tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/history-education-2505/articlesHistory Education – The Conversation2022-05-09T19:58:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1819992022-05-09T19:58:46Z2022-05-09T19:58:46ZUkraine Invasion: How history can empower people to make sense of Russia’s war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460832/original/file-20220502-16-a8bevj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=89%2C7%2C4244%2C3293&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives to deliver a speech at the Kremlin in Moscow, April 26, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered, in the words of <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-ukraine-russia-attack-1.6362554">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau</a>, “the greatest threat to European stability since the Second World War.” </p>
<p>Since then, not a single day has passed without powerful stories and shocking images of bombardments and casualties circulating online. </p>
<p>In a recent CBC interview, Canadian historian <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-63-the-current">Margaret MacMillan</a> examined how history has become “an instrument of war” used by President Putin to lay claims on Ukraine through a one-sided interpretation of the past.</p>
<p>According to Putin’s distorted view, Russia’s future and its place in the world are at stake and these depend on Putin’s goal: to “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56720589">demilitarize and denazify Ukraine</a>.” </p>
<p>The disciplinary tools of history are important to help people today understand two critical related things: Stories mobilize people in powerful ways; and the ability to analyze, challenge and judge stories’ credibility is at the heart of empowering citizens to participate in and create democratic societies. </p>
<h2>The past, in all its complexity</h2>
<p>Historians, MacMillan observes, have a central role to play in making sense of war. She notes:</p>
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<p>“We must do our best to raise the public awareness of the past in all its complexity.” </p>
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<p>Like MacMillan, we believe that leaders like Putin cannot mobilize for military operations without invoking the past, or some interpretations of it.</p>
<p>In <em>Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History</em>, MacMillan writes that historians are highly qualified to interrogate one-sided, even false, histories that politicians use “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/105819/dangerous-games-by-margaret-macmillan/">to bolster false claims and justify bad and foolish policies</a>.” </p>
<h2>History and the power of knowledge</h2>
<p>In the past decades, there has been a push in Canada, England and other nations to implement programs of study aimed at developing <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781442610996/thinking-historically/">historical thinking</a>, <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315642864-6/history-education-historical-literacy-peter-lee">historical literacy</a> or <a href="https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/130698">powerful knowledge</a>. All these terms refer to approaches that seek to develop a “<a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/yt/n3/01.pdf">historical gaze</a>” or a distinctively historical way of seeing past and current issues. </p>
<p>The rationale driving this is a democratic one: all future citizens should have equal access to the knowledge resources necessary to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119100812.ch9">exercise agency</a> in their world.</p>
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<img alt="A man seen riding a bicycle past a statue surrounded by sandbags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460835/original/file-20220502-24-zcieud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460835/original/file-20220502-24-zcieud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460835/original/file-20220502-24-zcieud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460835/original/file-20220502-24-zcieud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460835/original/file-20220502-24-zcieud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460835/original/file-20220502-24-zcieud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460835/original/file-20220502-24-zcieud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A man rides a bicycle past a statue of Grand Princess Olga of Kyiv, covered in sandbags to avoid damage from potential shelling, in Kyiv, on March 28.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)</span></span>
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<p>To <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/How_Students_Learn.html?id=lDzGDQjEd78C&redir_esc=y">learn a discipline</a> is to learn to reason and organize information in specific ways, drawing on discipline-specific concepts and ways of thinking. </p>
<p>History, as a discipline, can provide us with powerful ways to
move beyond the acquisition of stories (as content knowledge) to learn about how these stories were created, including their degree of certainty and their purpose. Such a disciplinary way of thinking helps people understand history as a tradition of inquiry and opens up a distinctive way of seeing world conflicts.</p>
<h2>Reasoning with source materials</h2>
<p>Studying history involves developing a deep knowledge of the human past understood as the histories of power relations. It also means: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>developing knowledge of the particular historical contexts of past and current conflicts;</p></li>
<li><p>providing education in how knowledge claims can be made, understanding, for example, that claims about the past emerge through questioning and reasoning <a href="https://citejournal.org/volume-14/issue-2-14/social-studies/what-does-the-eye-see-reading-online-primary-source-photographs-in-history/">with source material</a>, not simply by reassembling memories and fragments of the past into a story; </p></li>
<li><p>and finally, it involves developing an understanding of historical narration — both how narration can be used to develop new understandings and insights and how it can be abused to sustain fixed political positions. </p></li>
</ul>
<h2>‘Making sense’ of war?</h2>
<p>How can studying history help young people make sense of the war in Ukraine? </p>
<p>A historical perspective on the current war in Ukraine can enable understandings of both the events unfolding in the present — as understood by different opposing parties — and the ways in which narratives are being used to influence perceptions. </p>
<p>A historical perspective <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315642864-11/causal-explanation-arthur-chapman">on the causes</a> of the invasion of Ukraine would avoid simplistic explanations. </p>
<p>Instead, history teachers might build a situation model to explain Russia’s invasion by putting it in short-, medium- and long-term contexts, looking for both enabling and determining factors in order to explain why the invasion took place. </p>
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<p>Taking a historical perspective would certainly need to move beyond the Putin-centred explanation and ask questions about Putin’s thinking, psychology and intentions. </p>
<p>It would ask questions about the contexts that enable his actions to have deep consequences in the world. </p>
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<img alt="A man in military uniform is seen laying flowers in front of a flame." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462068/original/file-20220509-18-395olb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/462068/original/file-20220509-18-395olb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462068/original/file-20220509-18-395olb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462068/original/file-20220509-18-395olb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462068/original/file-20220509-18-395olb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462068/original/file-20220509-18-395olb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/462068/original/file-20220509-18-395olb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Soviet army veteran lays flowers at a the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to mark the Victory Day in the Second World War, in Kyiv, on May 9, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Evaluating competing narratives</h2>
<p>To take a historical perspective is also to move beyond explanation, and to start asking questions about multiple stories that different parties offer, to make sense of what has happened and to shape our responses. </p>
<p>This means considering differing <a href="https://rm.coe.int/0900001680493c9e">historical perspectives</a> on events and analyzing different points of view on the conflict: Russia/Putin, Ukraine, Canada/NATO. </p>
<p>It also means exercising narrative competence and judgment to compare, deconstruct and evaluate the competing narratives that circulate about the events and that are part of the process of mobilizing action and shaping the future. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/commemoration-controversies-in-classrooms-canadian-history-teachers-disagree-about-making-ethical-judgments-163053">Commemoration controversies in classrooms: Canadian history teachers disagree about making ethical judgments</a>
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<p>Why, one might ask, has a euphemistic narrative that speaks of “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-putin-authorises-military-operations-donbass-domestic-media-2022-02-24/">special military operation</a>,” not “war,” been actively disseminated by the Russian government <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/23/lessons-in-patriotism-used-to-justify-ukraine-invasion-to-russias-children">notably in schools</a> and what ideological function does that serve? </p>
<p>Why, on the other hand, have “<a href="https://nypost.com/2022/02/24/not-peter-the-great-hes-vlad-the-mad/">Vlad the mad</a>” psychologized narratives arisen in the West? What function do they serve and what do they obscure and reveal? History has things to teach about what responsible and realistic <a href="https://public-history-weekly.degruyter.com/4-2016-37/on-the-diagnosis-and-treatment-of-narrative-vices/">narratives</a> look like and about the kinds of narrative we should question and find incredible.</p>
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<img alt="A large mural is seen of a man in a suit depicted as having skeleton teeth and a man walks in front on the street holding flowers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460831/original/file-20220502-13-6fbauf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460831/original/file-20220502-13-6fbauf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460831/original/file-20220502-13-6fbauf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460831/original/file-20220502-13-6fbauf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460831/original/file-20220502-13-6fbauf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460831/original/file-20220502-13-6fbauf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460831/original/file-20220502-13-6fbauf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man walks by a depiction of Russian President Vladimir Putin with skeleton teeth by artist Krišs Salmanis outside the Russian Embassy in Bucharest, Romania, April 29, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Learning to detect patterns</h2>
<p>Traditional education, focused either on content knowledge or on skills, is inadequate to the task of educating young citizens to navigate complex futures — <a href="https://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/teaching-and-learning/learning">as the Organization for Economic Co-opration now recognizes</a>.</p>
<p>To get our bearings on world issues, including climate change and war, we need what education researchers Michael Young and Johan Muller call <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-3435.2009.01413.x">a “Future 3” education, grounded in disciplinary ways of knowing, not simply in bodies of knowledge</a>. For them, “Future 1” education simply reproduces dominant knowledge traditions and fixed stories. “Future 2” education eliminates distinctive forms of knowledge to emphasize general skills that ultimately limit our capacity to understand history — and its uses and abuses.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.persuasion.community/p/history-brought-us-here?s=r">Michael Ignatieff</a> sums it up, “to get our bearings, to figure out what to do, we need to understand how we got to this point … we need to be able to see the pattern in the carpet.” </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-analyzing-patterns-helps-students-spot-deceptive-media-110490">How analyzing patterns helps students spot deceptive media</a>
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<p>To do that, we need not to be taught more stories or facts but, crucially, to be taught how to look and look critically at narratives aiming to shape perceptions of both the past and the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181999/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stéphane G. Lévesque is current policy analyst and expert for the Government of Canada. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arthur Chapman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>‘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.Stéphane G. Lévesque, Professor (Adjunct), History education, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaArthur Chapman, Associate Professor History in Education, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1630532021-06-30T15:51:44Z2021-06-30T15:51:44ZCommemoration controversies in classrooms: Canadian history teachers disagree about making ethical judgments<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408734/original/file-20210628-13-1mcbn9r.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C119%2C6122%2C3785&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">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.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Lars Hagberg</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Commemorations of significant historical people and events connected to histories of racism, enslavement and colonialism continue to fuel debates over collective memory and <a href="https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/cornwallis-statue-park-and-street-need-to-go-halifax-task-force-1.5028757">civic values in Canada</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jun/01/gary-younge-why-every-single-statue-should-come-down-rhodes-colston">around the world</a>.</p>
<p>Most recently, after a survey of the grounds at the former residential school in Kamloops uncovered <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tk-eml%C3%BAps-te-secw%C3%A9pemc-215-children-former-kamloops-indian-residential-school-1.6043778">the remains of 215 children buried at the site</a>, the city council in Kingston, Ont., expedited long-standing debate and removed a statue of John A. Macdonald.</p>
<p>In Toronto, activists toppled and decapitated a <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/statue-of-egerton-ryerson-brought-down-1.6055676">statue of Egerton Ryerson</a>, whose recommendations were <a href="https://www.ryerson.ca/content/dam/governors/resources/6.1_A_Brief_History_of_Ryerson_Final.pdf">instrumental in designing and implementing the residential school system</a>. The university said the statue would not be replaced and <a href="https://www.ryerson.ca/news-events/news/2021/06/a-message-from-president-lachemi-on-the-removal-of-the-egerton-ryerson-statue">invited further dialogue about a possible institutional name change</a>. <a href="https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/smol-teachers-should-be-outraged-over-ryerson-statue-toppling">One commentator said teachers should be outraged by protestors’ actions</a>.</p>
<p>Our previous research has explored how teachers and students <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315110646-6">think about and approach ethical judgments</a> when focusing on controversial historical events and how historical injustices are included in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2020.1822920">revised social studies curriculum in British Columbia</a>. </p>
<p>In an article in the <em><a href="https://cje-rce.ca/">Canadian Journal of Education</a></em>, one of the authors of this story argues that <a href="https://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/article/view/4451">commemoration controversies should be taught in Canadian history and social studies classrooms</a>.</p>
<p>Learning about these controversies could be an opportunity for students to address knowledge, skills and values essential for developing civic identity and engagement. Students could find powerful opportunities to use their historical understandings to make informed decisions.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stop-telling-students-to-study-stem-instead-of-humanities-for-the-post-coronavirus-world-145813">Stop telling students to study STEM instead of humanities for the post-coronavirus world</a>
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<p>To date, little research has focused specifically on teaching about commemoration controversies. Our team (with Catherine Duquette, Jacqueline P. Leighton, Alan Sears and Jessica Gobran) designed a 31-question online survey to better understand Canadian teachers’ beliefs about commemoration controversies and how to teach them. We also wanted to identify the benefits and challenges teachers see in doing so. </p>
<p>We found that history teachers are regularly teaching commemoration controversies through analyzing different sources, discussing different arguments and perspectives and generating solutions about how to respond.</p>
<p>However, teachers disagree about if and how they should approach <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2017.1389665">ethical judgments</a> when teaching about commemoration controversies. </p>
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<img alt="A woman dances next to a toppled statue of Egerton Ryerson." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408728/original/file-20210628-13-1sj9ze3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408728/original/file-20210628-13-1sj9ze3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408728/original/file-20210628-13-1sj9ze3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408728/original/file-20210628-13-1sj9ze3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408728/original/file-20210628-13-1sj9ze3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408728/original/file-20210628-13-1sj9ze3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408728/original/file-20210628-13-1sj9ze3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A protester dances next to the Egerton Ryerson statue before protestors removed its head after toppling it June 6, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young</span></span>
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<h2>Changing views?</h2>
<p>Canadian commemoration controversies have been divisive because they challenge long-standing national myths about Canada as a progressive and inclusive nation. They also highlight important problems and issues in Canada today, particularly the ongoing effects of racism and colonialism on Indigenous peoples, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/statues-defaced-paint-toronto-defund-the-police-1.5654829">Black and racialized people</a>. </p>
<p>A September 2020 <a href="https://leger360.com/surveys/legers-weekly-survey-september-9-2020/">survey</a> by Leger of 1,529 Canadians found that half the respondents were opposed to removing statues or monuments or renaming, even when it was demonstrated that the person being commemorated held racist views or implemented racist policies. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/news-polls/canadians-agree-there-should-be-national-day-of-remembrance-for-victims-of-residential-schools">recent data suggest</a> attitudes may be shifting. </p>
<p>In June 2021, Abacus Data surveyed 3,000 Canadians for the Assembly of First Nations and the Canadian Race Relations Foundation after the discovery of the remains of 215 children in Kamloops. The survey found that <a href="https://www.crrf-fcrr.ca/images/NIHM2021/Residential_Schools_June_2021_National_Report_EN_TC.pdf">58 per cent of respondents support renaming buildings and institutions named after people connected with the residential school system, 21 per cent are opposed and 21 per cent say they don’t know</a>.</p>
<h2>Teachers aware of controversies</h2>
<p>In our survey of 114 history teachers, most of those who completed the survey are experienced, with 71 per cent having taught in classrooms for more than nine years. </p>
<p>They teach in kindergarten to Grade 12 schools, post-secondary institutions and museums and live in a range of provinces and territories. Just over half identified as male (53 per cent), 43 per cent as female and three per cent identifying as transgender, gender non-conforming or gender-queer.</p>
<p>Respondents weren’t racially diverse. More than 85 per cent of respondents identified as white, understood either as “Canadian/white” (68 per cent), or “European/white” (17 per cent). Only three respondents identified as Métis or First Nations. No respondents identified as racialized.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/black-history-how-racism-in-ontario-schools-today-is-connected-to-a-history-of-segregation-147633">Black History: How racism in Ontario schools today is connected to a history of segregation</a>
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<p>Respondents were aware of numerous commemoration controversies and recognize that commemorations are interpretations of the past created after the event occurred or the person was alive. </p>
