What a lot of shallow twaddle from a narrow perspective. How about broadening an author’s perspective on life by other types of history. A reading of Nature, Nurture and Chance: The Lives of Frank and Charles Fenner might be a useful step onto a broader spectrum

Given the fact that all but one of the author's examples are from the last twenty years, this sounds like an argument against the study of history and for the study of contemporary politics.

The author's mind is arid (full of assumptions about overseas supremacy) not willing to connect with Australian intellectual life or our history.

I was lucky enough to have the late John Ritchie teach me Australian history http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/ritchie-john-13511 . He was the most popular lecturer at ANU - who made our history and politics shine.

Pete

Australian politicts have become distorted over the decades, especially in the last 4 decades.

The seal on our 'Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900' is the valid seal and is part of the Constitution. It is the only valid seal for any Act in Australia.

The counterfeit seal on the "Criminal Code 1995", it is the stylized seal of the private Corporation which has absolutely no authority.

We are bound only to laws made by the Parliament of the Commonwealth under the Constitution - Not under a corporation seal and an enaction manner and form of Parliament of Australia enacts.

You see we are only bound to laws made by the Parliament of the Commonwealth under the Constitution with the valid seal Not under a corporation counterfeit invalid seal and enaction manner and form of Parliament of Australia enacts.

The High Court of Australia, Decision - Re Wakin [1999]
HCA 27; 198 CLR 511; 163 ALR270; 73 ALIR 839 (17 June 1999) Kirby JJ stated - "A legislature cannot, by pre-ambular assertions, recite itself into constitutional power where none exists. [239]

In simple words Judge Kirby of the High Court of Australia is telling us that the Parliament of Australia is NOT working UNDER any Constitution. In other words they have NO AUTHORITY - absolutely nothing. Any Act that does NOT have proper lawful SEAL UNDER the ("Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act" passed on 9th July 1900 and entered into the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette 1st January 1901) in any State, IS INVALID.

Agree on Ramsey - I used to look forward to his weekly SMH column. He had a prodigious historical perspective so lacking from much of today's journalism.

I do wish people had a longer historical perspective. I don't think this will naturally lead to more humane values.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12488#215830

colinsett, he might also have added Manning Clark's nemesis, in the history wars Geoffrey Blainey, which while we are on the subject. How could anybody ignore the "Cold War" & the history wars flowing on from there?

Soviet era proverb, "the present we know, we are doing it, the future we know, we are building it, only the past keeps changing".

"repeat the lie until it becomes the truth" Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12488#215835

Godo, excellent point, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JihQw39hyG0 some study of our constitution/federation is worth a look.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12488#215840

plantagenet, did he teach you about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Act_1986 or the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd3fH9P8394 ah Queensland horrible one day, hopeless the next. the matriarchal communist regime at its best.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12488#215843

gypsy, so true, have a look at the 2 links above.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12488#215846

Dallen, journalism today is abysmal, even worse than it was in the 1980's.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12488#215851

Evan Hadkins, true our constitution is based on musch of the "common law" preceeding it. EG, magna carta, british bill of rights, etc.

A well written piece of truth. I want my politics sexy again.

>>I want my politics sexy again.>>

Posted by AJR, Friday, 19 August 2011 4:24:09 PM

Well AJR, Craig Thomson is certainly doing his best

That's just sex Steven, AJR wants sexy.

How do you know the whores weren't sexy?

On the whole I prefer real whores to political whores.

I’ve been mentoring Australian students in HSC English for a decade now. Many of my students attend an NSW Selective school, or one of the better-respected private schools in the Hunter region, so in general they’re on the bright side. A good deal of their work involves understanding the the context of the texts set for study. They get a bit of disjointed information from their teachers, but it doesn’t stick. The reason is clear to me: they know next to nothing about history. So I spend quite a lot of time surprising them with details about their own country’s past, and whatever modern history they might need to understand a text like Ted Hughes’ ‘Your Paris’.

