The his-story man

I have read the Prime Minister's address to the National Press Club . Much media comment has focused on the PM's references to the importance of history and history teaching, eg

Quite apart from a strong focus on Australian values, I believe the time has also come for root and branch renewal of the teaching of Australian history in our schools, both in terms of the numbers learning and the way it is taught. For many years, it’s been the case that fewer than one-in-four senior secondary students in Australia take a history subject. And only a fraction of this study relates to Australian history. Real concerns also surround the teaching of Australian history in lower secondary and primary schools. Too often history has fallen victim in an ever more crowded curriculum to subjects deemed more ‘relevant’ to today. Too often, it is taught without any sense of structured narrative, replaced by a fragmented stew of ‘themes’ and ‘issues’. And too often, history, along with other subjects in the humanities, has succumbed to a postmodern culture of relativism where any objective record of achievement is questioned or repudiated.

Part of preparing young Australians to be informed and active citizens is to teach them the central currents of our nation’s development. The subject matter should include indigenous history as part of the whole national inheritance. It should also cover the great and enduring heritage of Western civilisation, those nations that became the major tributaries of European settlement and in turn a sense of the original ways in which Australians from diverse backgrounds have created our own distinct history. It is impossible, for example, to understand the history of this country without an understanding of the evolution of parliamentary democracy or the ideas that galvanised the Enlightenment.

In the end, young people are at risk of being disinherited from their community if that community lacks the courage and confidence to teach its history. This applies as much to the children of seventh generation Australians or indigenous children as it does to those of recent migrants, young Australian Muslims, or any other category one might want to mention. When it comes to being an Australian there is no hierarchy of descent. Whether our ancestors were here thousands of years ago, whether they came on the First Fleet, in the 19th century, or whether we or our ancestors are amongst the millions of Australians who have come to our shores since the Second World War, we are all equally Australians – one no better than the other.

As a former history teacher I'm pleased to see him calling for an increase in the "numbers learning" (despite the mathematical- utilitarian associations of this phrase). When, however, he links this with a call for radical changes in the way history is taught my feet start to turn cold. He envisages a revised orthodoxy ("structured narrative") replacing the "fragmented stew" so that everything becomes much clearer to the students. His story (of Australia) becomes the new history.

Elsewhere in the address he presents his view of what the John Howard structured narrative might look like:

The great struggle of Australia’s first century of nationhood was to reconcile a market economy with a fair and decent society. At the start of the 21st century, we have found a healthier balance in our political economy between public and private – one in keeping with the times and the contemporary character of the Australian people.

What "great struggle"? This sounds like Marx or Lenin for dummies. How, for example, do the two wars and events within them such as Gallipoli, fit into this scenario?

On the other hand his comment about the "heathier balance" implies that we are well down the road to Utopia (and have switched to driving on the right hand side). At best is a self-serving view of current events, at worst hubristic balderdash.

For an alternative perspective see this.