<p>They also understand that removing or revising commemorations is not an attempt to destroy history. Instead, they acknowledge that removing or altering commemorations is acceptable if they are found to be inaccurate, exclude important information or celebrate those who acted unjustly in the past.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408732/original/file-20210628-27-116li5u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408732/original/file-20210628-27-116li5u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408732/original/file-20210628-27-116li5u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408732/original/file-20210628-27-116li5u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408732/original/file-20210628-27-116li5u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408732/original/file-20210628-27-116li5u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408732/original/file-20210628-27-116li5u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elder Junior Peter Paul points to a statue of Canada’s first prime minister, John A. MacDonald, during a ceremony in Charlottetown, May 31, 2021. The city has since removed the statue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Morris</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Commemoration controversies important to teach</h2>
<p>The respondents think commemoration controversies are important to teach about, and more than 80 per cent have already taught about them or intend to teach about them. </p>
<p>Most respondents report using similar methods for teaching about commemoration controversies. The most popular include small and large group discussions, analyzing primary and secondary sources and having students generate possible solutions.</p>
<p>Respondents identified many benefits of teaching about commemoration controversies including making history more interesting and meaningful, fostering students’ <a href="https://historicalthinking.ca/">historical thinking</a> abilities and advancing students’ <a href="https://www.tcpress.com/teaching-controversial-issues-9780807757802">critical thinking</a>, problem solving and communication abilities. </p>
<h2>Challenges, disagreements</h2>
<p>More than half the respondents said they have no concerns about teaching commemoration controversies, which challenges <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Political-Classroom-Evidence-and-Ethics-in-Democratic-Education/Hess-McAvoy/p/book/9780415880992">previous research</a> that found that teachers often avoid teaching about controversial issues. </p>
<p>The most common challenges respondents identified were concerns about students making hasty judgments that do not consider historical context and using present day beliefs, values and attitudes to judge the past.</p>
<p>Despite widespread agreement about most aspects of teaching about commemoration controversies, there were areas of disagreement. Participants were divided about whether changing or removing problematic commemorations will lead to meaningful social change. </p>
<p>Half think teachers should remain neutral and objective when discussing commemoration controversies with students, while 44 per cent disagreed with that view and five per cent strongly disagreed. </p>
<p>Similarly, 45 per cent think teachers should not ask students to judge the actions of people in the past in terms of just and unjust, right and wrong. </p>
<p>These findings illustrate the prevalence of the myth of neutrality among teachers. There is a longstanding idea among many teachers, including social studies and history teachers specifically, <a href="https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/spring-2016/shifting-out-of-neutral">that they need to remain neutral and objective</a> when teaching, even though it is <a href="https://journal.jctonline.org/index.php/jct/article/view/557">commonly known that teachers’ beliefs and values influence their teaching</a>.</p>
<p>When it comes to classroom practice, many teachers are unaware of the various ways ethical judgments are <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315110646-6">present in the activities and the resources they use, and the extent to which they bring their own ethical judgments</a> into the classroom.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A police officer gestures with to a statue while talking with a veteran holding a Canadian flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408391/original/file-20210625-21-1kvy90o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408391/original/file-20210625-21-1kvy90o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408391/original/file-20210625-21-1kvy90o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408391/original/file-20210625-21-1kvy90o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408391/original/file-20210625-21-1kvy90o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408391/original/file-20210625-21-1kvy90o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408391/original/file-20210625-21-1kvy90o.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Kingston Police officer talks with a man who protested the removal of a statue of John A. Macdonald in Kingston, Ont., as construction crews arrived, on June 18.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Lars Hagberg</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Future research</h2>
<p>This research suggests the need for teachers to identify how their beliefs about objectivity and neutrality influence how they teach about commemoration controversies. It also raises questions about how an attachment to neutrality may serve to maintain the status quo when asking students to make ethical judgments about historical and contemporary injustices. </p>
<p>Anti-racism education researchers highlight how what teachers do in classrooms isn’t <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-curb-anti-black-racism-in-canadian-schools-150489">neutral, but is always shaped by context, implicit bias and racialized and cultural assumptions</a>. From this perspective, assuming neutrality leaves white supremacy and racism unaddressed, perpetuating harm to racialized students.</p>
<p>But many teachers don’t consider how their attempts at neutrality and objectivity affects their students.</p>
<p>Future research needs to move beyond surveys to investigate how teachers and students respond to commemoration controversies in the classroom, and the impact these experiences have on all students’ learning.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163053/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lindsay Gibson received funding from the University of British Columbia Hampton Fund Research Grant in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Research described here was funded by The Hampton Fund New Faculty Grant at UBC. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Miles receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>A survey of history teachers in Canada showed the prevalence of the myth of objectivity among history teachers.Lindsay Gibson, Assistant Professor, Social Studies and History Education, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, University of British ColumbiaJames Miles, PhD candidate, Curriculum & Pedagogy, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1536452021-01-26T18:50:55Z2021-01-26T18:50:55ZIt’s not just about the rise in anti-Semitism: why we need real stories for better Holocaust education in Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380345/original/file-20210124-13-yf2swk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The former Nazi concentration (and extermination) camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/auschwitzbirkenau-concentration-camp-poland-january-2020-1669225666">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On January 27 communities worldwide commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz — the largest complex of concentration camps and extermination centres during the Holocaust. This is the first year the <a href="https://austfhu.org.au/events/international-holocaust-remembrance-day-27-january-2021/">International Holocaust Remembrance Day</a> will be marked nationally in Australia. </p>
<p>Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will <a href="https://austfhu.org.au/events/international-holocaust-remembrance-day-27-january-2021/">address the event</a>, which demonstrates the importance the government ascribes to Holocaust commemoration. </p>
<p>In October 2019, after two cases of serious anti-Semitism in schools (one where a Jewish student was forced to kiss the feet of another student) <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/oct/04/josh-frydenberg-urges-more-holocaust-education-after-antisemitic-bullying-cases">Josh Frydenberg urged</a> schools to deliver more history lessons about the Holocaust. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If they [bullies] understood and comprehended the atrocities of the Holocaust, they would be as insulted as anybody, including me, about these recent attacks.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Federal and state governments have provided funding to Holocaust museums, and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/education/study-of-holocaust-mandated-for-schools-20121207-2b10k.html">Holocaust education</a> is mandatory in <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-26/compulsory-holocaust-victorian-education/12001214">years 9 and 10</a> in NSW and Victoria. It is also part of the history curriculum nationally.</p>
<p>Although the Holocaust is a universal symbol of evil, there is some feeling among Australians it has no direct historical relevance here. In 2016, the Australian War Memorial in Canberra unveiled a small exhibition with several stories connecting Australia to the Holocaust. But there was some opposition.</p>
<p>The Memorial director Brendan Nelson, <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/speeches/witnesses-and-survivors">commented that</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>One regular visitor to the Memorial told me emphatically that she was opposed to this exhibition. “This has nothing to do with Australia and the Australian War Memorial”, she said. She told me that she would never walk through it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With the passing of most of the last survivors, it seems the horrors of the event are being lost with the younger generations. Surveys <a href="http://www.claimscon.org/study/">conducted by the Claims</a> conference (an international organisation that aims to bring justice to Holocaust survivors) in 2018, showed 31% of Americans (41% of millenials) believe substantially fewer than 6 million Jews were killed (two million or fewer) during the Holocaust. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/many-young-people-still-lack-basic-knowledge-of-the-holocaust-146937">Many young people still lack basic knowledge of the Holocaust</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>And almost half of Americans couldn’t name a single concentration camp during the Holocaust, despite the fact there were possibly more than 40,000 at the time.</p>
<p>Teachers need to consider new ways how to make Holocaust history relevant to new generations globally, and in Australia. </p>
<h2>How the Holocaust is relevant to Australia</h2>
<p>My <a href="https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/social-affairs/holocaust-through-lens-australian-jewish-refugees">historical research</a> has brought to light personal stories connecting Australia and Europe during the second world war. </p>
<p>Between 7,000 and 10,000 Jewish refugees reached Australia shortly before the war. Most of them left behind relatives, often elderly parents, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles and friends, who perished in the Holocaust.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1351867945044094977"}"></div></p>
<p>In 1939 Mayloch Ruda from Warsaw, Poland migrated to Australia with his two daughters — leaving his wife Chana and three other children, Pola, Frania and Guta behind. This was a typical migration strategy, when the breadwinner left first to establish a new home overseas. </p>
<p>Mayloch applied for Australia to admit his family, but it was too late. The war closed almost all emigration routes from Europe. His wife and three daughters were soon imprisoned in the largest Nazi ghetto in Warsaw.</p>
<p>Mayloch and his two daughters remained in an intermittent contact with their family through the International Red Cross. The last message they received from Pola in November 1942 was delayed by almost six months: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are in dire material conditions. Mother lost her sight. We plead for any help, as soon as possible. We all live together. We are waiting for help and the news. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mayloch contacted Jewish humanitarian agencies to send his family food parcels, but it is doubtful they ever arrived. Most of the Jews from Warsaw, very likely including the Ruda family, were murdered in Treblinka. </p>
<p>After the war, the Rudas and others tried to locate their relatives, and if they survived, bring them over to Australia.</p>
<p>Another surviror, Max Heitlinger, who arrived in Australia in 1939 from Vienna, expressed these feelings in his memoirs.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I knew it was the end for all of them. I still wake up at night and cry in desperation and self-accusation. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Despite the immense interest in the history of the Holocaust in Australia their efforts and strategies have remained largely unknown.</p>
<h2>The Holocaust is about human rights more generally</h2>
<p>The idea Holocaust education could help combat rising anti-Semitism is not new. <a href="http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/holocaust-education-and-contemporary-anti-semitism">Surveys</a> conducted in the past 15 years, however, suggest “Europe is experiencing rising levels of antisemitism […] alongside a growth in Holocaust education”.</p>
<p>The authors of the surveys write that for Holocaust education to be effective, the curriculum should also consider “the pre-existing cultural capital of students and the specific history of Jewish communities, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust in the country […] where the subject is being taught”. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-religious-discrimination-is-on-the-rise-around-the-world-including-in-australia-141789">New research shows religious discrimination is on the rise around the world, including in Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>UNESCO <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000263702">recommends</a> education about the Holocaust include elements such as a fostering critical thinking, education about global citizenship and an integration of gender perspectives to help unmask bias.</p>
<p>Stories like the above, of migrants in Australia separated from family, offer possible avenues for teachers to present the Holocaust as part of our history. </p>
<p>Using these stories is also crucial for understanding the diverse experiences in Australian multicultural society. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380357/original/file-20210125-23-f8ol9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Photos of Holocaust victims and survivors from the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380357/original/file-20210125-23-f8ol9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380357/original/file-20210125-23-f8ol9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380357/original/file-20210125-23-f8ol9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380357/original/file-20210125-23-f8ol9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380357/original/file-20210125-23-f8ol9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380357/original/file-20210125-23-f8ol9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380357/original/file-20210125-23-f8ol9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Up to 10,000 Jewish refugees came to Australia before the war. Many left behind relatives. (Photos of Holocaust victims and survivors taken from the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington)</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/washington-dc-dec-19-internal-view-473667163">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stories of separated families still happen today. <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-11/australian-uyghur-reunited-with-wife-child-returned-from-china/12974928">Sadam Abudusalam</a>, an Australian citizen, was separated for three years from his Uyghur wife Nadila and their child, who were left behind in China. The Chinese persecution of the Muslim Uyghurs was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55723522">recently characterised</a> by the Trump administration and the president-elect Joe Biden’s team as a case of genocide. Thankfully, Sadam was reunited with Nadila and their child in December 2020. </p>
<p>The study of the Holocaust offers immense opportunities to educators at all levels, but proper <a href="https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/4/2/15228.pdf">training</a> is necessary for those who teach the subject. </p>
<p>But while the Australian government has mandated Holocaust education, the recent fee shake-up in universities — where fees for most humanities courses have risen – will unfortunately put learning about it in-depth out of reach for some students. And this includes prospective school teachers.</p>
<p>Australia must make it easier for students to learn about the history of our world so they can better teach it to school students.</p>
<p>The study of the Holocaust, as the ultimate example of genocide, allows teachers to raise the universal message of human rights abuses and mass violence. If we relate the Holocaust to our past and present context, we can facilitate a better understanding of the Australian place in the world and its relation to gross human rights violations around the globe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153645/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Lanicek receives funding from the State Library NSW. </span></em></p>The study of the Holocaust, as the ultimate example of genocide, allows teachers to raise the universal message of human rights abuses and mass violence.Jan Lanicek, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History and Jewish History, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1433182020-09-04T12:24:19Z2020-09-04T12:24:19ZMonuments ‘expire’ – but offensive monuments can become powerful history lessons<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356156/original/file-20200902-20-14ywezs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C4082%2C2780&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Charlottesville city workers drape a tarp over the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in 2018. Debate over removing the statue continues today.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Confederate-Monuments-Virginia/d95f1d175d4f4e1f94cdaec565c90845/3/0">AP Photo/Steve Helber, File</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Historical monuments are intended to be timeless, but almost all have an expiration date. As society’s values shift, the legitimacy of monuments can and often does erode. </p>
<p>This is because monuments – whether statues, memorials or obelisks – reveal the values of the time in which they were created and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=A_xmDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=lies+across+america+loewen&ots=dvIDkQmqi5&sig=a8Jo_vADxErbjPGB0cdM8mqqbWg#v=onepage&q=lies%20across%20america%20loewen&f=false">advance the agendas of their creators</a>. </p>
<p>Many 9/11 monuments in the U.S., for example, <a href="https://www.911memorial.org/">serve both to remember and honor victims of the attacks</a> while promoting national vigilance. These views garnered nearly universal support immediately after the attacks. Over time, however, as the costs and consequences of “homeland security” became clearer, unqualified support for this agenda has waned. </p>
<p>Current debates around racism confirm that Confederate statues and Christopher Columbus statues, both of which effectively commemorate white superiority, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/12/876293231/confederate-monuments-the-history-of-controversial-symbols">have expired</a>, too. </p>
<p>The question then becomes: What’s a nation to do with expired monuments?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two young blond boys jump and crawl on a fallen bronze statue in a park" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356154/original/file-20200902-20-1vsxaqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3824%2C2570&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356154/original/file-20200902-20-1vsxaqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356154/original/file-20200902-20-1vsxaqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356154/original/file-20200902-20-1vsxaqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356154/original/file-20200902-20-1vsxaqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356154/original/file-20200902-20-1vsxaqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356154/original/file-20200902-20-1vsxaqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russian children play atop a toppled statue of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/after-the-coup-children-play-on-a-toppled-statue-of-stalin-news-photo/635966617?adppopup=true">Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Purpose of monuments</h2>
<p>Over the past century, American public officials, citizens and historians have taken one of two paths. They either ignored expired monuments – the 20th-century approach – or, more recently, rejected them. </p>
<p>Ignoring problem monuments left the impression among many that officials endorsed the views they embodied. Today, people who see a host of monuments as illegitimate symbols of racism, authoritarianism and oppression have rejected this official indifference. Through protest or policy change, they have forced more open and productive discussions about race in America. Ultimately, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53005243">many offensive monuments have been removed</a>. </p>
<p>Removal eliminates the symbols of now-rejected values. But as <a href="https://cthistory.org/">historians</a> and <a href="https://education.uconn.edu/person/alan-marcus/">educators</a> who have <a href="https://www.socialstudies.org/system/files/publications/articles/se_7403131.pdf">explored the instructive value of monuments</a>, we believe statue removal can also limit the important conversations underway about their expired agendas. </p>
