Yet the influence of the Howard-era battles remains – and its most significant legacy might be the fact that history is embedded in the national curriculum at all. This is a major shift from its folding into SOSE (Studies of Society and Environment) at P-10 levels in many states.

In an interesting piece for Crikey today, Tony Taylor looks at the reception and implementation of the history curriculum:

The shameful moments came when, uncertain how to tackle a curriculum that was being hyped as traditionalist?—?and while Tony Abbott was pictured crouched in earnest conversation with an Aboriginal elder?—?some Opposition MPs started to count mentions of Aborigines in the curriculum. Should there be a quota on references to Aborigines? Give me a break! How would I feel, I asked myself, if I were an indigenous Australian and yet again in the newspapers I read that my culture’s presence in the nation’s schools was unwelcome?

When both sides of Australian politics acknowledge, with sincerity and generosity, the value and contribution of our indigenous heritage, the country will have truly grown up. Until then, we wait, but not with bated breath.

There were other knee-jerk reactions, too. Gallipoli watchers were at work. Wilful misreaders were prominent. Conspiracy theorists abounded. SOSE educators, a vanishing breed, said the curriculum was too narrow. Conservative commentators, a stubborn sort, said, variously, it was too broad, too stodgy, too socialist and a bit too Asian. More generally though, the new history draft was well received.

But, as Taylor argued, there’s always a potential gap between policy text and pedagogical practice. He goes on to discuss the absence of expertise in history at secondary and primary schools, and crucially for the future of the curriculum, in university Education Faculties.

The whole thing is worth a read.

NB: Previous LP discussion of the draft national curriculum is here.

Late last year Keith Windschuttle released another book questioning the existence of the stolen generations. But this time, nobody cared.

Very few people would be aware that Keith Windschuttle released volume three of his series The Fabrication of Aboriginal History in December last year. As Robert Manne observed in his review of the book in The Monthly, it arrived to only the most “strangely muffled fanfare from his friends”.

Robert Manne’s review is here.

We’ve come a long way since the Howard era furore over Stolen Generations denialism. That’s a good thing.

It also probably contributed to the demand – within the Liberal party – to ‘stand for something’, which is apparently code for ‘defending the Howard legacy’. This theme inspired Turnbull to get ahead of the pack and raise the tattered banner of individual work contracts. Not so useful politically, that one.

Those interested in the merits of this debate, as opposed to the sound and fury, might find Mungo McCallum’s contribution interesting:

It’s all Kevin Rudd’s fault. Here we are, nearly two years out of the Howard years and happily consigning them to well-deserved oblivion.

And then Rudd has to mention the war; and of course John Howard and Peter Costello lurch out of the political cemetery to boast about the size and quality of their tombstones and pretend they are not really dead after all, and Malcolm Turnbull feels that he has to join in and defend the two people in the world he most wants to forget. Such is the level of discussion in contemporary Australia.

After all the brouhaha about the Katherine Wilson/Keith Windschuttle hoax dies down, I suspect the most lasting insight to be derived from all the kerfuffle is that Wilson’s target had already disappeared into a long twilight of irrelevance. For mine, John Quiggin’s point about the saga is among the most telling – Windschuttle’s own credibility on the issue which has been central to the recent stages of his career – Indigenous history – lies in tatters because of his own inability to substantiate the claims he made many years ago now with further research. The biggest hoax, Quiggin argues, is Windschuttle’s own contribution to “the history wars”.

After a number of folks actually had a look at what’s published on Quadrant’s website these days, it’s painfully obvious that there’s very little credibility there to be undermined. Egregious grammatical errors, bizarre rants with scant evidence of an elementary ability to construct a coherent argument, to be sure.

So the other motto we might draw from the hoax affair is that it’s drawn attention to the absence of both standards and relevance in most of what Quadrant has to offer. Now that the mag, and its writers, no longer have their great patron John Howard sitting in Kirribilli, the phrase “paper tiger” comes to mind. Certainly that appears to be evident from this truly bizarre piece just posted on the magazine’s website by Michael Connor, referencing a comment made here at LP by Pavlov’s Cat – “the Left totalitarianism”, “the Left establishment”, “Hatred blows in from the Left”… etc. Perhaps Connor was rankled by his writing being described as “half crazed”. But what can all this hyperbole and nonsense mean, and does anyone bar Connor and his ilk really care? I think he and the rest of Windy’s wingnut stable’s response to the hoax contains an element of schadenfreude. They’ve been rescued – I strongly suspect temporarily – from their own feelings of relevance deprivation. It might have been better, I think, if the windmills had been allowed to fall over of their own accord, without the need for any tilting at them.