Most students can’t correctly guess the decade in which we fought WWI. Or WWII. Or the Cold War. Something like a quarter don’t know what the Holocaust is. I’ve asked well over 100 students if they’ve ever heard of Pol Pot — only two had an idea who he was. They don’t know anything about Stalin. They’ve never heard of the Great Leap Forward, or the Cultural Revolution. The Magna Carta, the French Revolution, the American Revolution ... not covered. Most know a few basic things about Shakespeare, but hardly any know about Queen Elizabeth, the English Parliamentary System, Marlowe, Thomas Moore. Australian history doesn’t make much sense without knowledge of 20th century geopolitics, but they don’t study enough of it to notice the lack; not one in ten can say anything coherent about Federation. Most don’t know that, in olden days, we used pounds and shillings for currency instead of dollars and cents. Ancient history is relatively popular; modern history is widely recognised as indoctrination, and shunned. Quite a few have to study BladeRunner, which requires a modicum of knowledge about the world in the late 70s and early 80s -- now THAT’s ancient history. Kruschev, Breshnev, and Reagan might as well have been Pharaohs. An entire generation has missed out on history. It’s lost its critical mass, so no one misses it. Maybe when we get around to REPEATING it ...

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12488#215904

donkeygod, http://www.rense.com/general32/americ.htm have a good look at #17, "soften the curriculum" is PC, new speak for dumbing down.

they have also taken out "civics" classes which used to teach a little about democracy voting etc.

most especially law degrees leave a lot to be desired.

Donkeygod,
I would agree with you based on my experiences with teenage children and their friends.

There are teenagers that have never heard of The Beetles. While they may have seen an episode of Star Wars, they have no concept that over 100 million people died last century in wars.

While they may demand that the latest blockbuster movie is in 3D, they have no concept of black and white silent movies, and no concept of a world without mobile phones.

I am not totally certain that history will ever repeat itself exactly, but it is important for the young to realise that many things don’t just happen, but have developed over time.

Our constitution and political processes have also evolved after trial and error processes that have been going on for centuries.

I would think a one year compulsory modern history course for all students, possible in grade 10 or grade 11.

The greatest problem then is trying to find unbiased, objective, non-feminist type teachers to teach history.

unbiased, objective, non-feminist type teachers to teach history.
vanna,
You'd need to start changing teachers' education first up. I found that the law actually forces authors to alter facts as they'd otherwise infringe on copyrights or plagiarism. How many times can one incident be described accurately in different words if an author is not allowed to quote someone else's, similar statement ? Theses are a typical example. People write a thesis on a subject that many others have already described yet if more than three words are the same they cop accusation of plagiarism. It's no wonder history gradually changes.

Individual

In academic writing, like a thesis or journal article, the rules are that you can use anybody's words as long as you 'reference' them. That means you provide the reader with enough information so that they can find the original source of the words - or the idea.

So you need to put the name of the person who's words you are using next to the information in the text, and then at the end of the document, you give the reader all the information about where they can find the original words or idea.

The idea is that knowledge and understanding are developed over time and each person doing a thesis is supposed to add a bit more to the information available. So you actually need to use, that is to refer to, the existing knowledge and then add something new or argue for a different way of interpreting the existing knowledge.

Mollydukes,
I know what you mean but unfortunately, mainly due to ego & self-importance many academic historians tend to ever so slightly invent history which gradually deteriorate the truth & in time amounts to serious distortion if not straight out lies.
Then there is the funding factor. Not few academic historians have been funded handsomely to write an indigenous's community history & the funding depended on the favouring of the underdog version which was necessary to subscribe to the Guilt industry burgeoning towards the end of the 20th century.

I tend to agree with mollydukes, vanna and individual. But the problem isn’t difficulty finding the information; what’s changed is that it’s now impossible to collate it.