<p>Monuments provide an especially useful educational service because they serve double duty. They mark historical events or figures – the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/bost/learn/historyculture/bhm.htm">Battle of Bunker Hill</a>, say, or <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/local/photos-martin-luther-king-statues-around-the-country-and-beyond/oMpTNGO3Bkq2CEqfpvVLEN/">Martin Luther King Jr.</a> – and reflect the prevailing values of the time in which they were created. Monuments are also unique compared with other forms of cultural expression like art or literature in that they almost always reside in public spaces and are found in practically every town and city in America. </p>
<p>These attributes make monuments ideal launching points for helping society assess its current values and compare them with what mattered in the past. </p>
<p>Expired monuments are a lesson: They teach that people can be tragically wrong about something even when that belief once had widespread public support and official approval. Simultaneously, they show that radical, marginalized or contrary voices can turn out to be right. Or they may be, like their opponents, creatures of a particular moment in time. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356155/original/file-20200902-18-10up4y1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Workers in hardhats use a small orange crane to hoist a plastic-wrapped and padded bronze statue" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356155/original/file-20200902-18-10up4y1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356155/original/file-20200902-18-10up4y1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356155/original/file-20200902-18-10up4y1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356155/original/file-20200902-18-10up4y1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356155/original/file-20200902-18-10up4y1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356155/original/file-20200902-18-10up4y1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356155/original/file-20200902-18-10up4y1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1933 statue of Confederate leader Jefferson Davis is removed from the University of Texas campus to be placed in a university museum, 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/statue-of-confederate-leader-jefferson-davis-is-removed-news-photo/539558538?adppopup=true">Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Reinventing monuments</h2>
<p>We’ve been studying <a href="https://www.wnpr.org/post/seeing-cracks-controversial-statues">how the function of expired monuments might be entirely reinvented</a> so that their outdated agendas provide a cautionary tale. </p>
<p>Many thinkers, artists and public officials <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/06/confederate-monuments-fall-question-how-rewrite-history/">have put forward suggestions</a>. </p>
<p>A common idea is to move expired monuments to museums, where they would be recast as art or as historic artifacts. The most creative proposals include making a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-confederate-statue-graveyard-could-help-bury-the-old-south-118034">Confederate statues “graveyard”</a> or moving expired monuments to a <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/what-to-do-with-all-those-toppled-monuments-artist-suggests-turning-chicago-dump-site-into-sculpture-park">sculpture park</a>. </p>
<p>In all these settings, expired monuments would be stripped of the seal of official endorsement and clearly explained as once-venerated symbols of views now understood to be morally unacceptable. That raises larger questions about how societies can be blind to their own moral failures. </p>
<p>European countries offer some examples of how statues from painful chapters of history can be, as artist Jonathan Keats put it, “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathonkeats/2019/02/15/getty-monument/#1723d49852c5">forcefully repositioned in a radically new context</a>.” </p>
<p>Gorky Park in Moscow <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/07/21/892914684/what-to-do-with-toppled-statues-russia-has-a-fallen-monument-par">contains an area displaying old Soviet-era monuments</a> that deprives them of their symbolic power. Statues of dictators Stalin and Lenin are no longer in a prominent public location and are clumped together in an apolitical manner. </p>
<p>In Estonia, old Soviet-era monuments <a href="https://www.ajaloomuuseum.ee/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/noukogude-aegsete-monumentide-valinaitu">are part of a history-rich museum exhibition</a> that uses these relics of authoritarianism as a warning to future generations. </p>
<p>In post-World War II Germany, virtually all monuments to Hitler and the Third Reich were destroyed; perhaps some crimes are simply too abhorrent to be remembered so soon. But in 1986 <a href="https://www.shalev-gerz.net/portfolio/monument-against-fascism/">an unusual monument against fascism was erected</a> in Hamburg. Each year a portion of this vertical gray column was lowered underground until by 1993 it was completely gone. The 39-foot monument “disappeared” before it could expire. </p>
<p>The sunken monument can still be viewed underground. This tactic communicates that society needs to remember the dangers of fascism, but that a monument is not enough. Ultimately, only engaged citizens can attack injustice.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/217650363" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Artists Esther Shalev-Gerz and Jochen Gerz’s disappearing anti-fascism monument went up in 1986 and was fully sunk into the ground by 1993. Video from www.shalev-gerz.net.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>From valorizing to analyzing</h2>
<p>Reinventing expired monuments uses outdated objects to teach about a society’s past values while assessing – and perhaps challenging – its contemporary beliefs. In other words, it moves from valorizing monuments to analyzing them. </p>
<p>That’s rich terrain for educators. Teachers can use reinvented monuments to ask students to consider the validity of what American society believes, says and does. </p>
<p>Monuments expire because views change. But because present-day cultural values are themselves often difficult for people to see from another perspective, analyzing monuments also has the educational value of prompting deliberations about how future generations will reflect upon today’s United States. How did this generation of Americans grapple with issues like racial injustice, climate change and economic inequality? </p>
<p>Future generations will hold current society to account, just as Americans today are scrutinizing the views and actions of past generations. </p>
<p>Reinventing rather than simply removing monuments requires confronting the past, recognizing current conditions and planning for the future – all while embracing the reality that historical change is a complex, messy and malleable process.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143318/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>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.Alan Marcus, Professor, University of ConnecticutWalter Woodward, Associate Professor of History, University of ConnecticutLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1330662020-08-02T19:54:51Z2020-08-02T19:54:51ZSecondary school textbooks teach our kids the myth that Aboriginal Australians were nomadic hunter-gatherers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/350551/original/file-20200731-15-1t3dnq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/aboriginal-australia-landscape-build-on-traditional-1384429946">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his book Dark Emu, <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-dark-emu-and-the-blindness-of-australian-agriculture-97444">Bruce Pascoe</a> writes that settler Australians wilfully misunderstood, hid and destroyed evidence of Aboriginal Australians’ farming practices. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17405904.2019.1637760">My analysis</a> of secondary school textbooks shows this behaviour isn’t restricted to the past — it is ongoing. </p>
<p>In Australia, pre-invasion Aboriginal peoples tend to be portrayed as <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-our-kids-should-learn-aboriginal-history-24196">nomadic hunter-gatherers</a>. For example, a 1979 textbook titled <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/9632898?selectedversion=NBD1665592">Australia’s frontiers: an atlas of Australian history</a> by J.R.J. Grigsby and T.F. Gurry said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The people of this distinctive race were hunters and gatherers […] They were constantly on the move, following game or seeking new sources of plant food. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, <a href="https://australianarchaeologicalassociation.com.au/journal/thesis-abstract-lake-condah-revisited/">physical evidence</a> as well as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-dark-emu-and-the-blindness-of-australian-agriculture-97444">journals of early colonists</a> show Aboriginal peoples farmed and built large villages, meaning many groups stayed in one place.</p>
<h2>Sophisticated farmers</h2>
<p>In the 1970s, evidence of Aboriginal farming in southwest Victoria recorded by white archaeologists confirmed what the local Gunditjmara people had always known: rather than living off whatever they came across, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-detective-work-behind-the-budj-bim-eel-traps-world-heritage-bid-71800">the Gunditjmara actively farmed the landscape</a>. As in other areas in the world, intensive farming was accompanied by permanent dwellings.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-detective-work-behind-the-budj-bim-eel-traps-world-heritage-bid-71800">The detective work behind the Budj Bim eel traps World Heritage bid</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Writings of early colonists show Aboriginal agriculture was practised Australia-wide. In 2011, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-biggest-estate-on-earth-how-aborigines-made-australia-3787">Bill Gammage</a> used historical writings to explain how Aboriginal peoples created the park-like landscape “discovered” by early colonists. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-biggest-estate-on-earth-how-aborigines-made-australia-3787">The biggest estate on earth: how Aborigines made Australia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Bruce Pascoe’s recent book Dark Emu extends Gammage’s research. Writing about the journals of the early colonists, Pascoe wrote: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As I read these early journals I came across repeated references to people building dams and wells, planting, irrigating and harvesting seed, preserving the surplus and storing it in houses, sheds or secure vessels, creating elaborate cemeteries and manipulating the landscape – none of which fitted the definition of hunter-gatherers.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What are school children taught?</h2>
<p>I analysed <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17405904.2019.1637760">Australian history narratives</a> in secondary school textbooks from 1950 to the present. Up until the 2000s, these textbooks repeated the myth that Aboriginal peoples were nomadic hunter-gatherers. For example, a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Their_Ghosts_May_be_Heard.html?id=47vuAAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">1984 text</a> said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Aborigines were nomads or wanderers. The wandered from place to place as they searched for food and water. But each tribe has its own special territory and members of the tribe did not move outside this area […] The Aborigines knew the places where they would be most likely to find water and things to eat and they visited each place in turn […] The Aborigines did not farm the land. They didn’t plant and harvest crops or herd animals.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although factually incorrect, it’s likely the authors of these accounts believed them to be accurate. </p>
<p>Over time, the textbooks I studied gradually improved as various errors and omissions were corrected. However, it took until the early 2000s before the myth of hunter-gathering was corrected. In 2005, one <a href="http://www.jaconline.com.au/sosealive/sahistory2/toc.html">text</a> for middle school students openly refuted the traditional narrative: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It has generally long been accepted that Australia’s Indigenous people were traditionally all nomadic […] Archaeological evidence recently discovered in Victoria seems to suggest, however, that at least some Indigenous people might have had fixed settlements. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320671/original/file-20200316-53523-3ozkm9.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">SOSE Alive History p10.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This change seems to reflect the impetus to correct misinformation. Remarkably however, this change was short-lived. The publisher reverted to the traditional narrative of Aborigines as hunter-gatherers the very next year. This is the only example I found where textbooks reverted to a previous account that was known to be incorrect. The publisher’s comparable <a href="http://www.jaconline.com.au/humanitiesalive/ha3/">2006</a> text stated: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Collecting food and the natural resources needed to provide shelter and weapons typically took up most of the day […] Indigenous people took only the resources they needed to live. When a particular territory became too pressured by over-use, the people moved camp, allowing landscapes and resource stocks to be restored. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This pattern continued in subsequent years. For example, the same publisher’s <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Retroactive+9+Australian+Curriculum+for+History+eBookPLUS+%28Online+Purchase%29-p-9780730338765">2012</a> textbook claimed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The arrival of the British began the process that saw the Gadigal lose their lands and their self-sufficient, hunting and gathering way of life.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The most recent textbooks omit this topic entirely, which means the widely-held myth of hunter-gatherering persists. </p>
<h2>Why aren’t our kids taught about Aboriginal farming?</h2>
<p>In Dark Emu, Pascoe explains that denying Aboriginal farming practices enabled the colonisers to reject Aboriginal peoples’ rights to land, shoring up their own claims to legitimacy instead. The invasion and colonisation of Australia was based on the self-justifying legal doctrine <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1468796806061077">terra nullius</a> — land belonging to no one. A key aspect of this claim was that Aboriginal peoples supposedly didn’t farm. </p>
<p>European political thinking in the 1800s linked “industriousness” with rights to land. For example, in 1758, Swiss jurist <a href="https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p70821/html/Text/ch05.html?referer=&page=12">Emmerich de Vattel</a> argued societies based on the “fruits of the chase” (rather than agricultural production) “may not complain if more industrious Nations should come and occupy part of their lands”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/captain-cook-discovered-australia-and-other-myths-from-old-school-text-books-128926">Captain Cook 'discovered' Australia, and other myths from old school text books</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This line of thought allowed the British colonists to reassure themselves the continent was there for the taking and justify their dispossession of Aboriginal peoples. </p>
<p>It’s difficult to understand why a contemporary publisher of school textbooks would publish misleading or incorrect material. However, we do know changes to secondary school history textbooks have occurred in the context of the “history wars” in Australia. </p>
<p>The “<a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2009/november/1270703045/robert-manne/comment">history wars</a>” refers to the conservative backlash to the increasing democratisation of Australian history. </p>
<p>From the 1970s, <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/the-history-wars-paperback-softback">complexity was introduced to Australian histories</a>. The traditional tale of heroic, elite, white men was moderated by including the perspectives and voices of Aboriginal peoples, non-white immigrants and white women and workers. The “history wars” is an attempt to marginalise these voices and return to traditional narratives.</p>
<p>Textbooks record the dominant understandings and values of the society in which they are published. The intrusion of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/western-civilisation-history-teaching-has-moved-on-and-so-should-those-who-champion-it-97697">history wars</a> into the school curriculum reveal a struggle to define these dominant understandings. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/western-civilisation-history-teaching-has-moved-on-and-so-should-those-who-champion-it-97697">'Western civilisation'? History teaching has moved on, and so should those who champion it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.macmillanihe.com/page/detail/Why-History-Matters/?K=9781137604071">History textbooks</a> are crucial to students’ understanding of our nation. In colonised nations such as Australia, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Conquest.html?id=STlYGwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">foundational narratives</a> are fashioned to establish the legitimacy of the nation. In Australia, it seems as if this fashioning requires Aboriginal peoples to be portrayed as hunter-gatherers. </p>
<p>Most of us who’ve been educated in Australia hold racist stereotypes of Aboriginal society as <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-our-kids-should-learn-aboriginal-history-24196">primitive and savage</a>. We’ve imbibed these stereotypes as part of our education. Resistance and refusal to acknowledge Aboriginal agricultural practices supports these stereotypes and leads to discriminatory attitudes which continue to impact Aboriginal Australians. Shattering these stereotypes is crucial to improving the lives of Aboriginal Australians. Our textbooks need to do better.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-our-kids-should-learn-aboriginal-history-24196">Why our kids should learn Aboriginal history </a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133066/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robyn Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An analysis of Australian history narratives in secondary school textbooks shows many still repeat the myth that Aboriginal peoples were nomadic hunter-gatherers.Robyn Moore, Social Researcher, School of Social Sciences, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1210962019-08-19T19:03:49Z2019-08-19T19:03:49ZHistorians’ archival research looks quite different in the digital age<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288381/original/file-20190816-192262-1d2xs1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Today, and into the future, consulting archival documents increasingly means reading them on a screen. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Our society’s historical record is undergoing a dramatic transformation.</p>
<p>Think of all the information that you create today that will be part of the record for tomorrow. <a href="https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx">More than half of the world’s population is online</a> and may be doing at least some of the following: communicating by email, sharing thoughts on Twitter or social media or publishing on the web. </p>
<p>Governments and institutions are no different. The American National Archives and Records Administration, responsible for American official records, “<a href="https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/leaders-share-national-archives-vision-for-a-digital-future">will no longer take records in paper form after December 31, 2022.</a>” </p>
<p>In Canada, under Library and Archives Canada’s <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/services/government-information-resources/guidelines/Pages/introduction.aspx">Digital by 2017</a> plan, records are now preserved in the format that they were created in: that means a Word document or email will be part of our historical record as a digital object.</p>
<p>Traditionally, exploring archives meant largely physically collecting, searching and reviewing paper records. Today, and into the future, consulting archival documents increasingly means reading them on a screen. </p>
<p>This brings with it opportunity — imagine being able to search for keywords across millions of documents, leading to radically faster search times — but also challenge, as the number of electronic documents increases exponentially. </p>
<p>As I’ve argued in my recent book <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/history-in-the-age-of-abundance--products-9780773556973.php"><em>History in the Age of Abundance</em></a>, digitized sources present extraordinary opportunities as well as daunting challenges for historians. Universities will need to incorporate new approaches to how they train historians, either through historical programs or newly-emerging interdisciplinary programs in the <a href="https://guides.library.duke.edu/digital_humanities">digital humanities</a>. </p>
<p>The ever-growing scale and scope of digital records suggests technical challenges: historians need new skills to plumb these for meaning, trends, voices and other currents, to piece together an understanding of what happened in the past.</p>
<p>There are also ethical challenges, which, although not new in the field of history, now bear particular contemporary attention and scrutiny.</p>
<p>Historians have long relied on librarians and archivists to bring order to information. Part of their work has involved ethical choices about what to preserve, curate, catalogue and display and how to do so. Today, many digital sources are now at our fingertips — albeit in raw, often uncatalogued, format. Historians are entering uncharted territory.</p>
<h2>Digital abundance</h2>
<p>Traditionally, as the late, great American historian Roy Rosenzweig of George Mason University argued, historians operated <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/108.3.735">in a scarcity-based economy: we wished we had more information about the past</a>.
