On the eve of Australia Day in 2006, then Prime Minister John Howard spoke at the National Press Club in Canberra with a ‘state of the nation’ style address celebrating Australia’s democracy, economy and national identity — the ‘Australian Achievement’, in his words. The speech was also a call to protect that achievement: more than ever, Howard maintained, Australia required greater national cohesion and identification.

One of the keys to that cohesion would come from a more consistent national history education. Howard lamented the state of historical knowledge and national connection among Australian schoolchildren. Australian history had become lost in a stew of ‘themes’ and ‘issues’, he said, and required a ‘root and branch renewal’ to restore its proper place in the curriculum.^[1] It was hard to disagree with his sentiment: Australian history education is largely inconsistent and uncoordinated. With the possible exception of New South Wales, students around the country learn patchy, repetitive versions of the nation’s past that chop and change between topics. Often they just learn the same things again and again. They are indeed alienated from their nation’s past.

Yet this wasn’t simply a call for curriculum restructure. Howard wanted a renewal of history education to promote ‘Australianness’ to the nation’s youngest citizens — ‘our children’. The Prime Minister regretted that the subject had ‘succumbed to a post-modern culture of relativism where any objective record of achievement is questioned or repudiated’.^[2] What was needed, he said, was a stronger, more positive national story for Australian schools. Such a position isn’t surprising. Many Australians share the view that a nationally affirming history education is essential for national cohesion and identity — essential for nation-building, in fact. My concern is that any understanding of history education as ‘nation-building’ actually reduces the capacity for critical reflection and understanding among students; and that these are the very qualities of citizenship that we should be fostering in a democracy.