Just a few decades back, all schools taught history from an approved texts, generally written expressly for schools. There’d be one for Ancient History, another for European or maybe 20th century history, another for Australian history. Boring, for the most part, overly general, but they endeavoured to deal with history as the ‘story’ of a relevant time or place. Understanding of our Australian customs, values, and forms of government depends on the ‘story’ of what’s basically a Western culture. Our society has evolved from in essential Judeo-Christian milieu, through the political watershed of the Magna Carta, and into 19th century capitalism. Understanding our history, civics, and law depends on HOW that evolution occurred.

Sometime in mid-80s, though, ‘multiculturalism‘ put an end to that view of history. The ‘story‘ of Europe excludes Asia and the Middle East, hence it ‘discriminates’ against people of Asian and Middle-Eastern ancestry. Australian history ‘discriminates’ against Indigenous peoples. Christianity is essential to understanding Western history, but teaching enough of it to make our history comprehensible constitutes discrimination against adherents of other religions and atheists. For a time, Boards of Study tried to broaden ‘history’ to include Asia and the Middle East, but the result was shallow coverage of all regions. Academics tried to work up a ‘comparative religion’ syllabus, but ... no joy.

We don’t teach history today because it’s all too hard. Never mind that our law, forms of government, customs, language, values and derive from a wholly Western tradition. Never mind that China, Japan, Iran and Turkey don’t teach Western history. We can’t tell the story of how Australian beliefs evolved because it’s now morally wrong to teach OUR heritage to the exclusion of other worthy cultures. Since the history syllabus can’t treat all cultures, religions, values and forms of government equally and impartially, we can’t teach any history at all. Instead, we study ‘identity’, ‘belonging’, and anodyne ‘values’ instead.

The problem with teaching the West wasn't that it was about the West - it was the triumphalist spirit. It was this that wasn't tackled.

The difference between values and facts is tricky. But most high school students can develop an awareness. The problem was that the culture wars deteriorated into the West having to be taught as best vs the West has many a shadow to face up to.

It simply is impossible to treat the history of every nation. But values can be included in each one - they all are about people. There could in Austalian history be attention to the abstinence movement in the suffragettes opening up questions of restrictions on individual liberty, social justice and so on (and could be compared to current debates about pre-commitment for pokies legislation).

When any recognition of past abuse is labelled 'black armband' it is pretty obvious that it is not teaching of what occurred that is desired.

I do think it is possible to be loyal to your own tradition (in my case the Western tradition with its competing interests and contradictions between the classical and christian heritage) and be conscious of appalling acts of exploitation that occurred.

And I do think it is possible to help become conscious of their values and articulate them and be willing to deal with challenges to them. But I don't think indoctrination of them will work. If this means people mounting a case to defend Hitler or Stalin or the annihilation of aboriginal people then that is what needs to be tolerated. I find these positions appalling but censoring their expression isn't likely to make them go away - quite the reverse.

Donkeygod,
I can understand the conundrum, made worse by the fact that failed societies usually don’t last very long, and rarely make the history books, and are not remembered by people for very long.

I can remember trying to teach my children about Marxism, the greatest killer of people in history, but they weren’t very interested. So I got a video of Animal Farm, and showed them that.

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi498532633/

They though it was a great movie (and one started crying by the end), but they thought it was a made up story. When I tried to tell them that it was based on true events and people such as Marx, Lenin and Stalin, they wouldn’t believe me.

The world is now relatively free from Marxism, and only remnants of Marxism remain, such as in feminism. So my children’s world is a world of relative safety and security, and they will quickly forget about Marxism or rarely hear about it.

Reviewing last century, Marxism, communism, Nazism, and other political systems such as feminism didn’t work. Although they did incredible damage, these systems didn’t work, and will be gradually lost from people’s memory.

Perhaps history has to be taught from the perspective of evolution, where many experiments have been run on the best way to operate a society, but the failures are not usually seen, or only remnants of the failures remain.

Individual, very few writers of historical texts are paid a lot of money. University wages especially for PhD's and post docs are very low.