Update: Margaret Simons wraps up the reaction to the hoax at Crikey, and Graham Young provides a publisher’s perspective at On Line Opinion.

Paul Keating has been speaking out again about Australian history:

He said he has never been to Gallipoli and never will because it is nonsense to think the nation was born again or redeemed there.

“The truth is that Gallipoli was shocking for us,” he said.

“Dragged into service by the imperial government in an ill-conceived and poorly executed campaign, we were cut to ribbons and dispatched and none of it in the defence of Australia.”

He said the sacrifice of soldiers was simply testament to the nation’s lack of confidence and ambivalence about itself.

“Who were we and what we had become. If our sons suffered and died valiantly in a European war, such sacrifice was testament to the nation’s self worth,” he said.

“In some respects we are still at it; not at the suffering and the dying but still turning up at Gallipoli, the place where Australia was needily redeemed.

“Without seeking to simplify the then bonds of empire and the implicit sense of obligation or to diminish the bravery of our own men, we still go on as though the nation was born again or even, redeemed there. An utter and complete nonsense.”

Similarly, Hendo appeared to be reacting to a press release. Now these characters are held up as “public intellectuals” and their assemblage of titles (thinktank director, educator/consultant, etc) supposedly represent authority and expertise. Obviously, they’re just going to push the political line they run with constantly, but what’s happened to the idea that you should actually inform yourself about what you comment on?

(Hendo, I suppose, doesn’t have time, what with having to write 50 emails a day to Robert Manne about what they each thought about Indonesia in the 1960s, or monitoring the ABC all day for “bias”…)

Something very similar is operating with the reaction of Warren Mundine to the NT Intervention Review. Andrew Bartlett asks some pointed questions:

Yet almost all the attacks seem to be ignoring the evidence about what has been happening on the ground, and the views of the people that live there, instead treating policies such as universal compulsory quarantining of welfare payments and scrapping the permit system as sacred totems which cannot be touched, regardless of the evidence.

NSW based Warren Mundine, described by The Australian newspaper, as an “ALP powerbroker and indigenous leader”, provides a range of insults of the Indigenous leaders involved in the review, saying the report is “touchy-feely nonsense” and “a joke” written by “people who want to accept second-best.”

The inference that any changes to the Intervention constitutes a ‘softening’ is particularly ludicrous given the strong comments at the time of the original legislation setting up the Intervention was passed by Noel Pearson – The Australian’s main standard bearer in justifying their strident support for every original facet of the Intervention and attacking anyone who raised concerns – that the Intervention process “needs to be decisively improved” and it would be a “grave mistake” to be intransigent to any amendments.

If memory serves, I think Mundine has previously been critical of Indigenous leaders who he claims are disconnected from folks on the ground and sip lattes in Paddington or wherever all day. But I can’t for the life of me see that Mundine has made any attempt to respond to the report with anything other than his usual schtick, and a range of ad homs which probably reflect struggles within the Indigenous community more than the Welfare Wars script they get written into.

Elsewhere: Marni Cordell on the substance and politics of the report at New Matilda.

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.

Also, and just asking, how does Anna Clark, who did a lot of actual research into what high school students in Australia and Canada thought about their national histories (answer – boring as) get pinged constantly as “Granddaughter of Manning Clark”… ZOMG! Probs a Commie too! Just like Stuart MacIntyre! We await the family tree of Dr Kevin Donnelly and Mr Keith Windschuttle. We trust their antecedents are pure. Or maybe this silliness only happens because Anna is… (shock!) a female. And therefore presumably unable to be distinguished from her Grandfather.

Taking this nonsense seriously for just one second, has it occurred to teh History Warriors that maybe Stuart MacIntyre is actually performing a bit of a public service? Not everyone is an underemployed “education consultant” or thinktank “Fellow” and able to drop everything to ensure the teh kidz learn teh Story of Australia.

Or, maybe this nonsense shouldn’t be taken seriously at all?

Elsewhere: Carlton’s lone classic liberal Andrew Norton on conservative educational delusions.