Today, hundreds of billions of websites preserved at the <a href="https://archive.org/about/">Internet Archive</a> alone is more archival information than scholars have ever had access to. People who never before would have been included in archives are part of these collections. </p>
<p>Take web archiving, for example, which is the preservation of websites for future use. Since 2005, Library and Archives Canada’s <a href="http://webarchive.bac-lac.gc.ca/?lang=en">web archiving program</a> has collected over <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Historical-Web-and-Digital-Humanities-The-Case-of-National-Web-Domains/Brugger-Laursen/p/book/9781138294318">36 terabytes of information</a> with over <a href="https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/about-us/annual-reports/annual-report-2017-2018/Pages/annual-report-2017-2018.aspx">800 million items</a>. </p>
<p>Even historians who study the middle ages or the 19th centuries are being affected by this dramatic transformation. They’re now frequently consulting records that began life as traditional parchment or paper, but were subsequently digitized. </p>
<h2>Historians’ digital literacy</h2>
<p>Our research team at the University of Waterloo and York University, <a href="https://archivesunleashed.org">collaborating on the Archives Unleashed Project</a>, uses sources like the GeoCities.com web archive. This is a collection of websites published by users between 1994 and 2009. We have some 186 million web pages to use, created by seven million users.</p>
<p>Our traditional approaches for examining historical sources simply won’t work on the scale of hundreds of millions of documents created by one website alone. We can’t read page by page nor can we simply count keywords or outsource our intellectual labour to a search engine like Google. </p>
<p>As historians examining these archives, we need a fundamental understanding of how records were produced, preserved and accessed. Such questions and modes of analysis are continuous with historians’ traditional training: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24048">Why were these records created</a>? Who created or preserved them? And, what <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1461444811414834"><em>wasn’t</em> preserved</a>? </p>
<p>Second, historians who confront such voluminous data need to develop more contemporary skills to process it. Such skills can range from knowing how to take images of documents and make them searchable using <a href="http://doi.org/10.3138/chr.694">Optical Character Recognition</a>, to the ability to not only count how often given terms appear, but also what contexts they appear in and how concepts begin to appear alongside other concepts. </p>
<p>You might be interested in finding the “Johnson” in “Boris Johnson,” but not the “Johnson & Johnson Company.” Just searching for “Johnson” is going to get a lot of misleading results: keyword searching won’t get you there. Yet emergent research in the field of <a href="http://www.nltk.org/">natural language processing</a> might!</p>
<p>Historians need to develop basic algorithmic and data fluency. They don’t need to be programmers, but they do need to think about how code and data operates, how digital objects are stored and created and humans’ role at all stages.</p>
<h2>Deep fake vs. history</h2>
<p>As historical work is increasingly defined by digital records, historians can contribute to critical conversations around the role of algorithms and truth in the digital age. While both tech companies and some scholars have advanced the idea that technology and the internet will strengthen democratic participation, historical research can help uncover the <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality">impact of socio-economic power throughout communications and media history</a>. Historians can also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/11/what-naomi-wolf-cokie-roberts-teach-us-about-need-historians/">help amateurs parse the sea of historical information and sources now on the Web</a>. </p>
<p>One of the defining skills of a historian is an understanding of historical context. Historians instinctively read documents, whether they are newspaper columns, government reports or tweets, and contextualise them in terms of not only who wrote them, but their environment, culture and time period. </p>
<p>As societies lose their physical paper trails and increasingly rely on digital information, historians, and their grasp of context, will become more important than ever. </p>
<p>As deepfakes — <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1365712718807226">products of artificial intelligence that can alter images or video clips</a> — <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/bill-hader-tom-cruise-seth-rogen-deepfake-871154/">increase in popularity online</a>, both our media environment and our historical record will increasingly be full of misinformation. </p>
<p>Western societies’ traditional archives — such as those held by <a href="http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Pages/home.aspx">Library and Archives Canada</a> or the <a href="https://www.archives.gov">National Archives and Records Administration</a> — contain (and have always contained) misinformation, misrepresentation and biased worldviews, among other flaws. </p>
<p>Historians are specialists in critically reading documents and then seeking to confirm them. They synthesise their findings with a <a href="https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/the-landscape-of-history-9780195171570">broad array of additional sources and voices</a>. Historians tie together <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/history-manifesto/big-questions-big-data/F60D7E21EFBD018F5410FB315FBA4590/core-reader">big pictures and findings</a>, which <a href="https://www.macmillanihe.com/page/detail/Why-History-Matters/?K=9781137604071">helps us understand today’s world</a>.</p>
<p>The work of a historian might look a lot different in the 21st century — exploring databases, parsing data — but the application of their fundamental skills of seeking context and accumulating knowledge will serve both society and them well in the digital age.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=youresmart">You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121096/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Milligan receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade, the United States Institute of Museum and Library Services, Compute Canada, and the University of Waterloo.</span></em></p>As our societies lose paper trails and increasingly rely on digital information, historians, and their grasps of context, will become more important than ever.Ian Milligan, Associate Professor of History, University of WaterlooLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1165782019-05-30T12:48:55Z2019-05-30T12:48:55ZI was an expert witness against a teacher who taught students to question the Holocaust<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276412/original/file-20190524-187189-fltgc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=80%2C723%2C2704%2C970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">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.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Germany-Holocaust/1ee6c974c28d4b76bf1b13f166f8472e/19/0">AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: This article was published in 2019. Jason Mostafa Ali, the subject of the article, died in early 2023.</em></p>
<p>When I first set out to research how the Holocaust was being depicted in textbooks in New Jersey’s public schools, my hope was to see what students were being taught about the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust">systematic state-sponsored killing</a> of 6 million Jewish men, women and and children.</p>
<p>I never imagined that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00377996.2018.1515060">my work</a> would lead me to serve as a witness against a history teacher who encouraged his students to question whether the Holocaust had ever taken place at all.</p>
<p>The case – known as <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-jersey/njdce/2:2017cv02210/346734/32/">Jason Mostafa Ali v. Woodbridge Township School District</a> – represents a rare look inside the mind of what I see as a modern day Holocaust denier. In some ways, the case is reminiscent of <a href="https://www.hdot.org/trial-materials/">Irving v. Penguin and Lipstadt</a> – a Holocaust denial case famously portrayed in the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4645330/">2016 movie “Denial”</a> and written about in a <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062659651/denial/">book</a> of the same name.</p>
<p>In that case, Emory University history professor Deborah Lipstadt was sued for libel in a London court by author David Irving, a well-known writer about WWII. Irving filed the libel suit after Lipstadt wrote a book called “Denying the Holocaust,” in which she called Irving “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/04/16/blood-libel">one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial</a>.” A British court ultimately tossed out Irving’s suit, finding that he had <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/apr/12/irving.uk1">“persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence”</a> in order to portray Hitler in “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/apr/12/irving.uk1">unwarrantedly favourable light</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276409/original/file-20190524-187179-3ttwoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276409/original/file-20190524-187179-3ttwoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276409/original/file-20190524-187179-3ttwoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276409/original/file-20190524-187179-3ttwoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276409/original/file-20190524-187179-3ttwoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276409/original/file-20190524-187179-3ttwoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276409/original/file-20190524-187179-3ttwoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276409/original/file-20190524-187179-3ttwoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Author David Irving claimed that Deborah Lipstadt, professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Emory University in Atlanta, had alleged in a 1994 book that he denied the Holocaust.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-United-King-/e400033561e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/21/0">Max Nash/AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now here I was some two decades later, being called upon to serve as a witness against a schoolteacher trying to get his job back after being fired for doing essentially the same thing.</p>
<p>My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. I have also spent the past four years interviewing children and other grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=list_works&hl=en&user=tB-wZZ0AAAAJ&gmla=AJsN-F7JadL94mD5fk4DKGGymKzG63Xj9716soFSGsgmhkr1sL1taPq8geaE6ZoxBBPF7zTVg5eE70iYyk4oS2D98wpIFUSOWRCxvYQSr1NT8LKERJiGp1k">My work</a> shows how deeply members of the second and third generations feel the impact of the Holocaust in their lives. Many often feel like they <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17504902.2017.1406701?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=rhos20">carry the trauma</a> that parents and grandparents experienced. I had to work to keep my emotions in check and focus on the business at hand.</p>
<h2>Denial makes news</h2>
<p>My involvement in the case against Mr. Ali began in November 2017 when I got a phone call from a lawyer who was representing the Woodbridge Township School District. I had sent an email earlier in the year to the district about my study of how textbooks portray the Holocaust and officials there remembered my note. </p>
<p>Woodbridge officials had fired Mr. Ali, who was teaching students to question the Holocaust and who was also pushing 9/11 conspiracy theories. Mr. Ali was now suing the district for illegally firing him <a href="https://patch.com/new-jersey/woodbridge/woodbridge-teacher-fired-over-9-11-conspiracies-sues-district-alleges-anti">over his race and religion</a>.</p>
<p>Mr. Ali had first made headlines in September 2016 after a news station <a href="https://pix11.com/2016/09/28/exclusive-woodbridge-high-school-teacher-removed-after-911-conspiracy-links-found-on-his-school-web-page/">discovered several 9/11 conspiracy links</a> on his school webpage.</p>
<p>After speaking with the Woodbridge district lawyer, I was sent several hundred pages of depositions, student work and lesson plans to review. I was also asked if I would serve as an expert witness in the case.</p>
<p>One particularly memorable student paper in the documents was called “A Gas Chamber Full of Lies.” </p>
<p>“We have all been taught that the Holocaust was a time of hate, and that Hitler used the gifts he possessed for absolute evil, but is that really the case? … Is the death of the Jews completely justified? No, because nobody deserves to die, regardless what they’ve done. But are their deaths really completely unjustified either?” read an excerpt.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276410/original/file-20190524-187182-17o84hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276410/original/file-20190524-187182-17o84hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276410/original/file-20190524-187182-17o84hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276410/original/file-20190524-187182-17o84hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276410/original/file-20190524-187182-17o84hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276410/original/file-20190524-187182-17o84hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276410/original/file-20190524-187182-17o84hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276410/original/file-20190524-187182-17o84hk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charred remains of bodies found by U.S. troops of the 80th Division in the furnace chamber at Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany, in April 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-International-News-Germany-WWI-/1f94ada504f2da11af9f0014c2589dfb/53/0">AP Photo/U.S. Army Signal Corps</a></span>
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<p>Another student stated that the Jews imprisoned in concentration camps “had a much easier and more enjoyable life in the camps” and that “even though they were not at home, they felt like they were.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276411/original/file-20190524-187185-bgapfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276411/original/file-20190524-187185-bgapfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276411/original/file-20190524-187185-bgapfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276411/original/file-20190524-187185-bgapfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276411/original/file-20190524-187185-bgapfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276411/original/file-20190524-187185-bgapfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276411/original/file-20190524-187185-bgapfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276411/original/file-20190524-187185-bgapfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A picture taken just after the liberation by the Soviet army in January 1945 shows a group of children wearing concentration camp uniforms behind barbed wire fencing in the Oswiecim (Auschwitz) Nazi concentration camp.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/AP-PL-FILE-POL-HOLOCAUST-AUSCHWITZ/93b29d33a9e0da11af9f0014c2589dfb/37/0">AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mr. Ali’s pedagogical folly was not limited to the Holocaust. He also shared links to stories that asserted that <a href="https://www.memri.org/reports/egyptian-daily-us-planning-911-style-attack-using-isis-early-2015-%E2%80%93-it-did-using-al-qaeda">9/11 was a conspiracy between the CIA and Mossad</a>. The stories had headlines like “<a href="https://www.memri.org/tv/saudi-scholar-abdallah-al-yahya-jews-are-cancer-woe-world-if-they-become-strong/transcript">The Jews are like a cancer, woe to the world if they become strong</a>.” </p>
<p>Confronted with this evidence, I decided to serve as an expert witness in the case.</p>
<h2>Taking on a ‘content specialist’</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/610/Rich_Response_to_Ali_v_Woodbridge-1.pdf?1558706975">a report</a> to the court, I pointed out how – during a deposition – Mr. Ali made numerous factual errors and had a lack of knowledge about the Second World War and the Holocaust.</p>
<p>Mr. Ali did not know basic facts, such as the name of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Erwin-Rommel">General Erwin Rommel</a>, one of the most prominent German generals of the war. He also was ignorant of <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1986/wiesel/biographical/">Elie Wiesel</a> or Wiesel’s classic book “<a href="https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/books/night-by-elie-wiesel/">Night</a>,” perhaps the best-known account of the Holocaust by an Auschwitz survivor.</p>
<p>These giant gaps in basic factual knowledge, I told the court, came along with what I described as a “worrisome awareness of arcane, conspiracy-related details, a classic case of losing the forest for the trees in historical terms.”</p>
<p>“By allowing his students to investigate assertions, myths, and logical fallacies as if they are real, Mr. Ali created the space for denial to grow,” I wrote in my report. “This allows the idea of ‘maybe there is more to this than I was told’ to bloom.”</p>
<h2>Where free speech stops</h2>
<p>In Mr. Ali’s <a href="https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/new-jersey/njdce/2:2017cv02210/346734/32/0.pdf?ts=1556702477">case</a>, he alleged – among other things – that he had a First Amendment right to share materials that he saw fit.</p>
<p>When he was asked whether he taught his students to “question the facts as to whether Hitler chose to brutally abuse, take advantage, starve and murder Jews for absolutely no reason at all,” Mr. Ali responded that he taught his students to “question everything.” And when he was asked if he encouraged his students to “come to different views than the traditional understanding of what World War II and the Holocaust and Hitler were about,” he stated: “Yeah, it’s called debate.”</p>
<p>But United States District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo disagreed. She <a href="https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/new-jersey/njdce/2:2017cv02210/346734/32/0.pdf?ts=1556702477">ruled</a> that the school district, not the classroom teacher, “has the ultimate right to decide what will be taught in the classroom.” Except for a procedural matter unrelated to his teaching, she tossed out the various claims in Mr. Ali’s lawsuit, saying that he failed to show he was fired for anything other than the reasons given by the school district – not his race or his religion like he claimed.</p>
<p>Mr. Ali is not done with this fight. Even though a judge tossed out his lawsuit, on May 28 he filed an appeal, <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/612/Plaintiff_s_notice_of_appeal.PDF?1559155553">court records show.</a></p>
