside in many places, and I don’t think that other schools would be driven to follow schools that do. Its a case of competing values with no clear winner.
Maybe its just wishful thinking – especially given the history of modern education, and it seems like no-one is interested in creating good citizens or independant thinkers anymore – but I’d like to think that the state having a hand-in would prevent an over-focus on simple worker production.
No-one’s said that! Like you say, curricula setting isn’t teaching.
Well, it is IMO (specially compared to Finland!), but that’s kind of a separate issue
That’s a bit nasty… you’re conveniently forgetting the time-and-resources problem a lot in this thread.
I think its a realistic projection, not a strawman, even without the blank-slate issue arising.
Why is it inevitably better to buy education direct from the private sector? Also, I should point out that state departments do evaluate private-sector-created curricula and sometimes use them too, far as I am aware. I’m rather happier for a big department to do that than a small group of teachers, for the reasons of efficiency and bargaining power.
Maybe. I still think that could easily occur within federal or state guidelines, though, and not to harp, but your Finland example seems to bear that out.
Leaving aside my disagreement with the assumptions behind the above, I don’t see how either mode argued in here differs in risk when you phrase it like that, except in terms of scale. I think the risk of universal detriment within a smaller geographical area is higher, though, to the point where I’m more worried about kids from particular areas being markedly disadvantaged than everyone getting hit with that stick.
I get that you’re sure that schools/districts will adapt to being regarded as crappy and lift their game, but I don’t think that can possibly happen fast enough to avoid screwing a particular cohort of kids over, or indeed that it will neccessarily happen at all. Its just not a suggestion that fills me with confidence.
Thanks for those, laura. I forwarded them on to a couple of historian mates.
One of the big advantages of a national curriculum is that it helps ensure all (or at least most) of the important boxes in a history education get ticked.
I went to one primary school and one high school (1986 – 1998), during the time it was fashionable to lump history under the umbrella “studies of society and the environment”. Here is the total extent of my history education:
Grade 4: Australian Aborigines before white settlement
Grade 5: First Fleet
Year 7: Prehistory and ancient civilizations
Year 8: Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Year 9: World War 1, Depression, World War 2
Year 10(as an elective): Renaissance Italy, Communist Revolution in China
So no industrial revolution, no study of colonial expansion across the world, and no 19th century Australian history. Whilst I have enjoyed filling in these gaps as an adult, I think they are inexcusable. A national curriculum would avert this by ensuring all periods of history are covered to some extent. A national curriculum also ensures that content is not unecessarily repeated (boredom) or missed (ignorance) when students transition from primary to high school, or move interstate.
Katz – This argument cannot be sustained Adrien.
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That’s not an argument that’s a question. This is denoted by the following punctuation – ? .
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Thanks for answering however. As I understand it you’re saying that the British still has reasons to resort to transportation but Australian society rejected their role as a jail – yeah?
Not all Australians.
NSW witnessed more protest against transportation than VDL and Swan Districts. In VDL convicts continued after 1849 to be snapped up as labour as soon as the boats arrived. Before 1850, there was virtually no protest against transportation in VDL.
Paradoxically, perhaps, it seems that the emancipist section of NSW society were less inclined to protest against transportation than the middling sort of free immigrant. NSW Squatters, though not all of them, were generally in favour of continuing a ready supply of cheap labour.
So the situation in the Australian colonies in regard to transportation was very complex. As GB states above, transportation continued in VDL/Tas and Swan Districts/WA for some time after its abolition to NSW.
It is therefore fair to conclude that the British government at the end of the 1840s remained keen to transport British felons. However, the British government grew wary of antagonising a growing section of NSW society that thought transportation to be objectionable. This British official concern for colonial opinion appears to be a long-lasting legacy of the American Revolution, when the British government took very little notice of colonial opinion.