Dear Yuyutsu,

You appear to have some religious mind/body split permeating your argument. This is irrelevant and only confuses the issue.

Fact: The British settled Australia in 1788 and we have inherited many of their customs. This is fact. Whether you think this was a positive or negative is the next step in the debate and where morals and values enter the equation.

We are embodied by the values and morals that permeate a society. How do you stand outside of a moral position? Any criticism of one moral position is viewed through the lens of another moral position. This mind/body split argument you have going may have worked in Medieval Europe, but today it's seen as a bit of a joke.

Dear Aristocrat,

I was not suggesting a split between the body and the mind: just as you are not your body, so also are you not your mind.

So long as one does not understand the obvious difference between themselves and their body, including between themselves and their mind, how could one possibly be impartial?

In order to be objective and impartial, you must step away from the situation. So long as you believe that you are involved in the situation, your ego will not allow you to be impartial. You can step away from your body, you can step away from your mind, but how can you step away from yourself?

Once you get that you are not involved, that yourself has nothing to do with it, then you can observe and analyse the situation stoically: "oh yes, the British settled Australia in 1788, and oh yes, my mind contains many inherited customs of theirs, now what do I wish to do with them? keep or discard?".

Not only do we suffer from identifying with our body and mind, but the school-systems attempts to also add an identification with a nation. This is nothing but criminal.

<<We are embodied by the values and morals that permeate a society.>>

It is our minds that contain those values and morals - but you are not your mind.

<<How do you stand outside of a moral position? Any criticism of one moral position is viewed through the lens of another moral position.>>

It is the nature of the mind to accommodate those opposites, constantly thrashing against each other. Know thyself as free. Let the mind be your servant, not your master.

What confuses the issue is the identification or entanglement with one's body and mind, both subject to history, thus you unnecessarily entangle yourself with history. Loosen that knot, then it's all simple, then you just choose freely which customs to preserve and which to discard and either way is fine.

History is an art, it's not a science and it's all about teaching values as opposed to facts
JOM,
History is being invented on the run. It is governed by funding. Well, since the big Goaf anyway.

Ah, well.

I guess that, after brainwashing generations of Australian schoolchildren to believe that being blown to bits on a beach in Turkey is to embody the highest pinnacle of what it means to be Australian, I guess brainwashing more generations of schoolchildren to believe that neoliberalism saved the world can’t be that much worse.

When I was a kid history was a series of dates to be learnt by rote, of who begat who & when of English royalty, plus a few battle dates. I still know who got that arrow in his eye & where & when for gods sake.

But then, as with so many times in my life, I got lucky, along with the rest of the kids in a NSW country town high school. We got a new history master, who had been a squadron leader in the pathfinders in bomber command. This was early 50s, & most of that history had yet to be written.

Here was a man who had made history & we were learning the real stuff. If we played our cards right, we could get him on the formation & development of the pathfinders. This from a man who had seen hundreds of his mates die defending a way of life.

He made the rest of history come alive too. We actually stopped hating history.

My father had been there too, in PNG as ground crew, but never mentioned it.

Nice to see that Killarney really appreciates those who suffered & died on that beach in Turkey, or stopped the Japs in the mud & slime of Kokoda, so people like her could exist.

I guess if there had been many like her back then, the boys might have befriended the Japs, & invited them down to clean the place up a bit

Yet again, the progressives cry foul when the other team gets the ball.

Contorting the minds of children is fine by them, as long as its their agenda doing the twisting.

You can teach whatever you want in class.
That won't create "values" in any child's mind.

They learn "values" from real life (primarily family relationships), not textbooks.