Indigenous history is supposed to be incorporated into students’ high school education, although recent comments by Scott Morrison shows perhaps it’s not taught as well as it should be.
Vague learning goals and descriptions in the curriculum have left educators confused and concerned students’ learning is being whitewashed.
Experts say it’s time to get specific in the syllabus and address Australia’s dark past head-on.
What does the curriculum say?
Director of undergraduate programs at Monash University’s faculty of education Libby Tudball was an expert designer on the national curriculum subject civics and citizenship.
The course was designed in “close consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders”, although contentious words like slavery and massacre were left out, the focus instead being on perspectives about national identity.
“The curriculum can’t be that precise, but there are lots of opportunities for kids to learn about it,” she tells Crikey.
Likewise the history curriculum simply discusses “unintended and intended” effects of settlers’ contact — along with the struggle for rights and freedoms of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across the ’60s — and avoids contentious phrases.
The curriculum is also supposed to encompass the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) education declaration — but this too makes vague goals to “understand, acknowledge and celebrate the diversity and richness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures”.
The problem, senior lecturer in Indigenous education at Melbourne University Dr Melitta Hogarth said, was the vague language meant teachers could skim over important aspects of history.
“The focus is instead placed on the white-washed and acceptable history of nation-building and ways in which Australia has responded to the rights of Indigenous peoples,” she says.
“There is very little attention to the actual ways in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were treated.”
States develop their own curriculums, in line with the national ones. New South Wales has developed a more specific syllabus and is the only state which specifically mentions massacre and genocide on Indigenous peoples (although avoids the term slavery).
What do the textbooks say?
Given the curriculum is so vague, textbooks broach history with varying degrees of specificity.
For example, Jacaranda’s Year 10 history book, History Alive, specifically mentions massacres, the myth of terra nullius, “virtual slave labour” in Queensland, and how history has been distorted to fit a colonialist narrative.
In comparison, sample pages of Macmillan’s Year 10 history book, The Modern World and Australia, show that while it mentions the White Australia policy and Stolen Generations, it defines assimilation as when “a person gives up their own way of life to live like other people (for example, giving up Aboriginal ways for European customs)”. It does not mention slavery or massacres.
Pan Macmillan did not respond to Crikey’s request for comment by deadline.
What do the teachers say?
A problem with avoiding atrocities in textbooks and the curriculum is it leaves it up to teachers to tackle hard issues.
“Research has shown consistently that teachers fear to be tokenistic or to make a mistake,” Hogarth says.
The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers states teachers must promote reconciliation, and encourages them to find Indigenous resources to teach Aboriginal perspectives. Again, the wording is vague.
Home educator and president of the Home Education Association Karen Chegwidden said without guidance, teaching Australia’s dark history correctly was a challenge.
“It’s been a really difficult subject to cover well as a non-Indigenous home educator,” she says.
“It was hard to find good resources and accessible, respectful, teaching resources to bring the subject to children at a level they can understand.”
Chegwidden said teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ perspectives had got easier over the years, thanks to children’s books like You and Me Murrawee, and resources from Wingaru Education, an Aboriginal-owned and -operated company.
“The state curriculum and syllabus documents just make a statement and they leave it up to the teacher or the home educator to implement that learning,” she says. “It’s really broad.”
Dr Hogarth said there were ways to broach Australia’s dark past with young children.
“There is no need to share explicit examples with young children,” she says. “Teachers could teach through various themes such as racism, prejudice, privilege, and empathy.”
If Australia was to reconcile with its dark past, the truth must be told: “There is a need to include the ‘few scars’, as Morrison has called it on occasion, in the Australian curriculum if there is real chance for reconciliation to occur.”
“although contentious words like slavery and massacre were left out, the focus instead being on perspectives about national identity. ”
Like so many others it’s brings to mind the “Battle of Pinjarra”, or as the local Aboriginies call it, the “Pinjarra Massacre”.