<p>The Conversation reached out to Mr. Ali and his attorney, Nicholas Pompelio, but did not get a response. </p>
<p>I don’t doubt that Mr. Ali has a story to tell. I can’t speak to his <a href="https://patch.com/new-jersey/woodbridge/woodbridge-teacher-fired-over-9-11-conspiracies-sues-district-alleges-anti">claims</a> that he was subjected to an “anti-Muslim attitude” at work, or that the school district didn’t seem to have a problem with his 9/11 conspiracy theory lessons until a TV station started reporting about it.</p>
<p>All I know is that when it comes to what Mr. Ali either let or encouraged his students to believe when it comes to Hitler and the Holocaust, his lessons weren’t just wrong, they were dangerous.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116578/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Rich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>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.Jennifer Rich, Professor of Sociology, Rowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/976972018-06-06T06:19:27Z2018-06-06T06:19:27Z‘Western civilisation’? History teaching has moved on, and so should those who champion it<p>The Australian National University recently decided not to accept money from the <a href="http://www.ramsaycentre.org/">Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation</a> to set up a Western civilisation degree. They join the University of Melbourne, Macquarie University and others that have also been approached but <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/anu-gutless-to-reject-study-of-west-says-uni-boss-greg-craven/news-story/3e7d39757b1d08a3b17f060561cc633d">not pursued</a> any similar arrangement. </p>
<p>The centre has been <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/tony-abbott-blamed-over-failure-of-western-civilisation-course/news-story/b415477d567dfb8357e61a7c9c93d4fa">criticised</a> for its narrow and outdated agenda, and the views of its board members, including former prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott. </p>
<p>The processes of making and evaluating history and history curricula are complex. When it comes to public opinion about which histories should be taught in schools and universities, politicians from across the spectrum tend to over-simplify this. </p>
<p>This cycle of political interference stagnates the discussion. The politics of who is represented in history requires ongoing investigation, but the conversation could be moved in a more educationally constructive direction. We should instead ask how history education can better explore competing narratives and perspectives in history. </p>
<h2>A history of political interference</h2>
<p>Political interference in history curriculum intensified during the Howard government years. Howard revived Australia’s “<a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2009/november/1270703045/robert-manne/comment">history wars</a>” by bringing the concept of the “<a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/RP9798/98RP05">black armband view of history</a>” to national attention. This refers to overly negative accounts of Australian history, particularly in relation to the treatment of Indigenous Australians. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-concept-of-western-civilisation-is-past-its-use-by-date-in-university-humanities-departments-87750">The concept of 'Western civilisation' is past its use-by date in university humanities departments</a>
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<p>The left and right accused each other of misusing history. Conservatives regarded the history curriculum as too politically correct, biased and postmodern. In 1999, the Howard government initiated the <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/33390475?q&versionId=45302877">National Inquiry into School History</a>, based on concerns young Australians lacked knowledge of national history. </p>
<p>This resulted in the creation of the <a href="http://www.civicsandcitizenship.edu.au/cce/expert_views/teaching_historical_literacy_the_national_history,9323.html">National History Project</a> and the National Centre for History Education. The centre was discontinued in the mid-2000s.</p>
<p>Howard re-engaged with the debate in his <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/2006/01/25/john-howard-australia-day-address.html">2006 Australia Day speech</a>. He sought to renew the position of Australian history in curriculum and promote the teaching of an uncomplicated and structured narrative of the national story. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/news/national/history-revision-in-two-years/2006/08/17/1155407959634.html">National History Summit</a> was launched later that year. Howard’s handpicked team developed the <a href="https://www.htansw.asn.au/docman/2007-destguidetoteachinghistory11oct/download">Guide to the Teaching of Australian History in Years 9 and 10</a>. </p>
<p>The election of the Rudd Labor government in 2007 meant the plan to mandate 150 hours of stand-alone Australian history was never implemented. Despite this, Australian history and Western history remain prominent in the current curriculum. </p>
<p>History was one of the four subjects prioritised in the new national curriculum, drafted in 2010 under the Labor government. Labor’s world history framework focused much more on Asia, a stark contrast to the structured national narrative supported by Howard. Some <a href="https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/senior-secondary-curriculum/humanities-and-social-sciences/">criticised</a> the over-emphasis on Western societies in some units, resulting in alternative topics (for example, ancient India) being added. </p>
<p>A review of the Australian curriculum was called for in early 2014, following the election of the Abbott Coalition government. The then education minister, Christopher Pyne, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/10/christopher-pyne-curriculum-must-focus-on-anzac-day-and-western-history">expressed concerns</a> about the national curriculum not placing enough value on “the legacy of Western civilisation”. Kevin Donnelly and Ken Wiltshire – both conservative critics of the Australian curriculum – were selected to lead the review. Commentary was again polarised.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-history-of-misinformation-pyne-spreads-curriculum-myths-8413">A history of misinformation: Pyne spreads curriculum myths</a>
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<p>The <a href="https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/review_of_the_national_curriculum_final_report.pdf">final report</a> highlighted some submissions were “critical of the Australian Curriculum for failing to properly acknowledge and include reference to Australia’s Judeo-Christian heritage and the debt owed to Western civilisation”. Despite this, it was decided the curriculum adequately covered Western history. Only minor changes were made. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://matthewguy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Liberal-Nationals-Education-Values-Statement-2018.pdf">Victorian Liberal-National</a> Coalition parties expressed similar arguments at the start of 2018. They argued the Victorian curriculum had inadequate coverage of Australian history, religious tolerance and Western Enlightenment principles. </p>
<h2>Evidence-based approaches to teaching history</h2>
<p>To ensure Australian students have access to a range of quality history curricula at school and university, we need to consider the responses of history experts and teachers, rather than politicians. Current history teaching recognises historical narratives are complicated and shaped by multiple and opposing perspectives. They also offer students the critical thinking tools needed to understand these complexities. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/identity-politics-have-not-taken-over-university-history-courses-85972">'Identity politics' have not taken over university history courses</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The work of Canadian <a href="http://historicalthinking.ca/peter-seixas">Professor Peter Seixas</a> has been influential in this area. The <a href="http://historicalthinking.ca/">historical thinking concepts</a> he helped develop provide a framework for historical inquiry and critical thinking. </p>
<p>This framework is built around the idea students need to do more than just recite what happened in the past. Students need to be able to ask why things are historically significant to certain people at certain times. They need to understand the past from their position in the world, as well as different perspectives in relation to their own cultural identities.</p>
<p>This framework is grounded in international <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2015.1101363?src=recsys">evidence-based research</a> on teaching history. Many countries have adapted it, including Australia in its national curriculum. </p>
<p>Politicians who privilege Western perspectives are doing the opposite of what we’re trying to get students to do in classrooms. To be successful in learning about history, it’s crucial students understand world history, <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137554314">contested and rival narratives</a>, as well as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220272.2014.956795">how history is used in different places and times</a>. This enables us to move beyond outdated labels such as “Western civilisation”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97697/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Cairns does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australia has been having the same disagreement about what and how history should be taught. We need to move on and listen to the evidence so our children have the best history education possible.Rebecca Cairns, Lecturer in Education, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/759762017-05-17T00:06:46Z2017-05-17T00:06:46ZAre movies a good way to learn history?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169574/original/file-20170516-11966-7ci4ib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">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?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.fox.co.uk/lincoln">Touchstone Pictures</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hollywood loves history. At <a href="http://oscar.go.com/news/winners/oscar-winners-2017-see-the-complete-list">this year’s Academy Awards</a>, three nominees for Best Picture (“<a href="http://www.fencesmovie.com/">Fences</a>,” “<a href="http://www.hacksawridge.movie/">Hacksaw Ridge</a>” and “<a href="http://www.hiddenfigures.com/">Hidden Figures</a>”) were “historical” to today’s teenagers – set in or about events that occurred before they were born.</p>
<p>History movies, like most movies, have a huge audience in the U.S. Even Disney’s notorious 2004 version of “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318974/">The Alamo</a>” – <a href="http://business.time.com/2012/03/21/the-top-ten-biggest-money-losing-movies-of-all-time/slide/the-alamo/">a box office “bomb”</a> – was seen by millions. That’s far more people than read most best-selling historians’ books.</p>
<p>A lot of these viewers are kids, watching the movies in theaters, at home and even at school. I’ve observed “The Alamo” used by teachers on more than one occasion.</p>
<p>But are motion pictures like these good for learning about history? As a scholar of social studies education and <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Teaching-History-with-Film-Strategies-for-Secondary-Social-Studies/Marcus-Metzger-Paxton-Stoddard/p/book/9780415999564">the use of film to teach history</a>, I offer the response that films can support learning – if used to meet specific goals and connected to the proper subject matter.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RK8xHq6dfAo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">2016’s ‘Hidden Figures’ was nominated for Best Picture. Will it be used in classrooms some day to teach about this moment in the 1960s?</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The allure of history movies</h2>
<p>Fact-based or fictional, realistic or fantastic, history movies shape the way people think about the past. In a study of how 15 families discussed historical understanding of the Vietnam War era, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831206298677">kids and parents both spontaneously drew on memories of movies</a>. “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109830/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Forrest Gump</a>,” in particular, was referenced by both generations.</p>
<p>It’s not surprising that teachers want to draw on this cultural power, showing movies in class to get students more excited about history. In one study of <a href="http://www.mccc.edu/pdf/cmn107/the%20burden%20of%20historical%20representation%20race%20freedom%20and%20educational%20hollywood%20film.pdf">84 Wisconsin and Connecticut teachers</a>, nearly 93 percent reported that they use some portion of a film at least once a week. While not enough to draw clear conclusions, this study does suggest that history films are likely used quite often in the classroom.</p>
<p>So why do teachers choose to show movies with class time?</p>
<p>People often talk about the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/pros-and-cons-movies-in-class-7762">stereotype of the busy/lazy/overwhelmed teacher</a> who puts on a movie instead of doing “real” teaching. However, research indicates that teachers actually tend to have good motives when it comes to showing movies in class.</p>
<p>In that study of 84 teachers, most felt that students are more motivated and learn more when a film is used. Case studies also describe <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Teaching-History-with-Film-Strategies-for-Secondary-Social-Studies/Marcus-Metzger-Paxton-Stoddard/p/book/9780415999564">other academic goals teachers have for using movies in class</a>, which include understanding historical controversies, visualizing narratives of the past and studying movies as “primary sources” that reflect the time at which they were made.</p>
<p>In a recent study of <a href="https://www.history.org.uk/publications/categories/304/resource/7132/the-international-journal-volume-12-number-1">more than 200 Australian teachers</a>, many described how movies added audio and visual elements to learning and showcased a more personal, empathetic look at historical figures and events – both aspects that the teachers felt resonated with the learning styles and preferences of their pupils.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169557/original/file-20170516-11966-kob1uw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169557/original/file-20170516-11966-kob1uw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169557/original/file-20170516-11966-kob1uw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169557/original/file-20170516-11966-kob1uw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169557/original/file-20170516-11966-kob1uw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169557/original/file-20170516-11966-kob1uw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169557/original/file-20170516-11966-kob1uw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169557/original/file-20170516-11966-kob1uw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=320&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">1994’s ‘Forrest Gump’ is a popular cultural touchpoint for thinking about the Vietnam War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.paramount.com/movies/forrest-gump">Paramount Pictures</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Do students trust movies?</h2>
<p>Most young people are savvy enough to know that movies and TV are fictionalized, but that doesn’t mean they know how to keep history and Hollywood separate. After all, movies and TV shows set in a historical period can be extensively researched and often <a href="http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/57hsn7hf9780252076893.html">blend fact and fiction</a>.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ760285">a study of two U.S. history classes,</a> high school students interviewed claimed that “Hollywood” films are less trustworthy sources of information. Yet in classroom activities, they treated them like any other legitimate source – perhaps because the teacher adds some unintentional legitimacy simply by choosing the film. The teacher “must see some good history in it,” explained one student. “I don’t think he’s going to show something random,” said another.</p>
<p>A case study by education professor <a href="http://education.uconn.edu/person/alan-marcus/">Alan Marcus</a> found that students believed most movies watched in class to be <a href="http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Celluloid-Blackboard-Teaching-History-with-Film">at least somewhat trustworthy</a> – a source of information to gather facts.</p>
<p>The level of trust students have may also depend on their prior knowledge or cultural viewpoints, as in a study of <a href="http://www.infoagepub.com/products/Celluloid-Blackboard-Teaching-History-with-Film">26 Wisconsin teenagers</a> – half of them white and half Native American. The Native American teens found the 1993 Kevin Costner film “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099348/">Dances with Wolves</a>” to be slightly more trustworthy than their white peers did. The white students, on the other hand, rated the school textbook as much more trustworthy than the Native American teens did.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169561/original/file-20170516-11956-1oo69a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169561/original/file-20170516-11956-1oo69a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169561/original/file-20170516-11956-1oo69a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169561/original/file-20170516-11956-1oo69a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169561/original/file-20170516-11956-1oo69a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=254&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169561/original/file-20170516-11956-1oo69a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169561/original/file-20170516-11956-1oo69a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169561/original/file-20170516-11956-1oo69a4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The perceived trustworthiness of Kevin Costner’s ‘Dances with Wolves’ may depend on a student’s cultural background.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Orion Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Educational challenges</h2>
<p>The complicated relationship between fact and fiction is just one of the many challenges educators face when using history movies in their classrooms. It’s not as simple as pressing “play.”</p>
<p>Among the host of practical and academic challenges:</p>
<ul>
<li>Many history movies are R-rated, with material parents may not want shown in class.</li>
<li>Some administrators aren’t supportive of spending class time on popular media.</li>
<li>Pressure to cover content standards and prepare for testing can leave little time for intensive media projects.</li>
</ul>
