The problem with any nationally affirming approach to history education is that it fails to encompass the disciplinary components of the subject: why do people disagree over Australian history, for example? And how do we deal with these contrasting historical interpretations? Such questions go beyond any specific national role for history teaching to consider deeper questions about the nature of history itself — and that means encouraging students to think about history beyond their national past. History is much more than an account of ‘what happened’. It offers a deeper understanding of national values and identity rather than simply confirming them in class.

While most responses to Howard’s Australia Day speech agreed that Australian history was in urgent need of curriculum support and renewal, a number of historians and educators qualified their support by emphasising a more complex approach to the discipline. Speaking on the ABC’s 7.30 Report, historian, Stuart Macintyre, acknowledged the need for a stronger national history curriculum, so long as that was not at the expense of critical engagement in the classroom. ‘I think we would all agree that we need to do more to restore history,’ he acknowledged, ‘but we need to make sure that that is open to diverse viewpoints and that it is not simply an exercise in indoctrination.’^[18] Historian Graeme Davison went one further and insisted that any national benefit from the subject in fact depended on history’s capacity to generate engaged discussion and debate among students. History’s worth in a liberal democracy lies in its capacity to develop critical thinking: ‘We cannot inculcate democratic values in the polity unless we encourage critical and independent judgement in the classroom.’^[19] Annabel Astbury, professional services manager at the History Teachers’ Association of Victoria, similarly hoped that history’s complexity would not be overlooked by any emphasis on the Australian story. ‘A history class free from question and repudiation therefore does not augur well in producing “good citizens”’, she warned.^[20]

Some public contributors to the discussion also questioned any emphasis on ‘national facts’ at the expense of more complex engagement. ‘Certainly, it’s a fact that Federation occurred in 1901,’ wrote Daniel Berk in a letter to The Australian, ‘but are the reasons behind this historic event ‘facts’ or opinions? That event was the product of a whole host of different opinions that motivated people to behave and interact in various ways, with Federation as the end result.’^[21] Contributing to an online discussion hosted by the Age newspaper, ‘Kim’ posted this response: ‘History is seen and told differently by the different sides and participants, so while facts are important and should be taught, theory, discussion, arguments and debates should also be encouraged.’^[22]

Meanwhile, other commentators wondered about the potential parochialism of any national history emphasis. Robert Manne said he thought it was ‘more important for historical literacy and for citizenship to have a rough working knowledge of what’s happened in the world’.^[23] The historian Clare Wright was similarly doubtful about any possible emphasis on prescribed facts in an Australian history education at the expense of skills: ