‘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.
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.
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.
An analysis of Australian history narratives in secondary school textbooks shows many still repeat the myth that Aboriginal peoples were nomadic hunter-gatherers.
As our societies lose paper trails and increasingly rely on digital information, historians, and their grasps of context, will become more important than ever.
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.
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.
Karina Urbach, School of Advanced Study, University of London
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…
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…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…