I accept that there was some dodgy stuff went on in the history depts but it was motivated by a desire to do right by the indigenous people not by a desire to keep one's job or income. People don't go into academia to make a lot of money. And the facts were never degraded to the extent that you think.

Because of the kerfuffle that Mr Windschuttle created, a few figures have been revised and some estimates downsized but the accepted facts still stand pretty much as they were prior to the history wars. And it was a good thing that these academics were challenged.

You are right though, I think it is just too difficult to teach history. Someone is always offended by another one's truth. I tend to think that, as the obvious winners - so far anyway - in the human race, we westerners should be a little bit more generous and less arrogant about our success.

Donkeygod, are you sure you agree with me?

I agree with Evan Hadkins that it was the "triumphalist spirit" in which western history was taught that was a big problem. A bit of humility and an upfront acknowledgement that western civilization has some major problems and has created some major problems for the rest of the world, would have been a better look.

And there can be no doubt that western society has developed ideals and ideas that really kick ass - as the young people say. But we fail badly in living up to these ideals of truth and justice etc.

University wages especially for PhD's and post docs are very low.
Mollydukes,
Well, that's another reason why they go out & pee into the pockets of the Guilt industry leaders & bleat for more funding.
If people are so appalled about the way history is written then they should put pen to paper themselves & not pay someone to do it for them for money provided by the taxpayer. Much history has been preserved due to people writing diaries & journals rather than relying so much on sanitised official versions.

I’m not sure what constitutes a ‘triumphalist’ spirit, Evan. It’s hard to remember the history I learned in school, as I found the subject fascinating, and read pretty widely on my own. Learned quite a few things the teachers didn’t bring up, and probably would have preferred I didn’t know. Still, I recall that most of it was about GOOD EXAMPLES. History was a true ‘story’ (more or less) and about ‘values’. Heroes were the ones we were supposed to imitate (Leonidas, Henry V)... and then there were the villains we were supposed to be appalled at (Xerxes, Richard III). We studied Athens because it was about ‘Democracy’ (I had a soft spot for the Spartans). Yes, the American Civil War and World War II were presented as triumphs of good over evil -- the moral message being that slavery was what today the UN would call ‘unacceptable’, and that totalitarianism could lead to things like the Holocaust. We were taught that capitalism was superior to communism (a belief we maybe questioned for a bit during the Vietnam War), democracy was better than dictatorship (duh), that the rule of law was even better than the rule of Alexander the Great (if not so exciting), and that we should be grateful for living in a developed Western country because we were richer, healthier, better educated, and safer than everyone else. If that’s ‘triumphalism’, I’m all for it, if for no other reason than that it’s true.

Now that we’re more multicultural, yes, it’s necessary to address our historical shortcomings. It’s not right to condemn our ancestors for denying women the right to vote, though; in the evolution of democracy, Australians were among the first to take that important step. Yes, we feared and loathed Asians up through WWII; but we learned better, forgave, and made Japan one of our largest trading partners. We did (and still do) great damage to Aboriginal Australians, but it’s enlightenment, not guilt, that’ll change that. History can motivate positive change by providing GOOD examples. Emphasising the BAD examples in our history isn’t penance, it’s just ineffective.

The recording of history is all about interpretation which, in turn, is influenced by perspective - micro, macro, social issues, time.
History is written by the educated class in all societies and, therefore, is always retold from a certain point of view. Its rare for an historian to write of peasant life from that vantage point. Men like William Cobbett roamed around the England gleaning what they could from peasant life, writing of what they saw and infusing it with their own judgments and prescriptions. Many documents are available telling of peasant or working-class life during the Witch Craze and the Industrial Revolution, but they too are written by the educated class. They give an insight into the experiences of the lower orders, but they can't tell the whole story.

