Tag Archive for 'stuart macintyre'

Review into the NT Intervention: on not reading and stereotyped debates

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 5 months ago
in Culture, Ethics, History, Indigenous, Media, Politics and Race
. 18 Comments

I have to confess at the outset that I haven’t read the report – I am really busy with work at the moment and I simply don’t have time (or energy when I do have time), but I wanted to comment instead on the practice of not reading. I was struck by this when reading Mark’s post from last night about the reactions of Gerard Henderson and Kevin Donnelly to the report released by Stuart Macintyre’s history curriculum panel. Donnelly, when interviewed on Lateline (and why is it necessary to interview him – for balance? … so that the substance of the story can be obscured by inscription in a “history wars” frame – what happened to journos perhaps reading the report and reporting on its substance not a press release?) couldn’t actually point to anything in the report which would support the line he wanted to run about a “black armband view” and wanted to mutter something dark instead about Labor being tricky about pretending not to be as left wing as they are. Incidentally, that’s the cunning new strategy that Chrissy Pyne came up with the other day, if we believe his ghost writer Glenn Milne.

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.

Continue reading ‘Review into the NT Intervention: on not reading and stereotyped debates’

History’s children

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 5 months ago
in Education, History, Nationalism and Politics
. 106 Comments

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.

What if they held a History War and nobody came?

Published
by
Kim
1 year, 6 months ago
in Education, History, Howardia, Media and Politics
. 109 Comments

Now that the Howard gubbermint is ancient history – except in the memoirs of the ghost of Peter Costello who wants you to know that Howard LIED six times and failed to hand him the leadership on a platter (ps. don’t waste your 55 bucks on his stoopid book – it’s been scooped, and that’s about it, except Pete WAS TEH BEST TREASURER EVAH! and could have singlehandedly sorted the international credit crisis) – there’s very little force, I’d have thought, in a claim that “the history wars have been revived”. A claim made by the usual suspects – particularly Dr Kevin Donnelly – that teh Communists have their hands on the history curriculum under a Labor Government. Read all about it here – in Crikey – by Jeff Sparrow – who skewers this nonsense without even raising a sweat, I suspect. As you were. No narrative here. Look away. There’s commies under your bed though.

Continue reading ‘What if they held a History War and nobody came?’