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Articles on History Education

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Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives to deliver a speech at the Kremlin in Moscow, April 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

Ukraine Invasion: How history can empower people to make sense of Russia’s war

‘Vlad the mad’ psychological analyses don’t help us understand Russia’s war. Historians gain insights by examining the enabling and determining factors behind why conflicts erupt.
Workers lower a a statue of Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, onto a truck as a crowd watches in Kingston, Ont., June 18, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Lars Hagberg

Commemoration controversies in classrooms: Canadian history teachers disagree about making ethical judgments

A survey of history teachers in Canada showed the prevalence of the myth of objectivity among history teachers.
Charlottesville city workers drape a tarp over the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in 2018. Debate over removing the statue continues today. AP Photo/Steve Helber, File

Monuments ‘expire’ – but offensive monuments can become powerful history lessons

Once stripped of their symbolic power, problem monuments offer what educators call ‘teachable moments,’ helping people assess society’s current values and compare them with what mattered in the past.
Adolf Hitler (second from the right in front) is shown in this 1939 file photo along with German and Italian army chiefs after having signed the German-Italian military pact in Germany. AP

I was an expert witness against a teacher who taught students to question the Holocaust

A scholar’s efforts to learn how textbooks in New Jersey were portraying the Holocaust leads her to testify against a history teacher who taught his students to question if the Holocaust took place.
Daniel Day-Lewis won the 2012 Academy Award for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln. Is Spielberg’s historical drama a good way to learn about the 16th U.S. president? Touchstone Pictures

Are movies a good way to learn history?

History movies may have Oscar potential, but their educational potential is more complicated. Should teachers use Hollywood to teach?
Who you think you’re kidding, Mr Gove? PA / Martin Keene

German historians have little time for Gove’s Blackadder jibes

Michael Gove must be off his head. In Germany any politician who tried giving professionals a history lecture would be considered a lunatic. German historians love to argue among themselves, and there…
History in schools is not engaging our students. History class image from www.shutterstock.com

Stop tinkering with school history, and start teaching it

In 2008, historian Dr. Anna Clark conducted a survey of the state of history education in Australian classrooms. The book that resulted from this study — History’s Children — presented a bleak image of…
Opposition leader Tony Abbott has signalled he’d like to see the history curriculum change. But is it a good idea for government to intervene? AAP Image/AFP Pool, Saeed Khan

Culture wars II: why Abbott should leave the history curriculum alone

In the last week of the campaign, some naggingly familiar comments came out from the Coalition. Then opposition leader Tony Abbott said he wanted to see the national curriculum in history changed because…
There are some powerful stories in the Anzac tradition but many more that are unknown to students. Australian War Memorial

Teaching the untold stories of World War I

“What are your legs? Springs. Steel springs”. Archy’s nervous mutterings before he sprints into gunfire are familiar in Australian history classes. So are the tale of Simpson and Duffy and their “bravest…
Why is it that we no longer teach the big story of how everything came to be? Universe image from www.shutterstock.com

Big History: why we need to teach the modern origin story

All human societies construct and teach creation myths or origin stories. These are large, extraordinarily powerful, but often ramshackle narratives that try and tell the story of how everything came to…
Australian humanities subjects need to get on board with MOOCs and develop Australian voices in online learning. World image from www.shutterstock.com

Deadset? MOOCs and Australian education in a globalised world

FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: We continue our series on the rise of online and blended learning and how free online courses are set to transform the higher education sector. Today Ruth Morgan looks at the…
By deliberately making false historical sources, students can learn to think more critically. Historical hoax image www.shutterstock.com

Teaching students to lie: historical method through hoaxes

What happens when you teach students how to lie? Answer: they become better historians. More than a decade ago, back in the days of Web 0.5, a student of mine submitted a generally well-written essay on…
If the same parts of Australian history are taught over and over again, we shouldn’t be surprised that students lose interest. Flickr/murphyeppoon

Beat-ups aside, Australian history has a future

Buried away in the correspondence columns of last week’s Sunday Age, a former history teacher’s letter “Where’s our history?” started an intense and confused debate about a “threat” by the national curriculum…

Teaching history without the books

Replacing textbooks with songs, diaries and illustrations improves the learning outcomes of history students, research from…

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