<p>The very structure of the school day, in fact, <a href="http://www.iajiss.org/index.php/iajiss/article/viewArticle/116">makes it difficult to fit film viewing into the curriculum</a> – especially if discussion and reviewing strategies are included.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most daunting question is whether movies are actually good for learning history.</p>
<p>In one Australian study, most participating teachers believed film to be useful, but some took the position that <a href="http://www.iajiss.org/index.php/iajiss/article/viewArticle/116">film can confuse students with inaccurate portrayals</a>. “Hollywood distorts history, but kids remember what they‘ve seen more than the facts,” said one teacher.</p>
<p>A psychological research study found that viewing history films <a href="http://psych.wustl.edu/memory/Roddy%20article%20PDF%27s/Butler%20et%20al%20(2009)_PsychSci.pdf">considerably increased factual recall</a> when the film matched historical readings. However, students came away with considerable misinformation when the film conflicted with the readings – because the students remembered the film and not the text. This occurred even when students were generally warned that the history movies were fictional.</p>
<p>With specific warnings about false details, most students were able to remember the accurate information as well as the misinformation. Teachers must set the stage when a movie is introduced, helping students mentally tag which elements are inaccurate.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169567/original/file-20170516-11956-d5q30w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169567/original/file-20170516-11956-d5q30w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169567/original/file-20170516-11956-d5q30w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169567/original/file-20170516-11956-d5q30w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169567/original/file-20170516-11956-d5q30w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169567/original/file-20170516-11956-d5q30w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169567/original/file-20170516-11956-d5q30w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/169567/original/file-20170516-11956-d5q30w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zack Snyder’s 2006 epic ‘300’ has some big pieces of misinformation, but the bulk of the narrative elements is more accurate than many people think.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.warnerbros.com/300">Warner Bros.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How to learn history from Hollywood</h2>
<p>History movies have potential as learning tools, but that potential isn’t easy to realize.</p>
<p>Teachers need strong subject matter knowledge about the topics portrayed, so that they can frame the movie and its relationship to fact and fiction. Teachers also need to have sound learning goals and awareness of the diverse cultural viewpoints that students bring to the classroom. And they need the time and resources for meaningful discussion or assignments after viewing.</p>
<p>Simply put, history movies – and most other media – by themselves don’t teach.</p>
<p>If a teacher lines up proper film choice, lesson goals, subject matter and class activities using the film, it is possible to really learn about history by way of Hollywood.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75976/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Alan Metzger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History movies may have Oscar potential, but their educational potential is more complicated. Should teachers use Hollywood to teach?Scott Alan Metzger, Associate Professor of Education, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/218262014-01-08T09:42:31Z2014-01-08T09:42:31ZGerman historians have little time for Gove’s Blackadder jibes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38600/original/nqfh9w6n-1389118578.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Who you think you're kidding, Mr Gove?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">PA / Martin Keene</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Michael Gove must be off his head. In Germany any politician who <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25612369">tried giving professionals a history lecture</a> would be considered a lunatic.</p>
<p>German historians love to argue among themselves, and there is a strong divide between the left and the right – even more so than in Britain. But in a few areas there is common ground.</p>
<p>The burden of our guilt in the World War II has absorbed all our scholarly and emotional energy. Hitler’s war is the war we are still coming to terms with. As a consequence, World War I has drifted into the background, a distant prelude to the second. </p>
<p>And we are not interested in military history. Except for some on the outer fringe, there is no German <a href="http://www.all-souls.ox.ac.uk/people.php?personid=67">Hew Strachan</a> or <a href="http://www.maxhastings.com/">Max Hastings</a>: no one describes in detail the heroism of combat in the expectation of being read. We had such books in the 1930s and, as we all know, they did not do our children any good. </p>
<p>Military history is simply no longer fashionable in Germany. This is not just affecting the job prospects of my colleagues, who are (often very good) military historians. It mirrors German society. Unlike the British, who have experienced so many wars in recent decades, German society is not used to military conflicts anymore. </p>
<p>German parents are regularly horrified when they visit the Imperial War Museum and encounter combat outfits for toddlers in the gift shop. They also refuse to buy the tickets for the World War I experience in the trenches. Such Disneyfication of war is something that never happened in Germany. We are painfully serious and think war should not be experienced for kicks. We also do not have popular war societies, such as the <a href="http://www.westernfrontassociation.com/">Western Front Association</a>, for fear of idealising war with dangerous consequences.</p>
<p>Curiously enough, this is a reason why many of us love watching a comedy programme like Blackadder. Though we would never produce something frivolous like this ourselves, we understand very well that it was a reaction against the jingoism British school children were subjected to until the 1960s. </p>
<p>We understand this because generations of our school children had to go through the same glorification of World War I. Their reaction was not Blackadder but the <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/208409/Fritz-Fischer">Fritz Fischer</a> debate in the 1960s. This resulted in children in my generation being brought up on Fischer’s thesis that Germany was responsible for the outbreak of the First World War. </p>
<p>Christopher Clark’s new book <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n23/thomas-laqueur/some-damn-foolish-thing">Sleepwalkers</a> questions this thesis and has shot to Number 1 in the German bestseller list. This does not mean that Germans want to be innocent. It just means that many people of my age resented their history teachers. In short, we are reacting again, but in a more sophisticated way.</p>
<p>Of course we are surprised about the great amount of money the British government is investing in <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-announces-scheme-to-commemorate-ww1">World War I commemorations</a>. We can’t bring ourselves to organise any such festivities. This is not just because it would mean commemorating defeat (we are used to that) but because we are scared of looking nationalistic or being accused of revelling in our suffering. We have learnt one thing – obsessing over heroism simply does no good.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21826/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karina Urbach does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>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…Karina Urbach, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/215132014-01-02T19:45:45Z2014-01-02T19:45:45ZStop tinkering with school history, and start teaching it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38244/original/prw7x556-1387415340.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">History in schools is not engaging our students.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">History class image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>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 — <a href="http://eprints.qut.edu.au/39304/">History’s Children</a> — presented a bleak image of students who were unenthused, disengaged, and confused by the subject. </p>
<p>Given that the book turned up on shelves during the final skirmishes of the so-called “History Wars”, a reader could be forgiven for taking the wrong message from Clark’s well-crafted exposé of history in Australian classrooms. </p>
<p>After all, students often singled out the treatment of Indigenous history as “dull” or “repetitive”, which may have caused those who coined the term “black armband view of history” to point out that focusing on the injustices of the past was not what the children of Australia wanted to hear. </p>
<p>But this was beside the point. The central problem identified by Clark was not one of content or scope but of method; history teachers, unsure of how to approach the topic, would teach directly from textbooks or a hackneyed set of standard texts that students had often already studied in other subjects. </p>
<p>In the words of one <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/why-kids-hate-australian-history/story-e6frg8h6-1111115620926">Year 12 student</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>You can’t ask a textbook questions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The problems identified in History’s Children have not only endured, but they have the potential to become worse in the near future. The term “black armband” was resurrected in April by the then-Shadow Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne, who used the phrase to complain about the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/libs-reignite-culture-wars-over-anzac-day-teaching-20130422-2iaro.html">“confidence-sapping”</a> nature of the Australian Curriculum. </p>
<p>Pyne advocated expanding the role of Anzac Day and the Anzac tradition, arguing that this would provide students with a focus of study that would imbue them with national pride. This idea was further developed by Prime Minister Tony Abbott last week, upon the launch of the Anzac Centenary Public Fund. In future, Mr. Abbott told the assembled guests, Anzac Day would become a <a href="http://www.pm.gov.au/media/2013-12-12/address-anzac-centenary-public-fund-launch">“public celebration.”</a></p>
<p>In focusing on one aspect of Australian history — and not one that is generally inclusive of the diversity and historical complexity of this country — the new government would do well to note the recent furore in the United Kingdom regarding the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/13/michael-gove-teaching-history-wars">National Curriculum</a> proposed by UK education minister Michael Gove. </p>
<p>The narrow parochialism of that debacle is in danger of being replicated here. Yet there is more at stake here. Invoking the “proud traditions” of Anzac in order to generate a more “positive” curriculum has the effect of imposing a standardised national historical narrative. </p>
<p>Students <em>must</em> find valour in the Anzacs, and <em>must</em> celebrate their achievements. Yet this is much the same issue that Mr. Pyne had previously condemned when he referred to that now-infamous “black armband.” It has long been <a href="http://newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=4245">an argument</a> of some history warriors that a prescribed, politically-correct narrative has become the standard in classrooms; students are made to feel as though there is one argumentative line, and one line only, that they can take. </p>
<p>Whether or not Pyne has some justification in thinking that this might be the case regarding Australia’s colonial history, it must be recognised that the same is now being done with the Anzacs.</p>
<p>This is not how history is done. The Year 12 student who, in 2008, complained about being unable to question a textbook was right. After all, unlike many other subjects, history cannot be learned by rote. </p>
<p>It is not simply a collection of dates or events, nor an algebraic equation with one set answer. At its heart, history is all about interrogation and close critical analysis of evidence. That analysis will lead any given student of history to different conclusions than any other student of history, because each will have a differing take on how much critical weight to give each piece of evidence, according to its provenance. </p>
<p>This is why there are so many history books: if we were to pick up three books on the outbreak of the First World War, we might well find that one blames the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/books/review/catastrophe-1914-by-max-hastings.html?_r=0">Germans</a>, another blames the <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/july-1914-countdown-to-war-by-sean-mcmeekin/2007113.article">Russians</a>, and the other insists that <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n23/thomas-laqueur/some-damn-foolish-thing">no one is to blame at all.</a> All three might well use much of the same evidence; it is up to the reader (and, indeed, the author) to decide what their own interpretation of that evidence is.</p>
<p>Past studies, such as Dr. Clark’s, suggest that the critical analysis that is integral to history as a discipline has been lacking, and this has led students to dislike or even hate the subject. Yet even this inadequate measure of independent thought seems likely to disappear as the federal government seeks to replace a flawed system with a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all answer. </p>
<p>Given the fact that school students have been told, by the Prime Minister no less, that “we should celebrate what [the Anzacs] gave to our country – the virtues, the ethos which inspires us to this day”, how many can we expect to question whether those virtues were evident during the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/massacre-that-stained-the-light-horse-20090723-dux9.html">Surafend Massacre</a>? How many will stop and ask why these honourable and inspiring soldiers were invading sovereign territory at Gallipoli when Australia itself was not threatened by the Ottoman Empire? Will they feel that they are even allowed to?</p>
<p>It’s correct to say that teaching of history in our schools should be reformed. But the cornerstone of this reform should not be content but method; if we embrace students’ spirit of enquiry, and allow them to challenge authoritative texts and sources, we will see a greater engagement in the classroom. If we do not do this, then we should do away with the fiction that our schools are teaching history at all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21513/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bodie A. Ashton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>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…Bodie A. Ashton, Postgraduate Research Fellow in History, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/179252013-09-11T20:48:01Z2013-09-11T20:48:01ZCulture wars II: why Abbott should leave the history curriculum alone<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31129/original/3fp3ckzx-1378860515.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">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?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/AFP Pool, Saeed Khan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the last week of the campaign, some naggingly familiar comments came out from the <a href="http://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2013/09/02/tony-abbott-address-national-press-club-election-2013">Coalition</a>. Then opposition leader Tony Abbott said he wanted to see the <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/history-syllabus-needs-a-rethink-says-abbott/story-fn9qr68y-1226709354686">national curriculum in history changed</a> because it was too left-leaning and underplayed Australia’s western heritage. </p>
<p>Slightly inconsistently, but to his credit, Abbott added that it would be up to teachers to decide what was in the curriculum. </p>
<p>If, now as prime minister, he sticks to that latter position, there will be sighs of relief amongst educators. If he doesn’t and the Coalition attempts to meddle in the history curriculum, as former prime minister John Howard did, Abbott should look to the past to see he doesn’t repeat it.</p>
<p>From experience both in Australia and elsewhere, we know any attempt at personally-motivated, ideological interference in the history curriculum will be seen for what it is. This interference will turn into an unpleasant, distracting and wasteful fight between history professionals and the revisers. </p>
<p>And, eventually, the meddlers will come to grief either because they outrageously overplay their hand or because their meddling is undone when there is a change of government.</p>
<h2>Why is it always history?</h2>
<p>Of all subjects in our school curriculum, it is history that causes most angst amongst conservative politicians. In contrast, there rarely, if ever, seems any political interest in intervening in maths or physical education. </p>
<p>But this intervention is often argued for without either evidence or understanding of how curriculum works. Tony Abbott insisted, for example, that there were no Coalition prime ministers mentioned in the curriculum, and that trade unions were included while business was left out. But this <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/09/04/abbotts-wild-goose-chase-for-maxists-in-the-classroom/">is clearly not the case</a> on either count.</p>
<p>The approach by right-wing reformist politicians to history curricula follows a clear pattern. First, they express a need to return to a triumphalist view of the past that uncritically highlights the achievements of a free market economy, Western civilisation and Christianity. Second, we have a highly personalised view about what should be in and what should be out of the ideal history curriculum. Finally, there is a reliance for support on at least one major conservative media outlet or at least one neoconservative think tank to reinforce these ideas.</p>
<p>This has been the pattern in the United States since 1986, in the UK since the early 1990s and in Australia from 2006. </p>
<p>In the US, from 1986 to 1994, the redoubtable Lynne Cheney - at that time fellow of the right wing American Enterprise Institute - was aided by the Wall Street Journal in a fierce but ultimately unsuccessful fight against the voluntary national curriculum standards in history. The conservative arguments were based on the idea that standards <a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Emlassite/discussions261/cheney.html">were corrupted by Leftist tendencies</a>. In the end, the standards were adopted in revised form by many states.</p>
<p>Since then, the arena for debate has shifted with several conservative US states reacting against a professionally-designed view of the past. The most egregious of these happened in Texas where in its 2010 curriculum, McCarthyism could be studied but only if, for “balance”, students learned about the Venona project too. The Venona project was a World War II US and British intelligence cryptanalysis operation which conspiracy theorists have recently used to justify McCarthyism on the grounds that it supposedly exposed Soviet penetration of US agencies - which it did not. </p>
