Macquarie’s own Vice-Chancellor offered comment on Australia’s history teaching last week. A national curriculum had been proposed, setting Australian history into a world-historical context. ‘Queen of the Humanities’, Schwartz called History – a downgraded cousin of the ‘Queen of the Sciences’ vied over by Philosophy and Theology perhaps, (according to Schwartz’ post, neither are claimants to the position).
At the heart of historical controversy stands interpretation. Sometimes we know what happened, but often we don’t know the motivation of the actors. If history teachers are not careful they may fall into the trap of presentism – projecting current concerns back into a time when those concerns had no meaning. So any history curriculum for young students has to tread very carefully. It must prioritise facts over opinion and fair evaluation of evidence over moralising.
Full post here.
Obviously it is not fair to criticize the V-C’s account of historical controversy here, and there would be little point in doing so. His point to underline the importance of history in education, and, like the National Curriculum, to take the debate beyond the ‘History Wars’. But, it is interesting to note just one point here: that historical consciousness itself is the concern. That is, that our country is having, or has been having, a moral debate about the way one approaches (if that is what one does when we think about history), history, before we get to the content itself. Quite obviously, the participants in this debate believe that these approaches have moral and political consequences for their nation. The question is though, given this distinction, are historians themselves, who approach historical data (after years of training) in a particular way without a second thought, themselves the best persons to be commenting on it?
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