There are some major logical leaps at the beginning of this piece that I found very difficult to overcome.

"The attacks, planned by “disaffected British citizens” of Pakistani descent, demonstrate that liberal democracies must work harder to integrate their citizens around the values upon which their political systems are based"

That is a view, certainly, but I don't believe that the connection is in any way proven. Especially when the next sentence is the hook upon which the rest of the article relies:

"In an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable world, Australia desperately needs to promote a unifying sense of national identity."

Name one country where a "unifying sense of national identity" forms some sort of protective barrier against terrorism?

History as described in this article ("[to equip] people “to live useful and dignified lives as citizens and members of Australian society in the twenty first century”) is no more or less than a tool of political control, and it is pointless trying to pretend otherwise.

It would be far more appropriate to place it in some General Studies category, give the kids some understanding of events and important dates, and leave the analyzing, contextualizing and general hand-wringing to their own inclinations.

Be honest, history is simply a form of distorting mirror that we hold up to ourselves, and what we see is what we want to see. There can therefore be no "right" or "wrong" way to teach it.

Do we need a sense of AUSTRALIAN_National_Identity ?

Well, at the Wheelers Hill hotel in Melbourne last saturday, not 1 or 2... not even 4 or 5..but the ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY people were involved in a full on riot/brawl loosely described by the Indian Security bloke as "Wogs against Aussies".

The 'Wogs' in this case were apparently Hungarians_Serbs_Bosnians_Croats etc....and the 'Aussies'....well.. who knows... those 'not' with Eastern European faces ? Presumably, there is sufficient understanding of the term 'Aussie' to suggest that it means "Anglo" in the wider sense of 'UK' (England Wales Scotland Ireland). This alone is a tragic outcome of 'Multi-Culturalism' in that it divides the community, emphasising DIFFERENCE and viola.. we have 150 people belting into each other on tribal lines. One of those being stomped was a woman.

I intend to goto the Wheelers Hill hotel next saturday night (brawl night) and do some interviews and try to determine what is going on.

The only way to counter this kind of thing is by EMPHASIZING UNITY and IDENTITY.

"We are first 'AUSTRALIANS' and our ethnicity is second, if at all relevant"

We need to use Dorothea McKellars poem "My Country" as almost a Biblical text to show how it is possible to have an ethnicity which is over-ridden by an original emerging love for this great land.

Yes..I feel all that it means to be (fill in the ethnic blank)...but I LOVE A SUNBURNT COUNTRY...... etc.

We need a 2 pronged approach to re-establishing national identity.

1/ IMMIGRATION. All applicants must be screened based on their values and WILLINGNESS to commit to a) Placing ethnicity last and b) Placing Australian-ness first !

2/ EDUCATION. We must take an honest look at our local history and derive from this our sense of identity. This canNOT be separated from the founding themes and ethnic predominance which produced the pre-war Austrlia which then invited people from other lands to come and share.

We must consider the actual prevailing culture into which migrants were invited on the CONDITION that they seek to embrace and share our values and identity.

Mervyn Bendle's is a useful paper in that it describes the background to the national history conference and indicates the magnitude of the tasks ahead. A jarring note was struck, however, with his misleading claim that the two discussion papers for the conference revealed among other things that the defenders of the status quo are "defending a set of ramshackle and inefficient education systems operated by the states on behalf of special interest groups with little or no recognition of the nation’s requirements in the crucial area of history education."

You'll get no argument from me that education systems are ramshackle and inefficient - that's an empirical claim readily tested. But the conspiratorial claim that these systems are operated "on behalf of special interests groups" is a different kettle of smelly fish. The curricula of state education systems have developed over the last century under a wide range of governments of different persuasions and with the collaboration and mostly support of private sector groups. To suggest that such diverse interest groups could have coalesced in such a way as to serve the interests of a unitary ideological elite stretches credulity too thin.

More to the point, Bendle's throwaway line that these interest groups have "little or no recognition of the nation’s requirements in the crucial area of history education" (however 'nation's requirements' might be defined) and his conclusion that "the battle for the hearts and minds of Australia’s future generations is to be won" introduce a disturbing element. I do not send my children to school to be indoctrinated 'heart and mind' by history teachers or anyone else. Bendle's view of history teaching should be strenuously resisted. Education is not about pumping the "right" ideas into children; it's much richer than that.

Well said FrankGol

History is particularly vulnerable to being used for propaganda purposes. Example: A party in Britain wants to reemphasis history in the schools. They want to examine Britains achivements in the arts, sciences, politics & so on. All laudable aims but in their history they missed out certain aspects. Like the fact that britain was the first major drug pusher [they supplied opium to the Chinese to gain a trade advantage].

Such a history is merely propaganda. Nothing more. I think that's what pericles is getting at when he called History a distorting mirror. Correct me if I'm wrong please.

But history needn't be like that. History can be a frank look at a nations achievements and past attitudes & behaviour. It can show the students that there are other ways of doing things, other world views. Some of them better than the ones we now hold. Some much, much worse. But such value judgements I leave to the students. To me the history teacher's role is to present their students with the evidence & teach them how to interpret it. To read through the bias, the cant, the self-interest & get to the heart of the matter. And to maintain a sceptical midset. These are the benefits of studying history.

Lets stop pussyfooting about. From the beginning of time, people of different races have lived in different parts of the world, and the separation of race and creed has enabled us to live relatively peacefully. We traded with each other, visited each other and appreciated the differences.

Now, thanks to unnecessary mass migration and the social experimentation of the multicultural maniacs, the mainly Western countries that have been subjected to this lunacy are worried because the totally inappropriate incomers don’t share our ‘values’ and couldn’t give a damn about those values and our history. Well, what a surprise!

Now, the very same spoilers who preach cultural relativism and denigrate our own culture think that a dose of Australian history will solve it all.

All that will come out of this latest brainstorm will be an unseemly spat over whose version of history will be taught, and students will continue to take their cues from crap television as they do now.

You cannot badmouth your own country for generations, and then suddenly expect teaching history to repair the damage.

With all due respect to the likes of Greg Melleuish who is a worthy participant in the process, it’s a little too late. We should have stuck to earlier history when: West (was) West and East (was) East and never the twain shall meet.

If you are going to "to promote a unifying sense of national identity" you cannot rely on history, unless you want to base unity on xenophobia. Europeans supplanted indigenous Australians; the British and Irish hated each other; on the goldfields the British and Irish hated the Chinese; the Protestants hated the Catholics; the Catholics hated the Masons; Conservatives hated the Socialists; after WWII, second and third generation Australians hated the Italians and then the Greeks; they all hated the Turks and the Lebanese; the Serbs hated the Croats and rioted at soccer games; then everyone hated the Vietnamese. Now there is unity in fearing the Muslims. And, the largest Muslim nation in the world is on our doorstep.

Use whatever synonyms you like for for my perhaps overstated word, "hate": but in the end it spells at the same time diversity in identity accompanied by unity in fear - a strong undercurrent in Australian social history that the Howard model of conservative history oversimplifies.