Teaching the Nation

The ‘History Wars’ have come to dominate discussion of Australian history in recent years, and have been waged over various national sites of celebration and commemoration.Anna Clark suggests that this anxiety over Australia’s past has intensified as debate grows over how to teach ‘our history’ to ‘our children’.Arguments rage over whether to teach the colonisation of Australia as an ‘invasion’ or a ‘settlement’, and whether students need to know Australia’s first prime minister. Meanwhile, many school children still think Australian history is boring and irrelevant.In light of John Howard’s recent call for a change in how history is currently taught in schools, Teaching the Nation examines the politics and pedagogy of Australian history education at a time when the nation’s history seems more hotly debated than ever.