Who amongst the recently uprooted fishermen and their families of the Mekong, who have now been given prefab houses and sent to work in factories, is going to write of the thousands of years of prosperous living on that majestic river where food was abundant and there was no need to "go out to work". No, some historian will write that a hydro-electric dam was built to supply 95 percent of a neighbouring country's electricity - and those uprooted were given accommodation and electricity, tellys and jobs and, therefore, are "better off"

Poirot raises a good point. Modern conceptions of ‘history’ are a heavily sanitised version of what, prior to the 20th century rise of academe, would have been ‘myth’. There may or may not be a valid ‘historical basis’ for elements of Homer’s Iliad, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Bhagavad Gita and the Bible, but these and related oral histories functioned as a repository of moral do’s and dont’s, not facts. Nobody wanted what today’s uni profs produce: say, a warts-and-all description of what wood Noah used to build the Ark, how much it cost, and the actual Aramaic text of his speech to the crew on the day the boat finally settled on Mt Ararat. These stories were told by elders to their children, who passed the on to their children. Myths are subject to evolution, and the damaging, outmoded or useless ones are ruthlessly culled. Those which survive impart information so useful to those who possess it that the recipients out-breed and out-survive cultures with a less well-adapted set myths. For millennia, no one gave a toss if their history was ‘true’; the only reason to preserve it was as a repository of useful lessons teaching the uninitiated about the benefits of virtue, and the penalties of vice.

Today, academics and teachers sneer at myth. We have ‘history’ instead, but historical fact is at best only TRUE; without a present-day ethical context, such fact unlikely to be USEFUL. Historians earn praise for discovering blemishes in those once held up as heroes, or virtues in those denounced as a bad example, never the other way around. They love nothing better than demolishing a myth. Those Mekong fishermen no doubt have (or had) innumerable myths to tell their children about what’s good behaviour, whats bad, and what the consequences might be in either case. Historians hate that. Hence, in Australia, we’ve given up on history, won’t countenance myth for ethical education on the grounds it’s tainted by religion, and end up preaching ‘values’ like ‘Do unto others ...’ without mentioning the mythic source of those words.

Yep history was written by the wealthy and powerful who were all men.

LOL things are improving as there is more diversity and acknowledgement of the 'other' - other ways of thinking and being and other ways of being progressive and successful.

The western white man is no longer the default human being. So sorry if some of you old farts can't cope. This old woman remembers what it was like when you blokes made the rules. I can empathise with your distress and anger at now being irrelevant and just plain wrong, But, it would be better for your health, emotional and physical, if you just got over it, stopped whinging and looked for the benefits.

Developing the contraceptive pill was your big mistake and theres no going back now.

Molydukes,
There have been many societies over time, but there isn't much known about feminist societies.

Most likely because they died out so quickly.

Something feminists and indeed historians could ponder about.

Also, your use of terms such as "old fart" does nothing to lift feminism up above its current level.

Vanna You are right about the old fart thing. I was being patronising to men who are doing it tough in this modern world, and I 'should' be more sensitive. It's what women are sposed to be eh? Sensitive and caring? And if I'm not, then I must be a feminist?

Not actually sure what a feminist is these days. I did know back in the 70's but things have changed you know. Although, now that I think about it, there are still 70's feminists lurking in Arts faculties.

I was actually asked to leave a course run by an unreconstructed '70's feminist in the Visual Arts faculty where I was doing a Fine Arts degree back in the late 90's. She was spouting nonsense about postmodernism which she knew so little about, that she thought it was 'the truth'.

But I'm not talking about feminist societies, or even matriachial societies. I'm thinking that what can develop from the freedom that birth control provides to women, is an entirely new society that includes men and women as partners rather than dominant male and subservient female.

This is one male who is supportive of the same project mollydukes. The patriarchy wasn't kind to most men either in my experience.

Mollydukes,
That would introduce the question “What dominates society?”

Economics? Perhaps.

Religion? Perhaps.

Desire to survive more likely, and I once read that in a natural state, women in a tribe had to be pregnant about 20 times throughout their often short life to get enough children to continue the tribe, (accounting for miscarriage, child mortality rates and death of women during child birth).

Now, there are too many people, due mostly to the efforts of men in reducing miscarriage, child mortality and death of women during child birth.