<p>Students of modern history also had to study closely the triumphs of the Moral Majority - a prominent Christian right organisation - and the National Rifle Association. </p>
<h2>A UK example</h2>
<p>In the United Kingdom, the most recent conservative intervention in history curriculum has been orchestrated by education minister <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/13/michael-gove-teaching-history-wars">Michael Gove</a>. </p>
<p>Gove’s first strategic move came in May 2010 when he sacked the independent statutory Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (England’s equivalent of the <a href="http://www.acara.edu.au/default.asp">Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority</a>). He replaced it with an executive organisation, the <a href="http://www.education.gov.uk/aboutdfe/executiveagencies/b00198511/sta">Standards and Testing Agency</a>, thus placing curriculum and assessment firmly within the remit of the minister. </p>
<p>Gove then took on the revision of the history curriculum in England by appointing a group of anonymous advisers and a small group of historians that included celebrity academics Simon Schama and Niall Ferguson. Over a three-year period, Gove-influenced arguments whizzed into his favourite newspaper, the Daily Mail. </p>
<p>Much controversy and a vociferous rejection by teachers and historians alike of the Gove proposals ensued. In the end, bowing to pressure and looking very foolish indeed, Gove backed off after a mass rejection of his approach by historians in February 2013 and after Schama castigated him in public in the following May. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/jun/21/michael-gove-history-curriculum">current state of play</a> is that the history curriculum has been revamped by pragmatist Special Adviser for History Mike Maddison with the assistance of progressive Cambridge history educator Christine Counsell. To the delight of his Tory rivals, Gove has been left with his pet project in ruins, his leadership ambitions thwarted and the UK’s professionally-designed history curriculum reasonably intact.</p>
<p>The lesson is there for all to see – meddle with history at your political peril. Let’s hope for everyone’s sake that Tony Abbott sticks to his promise to leave it to the teachers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/17925/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Taylor receives funding from Australian Research Council</span></em></p>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…Tony Taylor, Associate Professor, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/105762012-11-10T23:01:27Z2012-11-10T23:01:27ZTeaching the untold stories of World War I<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17463/original/h62fcfbw-1352431560.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C133%2C620%2C445&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There are some powerful stories in the Anzac tradition but many more that are unknown to students.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Australian War Memorial</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“What are your legs? Springs. Steel springs”. </p>
<p>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 deeds of Anzac”.</p>
<p>Peter Weir’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082432/">Gallipoli</a> and the stories of Simpson are undoubtedly recognisable. They and many other well-versed stories have stood the test of time and have been drawn on in the classroom for decades. </p>
<p>But now, nearly 100 years on from the Great War, the nation and our classrooms are very different places. A narrow focus on a few key stories of the Anzac tradition don’t tell the whole story.</p>
<p>It’s time to recover some of the harder stories of the First World War and redress an imbalance of remembrance. It is time we expand the ambit of commemoration and adapt the way we tell the history of the Great War to old and new audiences.</p>
<h2>A hundred stories</h2>
<p>This is the ambition of the <a href="http://www.monash.edu.au/news/show/monash-to-lead-research-for-anzac-centenary">One Hundred Stories</a> project at Monash University. The project involves providing classroom resources, including a DVD and teaching kit, that are designed for Australian schools.</p>
<p>These tell one story for each year of the approaching Anzac centenary, showing a whole range of perspectives and experiences of the war.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WsCQPkqnqqc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Without discarding the familiar themes of heroism, endurance, mateship and success and without suggesting that these stories are typical, this project remembers some of the more difficult and uncomfortable stories of the Great War, ones that have often been avoided in the past, voices that have been previously unheard, often marginalised and perhaps forgotten.
Researchers have delved in to new archives, worked with family members, trawled diaries, memoirs, photographs and letters, to capture experiences of servicemen who came home and those who did not, of indigenous servicemen and their communities, of women – wives, mothers, sisters, sweethearts, friends and nurses.
Each of the stories is challenging but as a teaching resource they can equip students with the tools, skills and space to reconsider the grief and suffering the war visited on Australia. As well, engaging with these stories provides opportunities for student interaction with archival material and the development of historical skills.
Battle scars
One such story is of Lance Corporal Harold Candy. He came home to Adelaide his body ravaged by battles at Pozières and Hamel and having suffered the effects of many illnesses, one of them being venereal disease.
Harold Candy.
State Records of South Australia GRG26/5/4/1324
Tormented by his physical and mental scars, in 1921 Harold took his own life, most tragically on the night before his wedding.
Harold hung himself in Adelaide parklands. He didn’t die on the battlefields of France and although it was nearly three years after the Armistice, Harold is certainly a casualty of the Great War. So too his devastated fiancée.
Rachael Pratt nursed the wounded in Turkey, Abyssinia, England and then France. In 1917, while Germans attacked her casualty clearing station from above, Rachael worked despite the shrapnel that had pierced through her back and lodged in her lungs. She worked until she collapsed. And for her service Rachael was awarded the Military Medal “for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty under fire”.
Sister Pratt never recovered from those injuries. She endured chronic bronchitis the rest of her life. And she never recovered from the trauma either. Eventually Rachael was deemed “totally and permanently incapacitated” and admitted to a hospital for the insane. Sister Pratt died in Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital in 1954.
Shortly before her death, she had written the following to her family: “the war is awful and I simply cannot discuss it … there is no prospect of it ending”.
And there’s Francis Wilkinson who was awarded a Military Medal for his bravery at Passchendaele. With his Scottish bride, he came back to Australia and embarked on another battle, this time with the landscape.
Eventually Francis’ soldier settlement farm failed, his mad despair and his “shattered nerves” were said to be the reason he attacked his wife and four-year-old daughter, brutally beating them with a hammer, strangling them and then slitting his own throat.
Some consider such tragic and unsettling stories unnecessary and possibly too distressing for the classroom. But Australia’s secondary school students are willing to work with these stories; they are keen to grapple with the hard, the hidden and they are unconvinced by one-dimensional stories.
Lines of the 9th and 10th Battalions in Egypt. The soldier in the foreground is playing with a kangaroo, the regimental mascot.
Wikimedia commons
Students aren’t passive readers of mythology, unable or unwilling to question this history.
Broader understanding
Perhaps we have reached a point, a distance far enough removed, that we can widen the scope of the Great War and recognise its countless victims. Young Australians aren’t afraid of difficult and uncomfortable histories, nor should the community be.
On Remembrance Day, with our schools, we can confront the stories that have been hidden and that have proved so difficult for so long. The centenaries of the Great War offer us the chance to commemorate and to learn this history in new ways for a very different Australia, a very different world.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/10576/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Wheatley's PhD is a part of Anzac Day at Home and Abroad: A Centenary History of Australia’s National Day project, an ARC Linkage Project led by Monash University. Partner Organisations are the Department of Veterans' Affairs, the Shrine of Remembrance, Legacy, National Archives of Australia, National Museum of Australia, King's College London (UK), Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (Turkey) and Historial de la Grande Guerre (France). </span></em></p>“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…Rebecca Wheatley, PhD Candidate and Researcher, National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/104052012-11-06T19:43:13Z2012-11-06T19:43:13ZBig History: why we need to teach the modern origin story<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17175/original/p76qgd75-1351744790.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4350%2C2630&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Why is it that we no longer teach the big story of how everything came to be?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Universe image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>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 be. </p>
<p>They offer maps that can help us to place ourselves, our families and our communities and to navigate our world. By positioning us within something much greater than ourselves, origin stories provide us with intellectual and ethical anchors. </p>
<p>This is why all spiritual traditions have these big narratives embedded within them. They’re at the heart of both small-scale communities with oral traditions and the theologies of the major institutionalised religions. </p>
<p>Traditionally origin stories were also central to education, because they gave shape and meaning to knowledge. But, in modern secular educational systems, we do not teach an origin story. Indeed we have become so used to its absence that it no longer seems strange to teach and learn without one. </p>
<p>Of course, you can learn about the origin stories of other societies or about the earlier origin stories of our own cultural traditions, though these seem to mesh less and less well with today’s world. In history courses you can also learn the tribal origin stories of individual nations, but these work only for particular communities.</p>
<p>What we lack is a universal origin story that works in today’s globalised societies. As a result, educators teach and students learn without the large organising structures and the sense of orientation that an origin story can provide. </p>
<p>Without those structures, knowledge itself seems fragmented, and all too often, students leave school and university with the sense of meaningless or drift that French sociologist Emile Durkheim <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Suicide.html?id=v23YleX1UskC&redir_esc=y">described</a> as “anomie”. </p>
<p>The failure to teach a modern origin story is curious because such a story lurks at the heart of modern science, waiting to be teased out. </p>
<p>The modern origin story is large and ramshackle, with many different components, bits of nuclear physics, some cosmology, stories about the power and creativity of DNA, or the astonishing diversity of evolved organisms, or the strange history of our own remarkable species. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17209/original/335822gp-1351826509.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17209/original/335822gp-1351826509.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/17209/original/335822gp-1351826509.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17209/original/335822gp-1351826509.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17209/original/335822gp-1351826509.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17209/original/335822gp-1351826509.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17209/original/335822gp-1351826509.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/17209/original/335822gp-1351826509.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Humans need to place themselves in the wider cosmos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons/Vincent van Gogh</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But it’s actually possible to put these bits and pieces together to tell a coherent, rigorous and evidence-based story that is based on the best of modern scientific scholarship. “Big History”, a course I’ve been teaching for more than twenty years, tries to do just that; it tells the story of the universe and our place in it using the best of modern scholarship in the sciences and humanities. </p>
<p>It begins with the big bang, 13.7 billion years ago. It tells how stars and planets were formed, and how life emerged and evolved on our earth. The final parts tell the spectacular story of our own strange and dangerous species. </p>
<p>Big History brings together the humanities and sciences into a coherent account of how things have come to be as they are. </p>
<p>When we first began teaching Big History, we soon discovered that our students were not content with a story that ended today. They also wanted to ask where the story was going. Will growth continue? Will there be a collapse as we undermine the ecological props of modern human society? Will we develop a more sustainable relationship to our environment? </p>
<p>So, our Big History course also takes us into the future and asks: what do we need to do? </p>
<p>It turns out that the modern origin story, like all others, is full of ethical significance and raises deep questions about how we should conduct ourselves.</p>
<p>Today, there are perhaps 50 Big History courses in universities and colleges. Most are taught in the USA, but there are also courses in Australia, in Korea, in the Netherlands and Russia. In 2010 an <a href="http://ibhanet.org/">International Big History Association</a> was founded; it held its first conference in August 2012.</p>
<p>For years, I believed that Big History courses should also be taught in High Schools, but I had no idea where to begin. In 2008, Bill Gates came across the idea of Big History and felt such courses should be taught in high schools. </p>
<p>He contacted me and together we have set up the <a href="http://www.bighistoryproject.com/%20and%20http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Topics/Education/Big-History-Project-Announcing-Educator-Beta">Big History Project</a>, which is developing a free online syllabus in Big History for high school students. In 2013, the online syllabus will be made freely available to schools and independent learners throughout the world.</p>
<p>Slowly, it seems, we are discovering our own modern origin story, the story that oozes out of today’s global society of 7 billion people. This will be the first 21st century origin story that links all of humanity. </p>
<p>I believe, for that reason, it will provide a powerful unifying force in a world in which global collaboration is going to become more and more vital. But perhaps more importantly, I hope it will help give students a sense of where they fit in the bigger picture.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/10405/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Christian is a Professor of Modern History at Macquarie University. He receives funding from the ARC for a research project on Inner Eurasia. He is a consultant to the Big History Project, a non-profit project funded by Bill Gates. </span></em></p>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…David Christian, Professor, Dept of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/97232012-10-16T03:21:58Z2012-10-16T03:21:58ZDeadset? MOOCs and Australian education in a globalised world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16048/original/pzkp9mzr-1349068938.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C22%2C995%2C637&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Australian humanities subjects need to get on board with MOOCs and develop Australian voices in online learning.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">World image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>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 cultural dimension of online education and where Australian history fits in.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, allow students to choose from a host of courses from leading experts for free online. A veritable smorgasbord of learning awaits the online student, or so it would seem.</p>
<p>But look closer and ask yourself, how much choice is really on offer?</p>
<p>Last month, Professor Simon Marginson <a href="http://theconversation.com/online-open-education-yes-this-is-the-game-changer-8078">warned</a> that for all the excitement over this new paradigm, “MOOCs mean the homogenisation of knowledge, learning and culture”. After all, at this stage many of these courses are based at American Ivy League universities, offering their particular view and course content.</p>
<p>How then will the rise of online education affect how courses about Australia, its peoples, politics and histories, are taught? </p>
<h2>An Australian perspective</h2>
<p>Australian universities are now just beginning to develop their own MOOCs – largely courses with a global focus – but American MOOCs still dominate.</p>
<p>Already online education has brought its own kind of cultural cringe – we assume if it’s from overseas, it must be better. As Communications Minister Stephen Conroy put it <a href="https://theconversation.com/universities-must-adapt-education-models-conroy-9848">earlier this month</a>, “What is a lecture worth if the best lecturer in the world at MIT is online for free for all to access?” </p>
<p>In some cases this might be true, but there are many subject areas, particularly in the humanities where Australian students need local knowledge and understanding. Indeed, why would MIT or any American university offer courses that focus exclusively on Australia’s Federation in 1901 or its development during the nineteenth century?</p>
<p>Having an Australian voice in Australian education is an important asset. And whether you are a student of the sciences or the humanities, mathematics or philosophy, your teacher will leave an imprint of their background, principles and worldview in the way they convey their course. </p>
<p>As an historian, far be it from me to gaze into a crystal ball, but there are some clues about the future implications of online education for humanities students, or at least for the teaching and learning of Australian history.</p>
<h2>The future of Australian history</h2>
