[historical accuracy] storm brews over what is being taught

There are certain issues which do not grab the immediate attention. They seem too abstruse, too far removed from our focus of interest and yet they really are deserving of our attention because of the ramifications if we do not focus on them.

One such issue is history. History is written by the winners, yes; and history is also written by the unrepresented, who then worm their way into key positions of influence, finding likeminded folk and, combined, they manage to shut out those of an opposite persuasion.

To specifics – the politically correct left has wormed its way into education for years [some would say they were ever there] and in particular, into the teaching of history. It then takes a conservative government or community figure to say, ‘Enough’ and by the time they do this and by the time they attempt to legislate the old status quo back in again, it’s too late. A generation has already grown up with the new ideas and the die is cast.

In the latest brouhaha, Education Minister Julie Bishop has stated that Australia must guard against history taught in schools becoming shoe-horned into a political agenda.

"History is not social justice awareness week," she said last night in a blunt speech on the eve of the national history summit in Canberra. Ms Bishop said the Government had a strong view that Australian history should be a compulsory, stand-alone subject at high school.

"Parents all around Australia are worried that their children will grow up with virtually no understanding of their country's history. Unfortunately, they have good reason to be," Ms Bishop said.

However, the Government was not in the business of producing some form of "official history", which would lead to further attempts to politicise the nation's past. "We cannot allow the nation's past to be rewritten in the service of a partisan political cause," Ms Bishop said.

"History is not peace studies. History is not social justice awareness week. Or conscious-raising about ecological sustainability. History is history, and shouldn't be a political science course by another name."

The experiment of "mushing up history" in Studies of Society and the Environment should be seriously questioned, Ms Bishop said. "There is a growing body of evidence that this experiment is failing our children."

A report on school history released by the Government in 2000 found unqualified or poorly qualified teachers were often asked to teach Studies of Society and Environment classes and students often emerged with no clear idea of what historical study entailed.

But Melbourne University historian Joy Damousi said it was hypocritical for any government to push its position as "quasi-neutral" historically, as that position did not exist.

"This Government has a particular view of the past and they are quite keen to present some neutrality, which in fact isn't neutral at all — it's very political," Professor Damousi said. "Keating had a very political view of the past, Howard does. I don't have a problem with that because history is about contesting viewpoints and interpretations."

History Teachers' Association Nick Ewbank said he agreed, to an extent, that history was not political studies. "(But) it's hard to divorce the meaningful teaching of history from some interpretations which have elements of ideology to them," he said. "That's one of many ways of engaging students."

Mr Ewbank, a participant at the history meeting, said it was pleasing that the Government had no intention of establishing an official or grand historical narrative as there is a plurality of historical stories to be told.

Ms Bishop announced the history summit last month, claiming not enough students were learning Australian history, there was too much political bias and not enough pivotal facts and dates were not being taught. This followed Prime Minister John Howard's call in his Australia Day speech for "root-and-branch renewal of the teaching of Australian history".

In Australia, it was always a given, in schools, that Captain Cook ‘discovered’ Australia for Britain, Hartog, Dampier and the Aborigines notwithstanding. In the 1950s and 60s, that was the way of it and chronologically, why not? Then the left gradually got its claws into curriculum development at ministry headquarters, new texts found their way into school curricula and nobody was any the wiser.

A few years back, the Australian Left ran a national Sorry Day to apologize to the aborigines for how some of the forbears of white Australians, of UK extraction, acted towards the dark-skinned Australians 227 years ago.

Uh-huh, fine and then there also needed to be a Sorry Day by the Carpentarians towards the Murrayans? Who? The Carpentarians – the first Australians. Never heard of them. Thought all aboriginals were the same.

Oh no, that’s the line spun by the woolly headed PC who want all aborigines to have a common origin and all white Australians to feel guilty towards them. But that ain’t exactly how it happened.

From Wentworth Shire Historical Society:

An early theory suggested that there were three original groups, the Murrayans, the Carpentarians and the Barrineans of north-east Queensland. The Murrayans were held to be the oldest and most `archaic' group who were displaced southwards by the later Carpentarians (named for the Gulf of Carpentaria).

The Barrineans were seen as a sideline of rain-forest dwelling people related to the `Negritos' of south-east Asia. This latter is thoroughly discredited, but the idea of two founding groups has remained.

Fair comment. So to Australia’s most respected historian [though he has his detractors in the political sphere] Professor Manning Clark, who said:

“The Murrayans in turn were driven south by the arrival of the Carpentarians.”

Driven south. Can you, in all honesty, imagine the Murrayans kindly suggesting that the other chaps move just a little further south, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble? Hence the need for a Sorry Day by the Capentarians towards the Murrayans.

While we’re still in the Murray-Darling region, what of the Maraura of the Lower Darling, the Paakantji of the Darling River, the Barindji to the east, the Kureinji to the east of the Maraura and south of the Barindji, and the Danggali in the north-west ?

And did they live in perfect peace and harmony? So where’s the Sorry Day? Come on. Read your history correctly and understand that history was a series of invasions, with one group pushing the last group away from the more fertile spots and into the more arid regions, where they eked out a subsistence existence.

In 1788, the colour of the skin changed, that was all.

What really gets on my goat is that the fictional history has even found its way into Wikipedia and so an American or Brit would read this:

A wave of massacres and resistance also followed the frontier of European settlement.

If he didn’t check it through, would think Sudan, Algeria or present day Somalia.

1824 Bathurst massacre: Following the killing of seven Europeans by Aboriginal people around Bathurst, New South Wales, martial law was declared and around 100 Aboriginal people killed.

‘One hundred’ people. Yes, that’s appalling. ‘Seven people’ is appalling as well. But that’s what happens and happened in internecine strife. The words ‘following the killing of’ are indicative of the true state of affairs. Of course the aboriginals resented encroachment and killings resulted.

Aboriginals first came to white attention in the 1969 referendum when 93% of Australians agreed they should be given the vote. I also thought it a great idea. But since them, the WHL [woolly-headed left has tried to place them in some sort of protected cocoon and this sort of drivel is then pumped into Wikipedia:

Use of the word "native", common in literature before about 1960, is also regarded as offensive.

How, in the name of all that is good and decent, can “native”, meaning ‘original, indigenous people, be offensive? To whom?

The teaching of history is a territory pockmarked with landmines for the unwary. The chronological history of the coming of the whites needs to be taught with historical accuracy and without the ‘social justice awareness’ of gays, feministi and the Muslim oppressed somehow woven into its fabric.