That is the past, but currently women are not inventing much except copying men.

“What dominates society?”
Vanna,
its own stupidity.

I don't think that any one thing 'dominates' society. I think the idea of domination is a 'western white male' way of thinking - and I don't mean to be insulting here. White males have done some great stuff but it is only one way of seeing the world.

I think the western worldview - like we need to dominate the earth and materially progress, that we are evolving toward something perfect etc - has been the foundation for western societies.

But to put it very simplistically, my view is that we are born with a certain type of brain chemistry that then interacts with the environment - and environment is both the home and the wider culural expectations, and creates each individual. And luck and/or chance occurences interact with both of these factors to further diversify the results further.

It's this very complex interaction that determines whether the individual functions well in the dominant culture or is dysfunctional and regarded as bad lazy stupid etc.

I think the dynamics of global population is just too complex an issue for anyone to understand - particulary me with my focus on the underlying explanations for human behaviour.

The thing that strikes me is how quickly we western people have stopped breeding now we are wealthy and comfortable and how much more we value human life when we have the wealth to look after damaged people.

Some women are 'copying' men because some women do think like men - and some men think like women. The figures that show that women aren't demanding to be on corporate boards suggests to me that most of us know that it is a stupid lifestyle - some men know this also.

Women invent stuff all the time. Maybe you blokes just don't notice it because we don't invent useless stuff.

Re the idea of men only being resonsible for lowering the mortality rate. The nurses and midwives and female biologists I know would not agree with this.

The "triumphant spirit" is some thing Western historians need to reintroduce. The current malaise that permeates Western societies can, to an extent, be put down to the pessemstic view of our history we are now taught. In extreme circle, particularly amongst certain Humanities academics, Western history is nothing but imperialism, sexism, classism, and a plethora of other supposed nasties. It's little wonder that people have a self-loathing view of themselves if they are taught thier their own history is nothing but oppression. To rectify this, the positives of Western history need to be taught; from its great thinkers through to its great inventors. Not only should they just be taught, but they should be glorified; hoisted up into a position that believes it carries the beacon of light for civilization forward. Currently, the West is its own worst enemy, because it allows white-ants to undermine everything it has done, even all the positives. One must remember, all history is a concoction of myth and truth. Therefore, why create the myth that we Westerners are evil incarnate when we can create one that glorifies our achievements?

I hardly know where to start to respond to your comment Aristocrat. I think the triumphalism comes from inferiority.

From the time of the Greeks copying the Egyptians and Romans copying the Greeks there is a long history of the West feeling inferior to the East. This story hasn't been written so far as I know.

Before the gold extracted by Spain from South America much of European manufactures were hopeless compared with what was produced by the East. Though the philosophy at some stages was fantastic. And the Western Enlightenment's discovery of the ethically responsible individual (despite all the problems it has bequeathed us) is a remarkable achievement I think.

Molydukes
Women have rarely invented anything, and that is historic fact. Some have gone into politics, and found that there isn’t much they can do.

To do something, they have to raise taxes. If they increase taxes, people complain. If they spend too much taxpayer funding, inflation increases etc.

So describing such women as having a male brain is just feminist bigotry.

Aristocrat
“particularly amongst certain Humanities academics, Western history is nothing but imperialism, sexism, classism, and a plethora of other supposed nasties.”

I would agree, but you missed out racism, where evil white Australian male stole the land from the Aboriginies, and now won’t allow refugees into the country, and so on.

Who would want to listen to how bad they are, and how awful they are, and how evil they are.

No wonder the young have minimal interest in being taught history in this way.

Sucks to be you Vanna. It must be just awful knowing that you are right and others refuse to see it. Somebody will pray for you I am sure.

Molydukes,
Women have invented very little. Probably less than 1% of what you see around you.

Throughout history, men have kept women alive.

N.B.
Most men don't care that women have invented next to nothing, and don't hold it against women that they have invented next to nothing, but that is the history of women.