<p>Recently, there have been questions raised about the future of Australian history as a national project and as a field of scholarly research. </p>
<p>Earlier this year, higher education commentators <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/opinion/why-our-historys-losing-its-lustre/story-e6frgcko-1226291036958">observed</a> the decline of undergraduate enrolments in Australian history, such that some universities had considerably reduced their offerings in the field. </p>
<p>Australian historians, too, are changing their outlook and increasingly looking at their research in broader terms – weaving Australian stories into larger global tapestries.</p>
<p>But neither of these trends signals the demise of Australian history: often students gravitate towards Australian history in their later studies, while Australian readers voraciously consume books about the nation’s past.</p>
<h2>MOOCing Australian subjects</h2>
<p>Although there are questions about the US dominance of MOOCs so far, there may also be opportunities here for Australian historians and humanities teachers. By definition, MOOCS are very “open” and could help present the growing transnational, global and comparative approaches in Australian history to students both at home and abroad. </p>
<p>In doing so, these online courses might attract new audiences to Australian voices and stories, which could provide Antipodean insights into global issues and debates.</p>
<p>But just as “face to face” teaching and learning in the bricks and mortar university requires a consideration of both course content and its communication, so too does its online delivery. This approach requires more imaginative approaches than simply making “chalk and talk” lecture recordings available online. </p>
<p>Already the move towards applying national standards to the teaching of tertiary-level history has encouraged greater scholarly engagement with the ways that the discipline is taught in Australian universities. In online learning too, we need the same examination of pedagogy and teaching quality.</p>
<h2>What next?</h2>
<p>In light of government and institution budget pressures, it is not surprising that many academics view this brave new world of online learning with some anxiety. They can take some relief in the views of Professor Stephen King, who <a href="https://theconversation.com/moocs-will-mean-the-death-of-universities-not-likely-8830">recently argued that</a>, “The internet will augment but not replace the face-to-face experience”. </p>
<p>For the humanities, this face to face experience can not be substituted. It is only there that the teacher and students can engage directly with each other, the course material and the events of the day, and in doing so, take part in the intellectual discussions and debates that shape their discipline and our nation.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Australian historians need to look closely at how we teach the skills of the historian, of historical thinking, research and writing in the online environment and investigate how online and face-to-face learning can complement each other.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The series will conclude next week with a panel discussion in Canberra co-hosted with the Office for Learning and Teaching and involving the Minister for Tertiary Education, Chris Evans.</em></p>
<p><em>We’d love you to take part: leave your comments, join the discussion on <a href="http://twitter.com/conversationEDU">twitter.com/conversationEDU</a>,<a href="http://facebook.com/conversationEDU">facebook.com/conversationEDU</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>This is part eight of our series on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/future-of-higher-education">Future of Higher Education</a>. You can read other instalments by clicking the links below:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Part one: <a href="https://theconversation.com/online-opportunities-digital-innovation-or-death-through-regulation-9736">Online opportunities: digital innovation or death through regulation?</a>, Jane Den Hollander</strong></p>
<p><strong>Part two: <a href="https://theconversation.com/moocs-and-exercise-bikes-more-in-common-than-youd-think-9726">MOOCs and exercise bikes – more in common than you’d think</a>, Phillip Dawson & Robert Nelson</strong></p>
<p><strong>Part three: <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-australian-universities-can-play-in-the-moocs-market-9735">How Australian universities can play in the MOOCs market</a>, David Sadler</strong></p>
<p><strong>Part four: <a href="https://theconversation.com/mooc-and-youre-out-of-a-job-uni-business-models-in-danger-9738">MOOC and you’re out of a job: uni business models in danger</a>, Mark Gregory</strong></p>
<p><strong>Part five: <a href="https://theconversation.com/radical-rethink-how-to-design-university-courses-in-the-online-age-9737">Radical rethink: how to design university courses in the online</a>, Paul Wappett</strong></p>
<p><strong>Part six: <a href="https://theconversation.com/online-education-can-we-bridge-the-digital-divide-9725">Online education: can we bridge the digital divide?</a>, Tim Pitman</strong></p>
<p><strong>Part seven: <a href="https://theconversation.com/online-learning-will-change-universities-by-degrees-9804">Online learning will change universities by degrees</a>, Margaret Gardner</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/9723/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Morgan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>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…Ruth Morgan, Lecturer in Australian History, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86532012-08-18T01:15:40Z2012-08-18T01:15:40ZTeaching students to lie: historical method through hoaxes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/14271/original/8hmfqh3b-1345006605.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C31%2C3452%2C2043&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">By deliberately making false historical sources, students can learn to think more critically.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Historical hoax image www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What happens when you teach students how to lie? Answer: they become better historians.</p>
<p>More than a decade ago, back in the days of Web 0.5, a student of mine submitted a generally well-written essay on “Ante Pavelić, Great Hero of the Croatian Nation.” Now, if you know your history of World War II, you may remember <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/447279/Ante-Pavelic">Pavelić</a> as the leader of the Croatian Ustaše government that was perhaps the most vicious of the puppet regimes aligned with Nazi Germany. </p>
<p>How, I wondered, had she decided that Pavelić was such a great hero?</p>
<p>The solution lay in her sources. All of the major citations in the paper were drawn from Croatian nationalist websites that lauded Pavelić for his supposed achievements on behalf of the nation and denied any role he had in the atrocities committed by his regime – some denying the atrocities had occurred at all. </p>
<p>When I pointed my student to histories of the period written by historians whose work focused on the history of Yugoslavia, she was surprised to find many significant differences between what she found on those websites and what she found in the published histories. We were then able to have a very good conversation about the critical assessment of sources – an essential conversation for any budding historian.</p>
<p>Anyone who has taught history at the high school or university level in the past decade has experienced some version of this story. Despite many stern warnings from teachers or parents, too often students uncritically accept what they find online, especially if it is served up in the first page of Google search results. </p>
<p>Of course, the same can be said of both scholars and society as a whole.</p>
<p>Over the years, I’ve issued many admonitions about the critical reading of sources, with decidedly mixed results. Several years ago, I decided that perhaps the problem was not the students, but the teaching. </p>
<p>So, in an attempt to teach my students the sort of scepticism historians need for successful historical investigation and analysis, I turned the entire process on its head and created a course in which my students create lies about the past and turn them loose on the internet. After two weeks, we end the hoax and come clean.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/14273/original/3ypm9cnj-1345008523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/14273/original/3ypm9cnj-1345008523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/14273/original/3ypm9cnj-1345008523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/14273/original/3ypm9cnj-1345008523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/14273/original/3ypm9cnj-1345008523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/14273/original/3ypm9cnj-1345008523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/14273/original/3ypm9cnj-1345008523.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of the most famous instances of historical forgeries was The Hitler Diaries – diary excerpts that purported to be written by the Nazi leader.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My purpose was to create better historians by helping them develop critical thinking skills in an unorthodox way. I believed that if my students went to the trouble of creating an elaborate historical hoax, they would learn just how easy it is to lie online. Hopefully, in doing this they would become better critical thinkers when it was time to do their own research. </p>
<p>I’ve taught the course twice now and, based on the results I’ve seen and my students’ self-evaluations, I think it’s safe to say that no one who took either of those courses will ever again believe what they read online without cocking one eye, raising an eyebrow, and asking themselves, “Really?” </p>
<p>In just 14 weeks they acquired essential critical thinking skills, but they also had a lot of fun.</p>
<p>For this reason alone, teaching students to create a historical hoax turned out to be the most effective way I’ve come across to teach historical method. </p>
<p>Because they had to create plausible “false facts” to support their hoaxes, my students became much closer readers of historical sources. Only by reading the “true facts” very carefully could they create plausible lies. They also spent many hours in libraries, archives, and visiting historical sites, all so the hoaxes they created would be more believable.</p>
<p>Just to be clear, the hoaxes my students create are truly innocuous. I place strict limits on what they cannot do (violate copyright, create a hoax about health care, etc.) and we have extensive discussions of the ethics of our work. </p>
<p>But something else happens in this class that I have only rarely seen in 16 years of university history teaching: my students laugh their way through the entire semester.</p>
<p>Why should it matter that they laugh? After all, the study of history is serious business. Or is that just a conceit of too many of us who teach about the past? </p>
<p>No doubt, there are scientific studies to show that the more engaged students are in their learning, the more they learn. And there are probably others to show that if students are having fun, they are more engaged. </p>
<p>But I don’t need these studies to know that the students I’ve taught in the first two iterations of this course were the most engaged, the most focused, and the hardest working of any group of students I’ve ever taught.</p>
<p>Teaching a course where my students lie to the public is not uncontroversial. Since an article on my course appeared in <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/how-the-professor-who-fooled-wikipedia-got-caught-by-reddit/257134/">The Atlantic</a>, I’ve received my share of hate mail as well as many well wishers. </p>
<p>Too often, debates about historical pedagogy are about what should be taught, not about how our students might best learn about the past. For a brief moment after that story appeared, hundreds of thousands of people around the world considered that latter question. How can that be a bad thing?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/8653/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>T. Mills Kelly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>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…T. Mills Kelly, Director, Global Affairs, George Mason UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82572012-07-16T00:36:18Z2012-07-16T00:36:18ZBeat-ups aside, Australian history has a future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/12970/original/7jz8r8s6-1342395839.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=27%2C137%2C965%2C735&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If the same parts of Australian history are taught over and over again, we shouldn't be surprised that students lose interest.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/murphyeppoon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>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 to Australian history in schools.</p>
<p>This controversy built when Tuesday’s Age <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/national-curriculum-declares-history-unaustralian-20120709-21rua.html">reported</a>, in a page one splash, that the “National curriculum declares history un-Australian.” The allegation in that headline was supported by a story which explained that Australian history would not be taught as a subject to year 11 and 12 history students under the proposed national curriculum. </p>
<p>The clear implication was that somehow the new national curriculum for Years 11 and 12 would kill off Australian history and the story of our nation’s past would be lost to generations of students. </p>
<p>This argument was then illogically and incorrectly rolled into a proposition that all students will somehow be obliged to forfeit the study of Australian history. Thanks to the national curriculum, our schools are heading for a cultural abyss, so the argument went.</p>
<p>Let’s clear up some misunderstandings that have featured in this, the most recent of many controversies about the teaching of Australian history.</p>
<p>Students will not “lose” their Australian history under the national curriculum. By the time they get to the beginning of Year 11, all Australian school students will, within the national curriculum, have had at least nine years of classes about their own nation’s past. More importantly, Years 9 and 10 feature a strong Australian narrative.</p>
<p>Further, if the relevant states and territories want to keep standalone Australian history or its nearest equivalent, it can stay on the books. If, on the other hand, the Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority alone takes a decision to drop its Year 12 Australian history because of declining numbers and the fact that there will be a large Australian element in the national senior modern course, that will be a Victorian decision. </p>
<p>And that’s what Victorian history teachers should really be worried about. If there is a Victorian push for more sequenced Australian content in senior modern history, the writing could well be on the wall for standalone VCE Australian history.</p>
<p>Why, then, is Australian history in such sharp decline? It is the research, not individual letters of the “When I was at school…” variety, that gives us the answer. </p>
<p>First, the research reported in the 1999-2000 <a href="http://www.dest.gov.au/sectors/school_education/publications_resources/profiles/school_history.htm">national history inquiry</a> and further outlined in Anna Clark’s 2008 book <a href="http://eprints.qut.edu.au/39304/">History’s Children</a> tells us that senior students and their teachers accept the importance of Australian history but see the subject as bland and dull when they compare Australian history with those of other nations and other societies. The French Revolution trumps Federation every time.</p>
<p>Moreover, the research shows that topic repetition during primary and middle secondary school years induces profound student boredom. Ned Kelly has only got so much mileage in him when taught in primary school and in Year 9. By Year 12, the yawns have set in. This over-familiarity breeds contempt, leading to adverse decisions about subject choice in senior school. </p>
<p>The figures are these: in 1998, 2308 students took the Australian Year 12 course but by 2011 the numbers had dropped to 1071. If this slide continues, by 2020 we shall probably see Year 12 Australian history figures in the low 500s.</p>
<p>Not that teaching Australian history within a more global senior modern history course will help much. New South Wales runs a popular High School Certificate (HSC) modern history course, with over 10,000 Year 12 students enrolled. Of that number, a mere 61 took the Australian history option within the 2011 course. </p>
<p>In all states and territories, the damage caused by cumulative boredom is real and it is lasting. Australian history’s reputation precedes it by Year 12.</p>
<p>What needs to happen is this. First, we must stop talking about Australian history as if we are parents encouraging our children to eat their greens. In my view, and I am not alone here, Australian history, especially its social history, is fascinating in its own right and needs to be sold as a complex, discursive engaging area of study, not offered as an unappetising dietary supplement.</p>
<p>Given a change of attitude, a fair timetabling allocation and the new and non-repetitive primary and mid-secondary national curriculum, Australian history may well thrive. </p>
<p>Second, we need more emphasis on getting qualified, capable and inspirational teachers into all high school history classrooms. We really don’t need history of any kind taught by a PE teacher armed with a textbook and wearing a puzzled frown. It is the strategic placement of engaging, confident specialist history teachers who will encourage interest in Australian history in Years 9 and 10 in a way that will keep the subject alive in Year 12. </p>
<p>Third, we need more emphasis in education faculties on the latest research into how history education is taught in the 21st century and less emphasis on the outmoded 1980s idea that discipline-based subjects are bad and good teachers can teach anything. </p>
<p>Fourth, devotees of Australian history should consider asking for a senior course that examines Australian social history in depth, rather than a general course that deals with mainly political and military themes, as is currently the case in Victoria. </p>
<p>Finally, we need informed public debate about this important topic. When it comes to the cyclical arguments about Australian history, everyone’s an expert – and everyone’s a critic. Not that I expect informed debate to happen any time soon, but it is not helped by a half-baked beat-up in the press.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/8257/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Taylor is a member of the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s history advisory group. Since 1999 he has worked with successive federal governments to help improve the state of history education in Australia.</span></em></p>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…Tony Taylor, Associate Professor, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.