While holidaying in the West a few years ago I was taken to a local farm just outside of Pinjarra and shown the grave site of the alleged 500 mostly Aboriginal women and children.
The Aboriginal men left the women and children in safety to meet the troops for battle further up the river but the troops and settler volunteers doubled back and the turkey shoot across the river began.
The grave site is a massive hump 100 meters long by 30 meters wide. It holds at least 1,000 – 1,500 bodies. Shame upon shame.
There were many massacres during the occupation of australia. but you need to be careful with your figures. It is very very unlikely that there were 1000-1500 bodies, probably 1/10 oF that. Most tribes were around 100 people, gatherings at major food events such as Hoop pine harvesting in Nth NSW may have reached 1000 but this was unusual.
I looked it up online. The official count was only 40-50 killed. Some say even less. That’s a long way from the 1000 – 1500 you cite.
Could be that the official lied. They did about everything else. The perpetrators of Myall creek boasted about tens of deaths then denied any. The other aspect is that Aboriginal settlements could be much larger than they liked to admit. Sturt spoke of villages of several hundred. Not an expert on this so I don’t know the specific case.
“The official count was only 40-50 killed” Interesting rhetoric there Karl.
I spoke to the owners of the farm who are directly related to the settlers who took part in the massacre and they say at least 1,000 bodies are in that grave site.
Pinjarra was a religious, commercial and trading hub for Aboriginal people who moved between Albany and the northern regions. Combining festivals and trading activities there could have been easily 3,000 people there at that time.
I don’t care about the “official” figures. Go there yourself and see the grave site.
It was only 40 to 50.
So the point that “it was only 40-50” makes it OK? How many does it take to make it “not OK” ?
If the official figure of a massacre is apparently recorded as 40 to 50 (quoted twice above) there may be a reason that nobody could be bothered making (or at least releasing) an accurate count of the deaths. If they weren’t bothered to make an accurate tally on that number, why should that tally outweigh the local hearsay. If the accurate figure is somewhere between the two sets of figures quoted on this page, then it is a massacre, a tragedy and a disgrace, and one of many racist stains on the history of this country. For that matter even if it was “only 40” it still is all of those things.
As a history teacher, it is true that a lot of staff are afraid to make mistakes and get it wrong. Though I think this is a BS response from most of my colleagues. I honestly think it’s just a lack of understanding and a genuine unwillingness to embrace and understand our past. It’s also okay to make mistakes, it’s just important that you learn from them. It’s almost like that’s a lesson that we learn from history.
It also doesn’t help that ‘History’ is consistently taught by a suite of teachers who are not history specialists. At my school, ‘history’ is currently also taught from 7-10 by an Economics, English, LOTE, Accounting and Psychology teacher. The lack of specialised knowledge means that people are confident to approach it.
There’s also no excuse for claiming a ‘lack of resources’. There have been innumerable books and fantastic resources like the Guardian’s Killing Times interactive map that make the horrors of colonial Australia easily consumed and understood.
Ultimately, I think in Australia we just like pretending that issues like genocide and slavery are foreign issues. They’re not issues that we have here on the home front. Just Cricket and ANZACs and nothing in between.
There is absolutely no doubt that many massacres took place in Australia over more than 100 years. However, on just a small point, your use of the photo to illustrate a “massacre” i.e. the “police massacre at Waterloo Creek” is a poor choice of photo. The scene predicted is a battle, as a lot of what we have classified as massacres really are. Both sides are armed and are using those arms against the other. History is full of examples of battles where the sides had different arms, which often, but not always, result in one side killing a lot more of the other side. However, it is still a battle. The intent of both sides was to kill the other. That is not a massacre.
I suggest that a confrontation where one side is hopelessly ill-equipped and likely only prepared for hunting is a massacre.
And let’s not forget the Eureka Stockade.
Hmm, no bites…
The curriculum and syllabus is driven by pure politics. Don’t expect politically sensitive material to appear in K1 – K12 anytime soon. However, it is interesting to see what topics have been ‘removed’ over the last 40 years.