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"