He says “Too often it is taught without any sense of structured narrative, replaced by a fragmented stew of themes and issues.” Mr Howard believes that this is leading to a lack of national identity. He’d like strong emphasis on pivotal dates and events such as the Battle of Hastings and the European discovery of Australia. He also makes some cursory mention of teaching Indigenous history, but doesn’t mention what parts (the stolen generation perhaps?)

Of course, being the leader of our nation, he’d be the expert on what is being taught in our schools and what students know. This is clearly a statement from a man in his later life, who’d like things to be like the “good old days” when he was at school. He has no idea how to keep a teenager’s attention when teaching something that is not as enticing as WWF or a PSP. He doesn’t understand how we have to prepare students for jobs that have not been thought of yet. In his brave new Workchoices world, knowing dates will not be important, but knowing how to access and process information will.

He says he came to this conclusion by ‘talking to people’, and he came to an understand that many young people can’t remember the details of Australia history. My first response would be: maybe because these young people don’t see them as relevant to their experience and my second response would be that many of my students can’t remember their books, it’s useless asking them when we landed at Gallipoli.

In my 8 years as a teacher I’ ve seen $$$ thrown at outcomes, values education and the celebration of Federation. I agree with Barista to a certain extent, there is some value in learning our history, and being able to place events in a national story. However, in my classroom, the focus on Australian history is, because of a curriculum focus, above that of a world perspective, I see this as narrow and short sighted. Surely in an increasingly globalised world, we should not be so introspective.

I see this “root and branch reform” (there’s some management jargon for you) as going deeper than extend acedemic rigor or national identity. In stepping backwards in the way we teach history, a narrative with no connecitons or reflection on the reason and consequence, students are losing vital skills. They will not be able to make value judgments on events or political policy, and they will not be able to create ’cause and effect’ conclusions about them. Bring on the dumbing down of a workchoices workforce.

I resent Mr Howard’s insinuation that teachers like me do not teach Australian history. This has been endemic in this government, as a way of continuing to undermine the role and importance of teachers, particularly those of ‘soft’ subjects, English and humanities.

Full text of the PM’s speech here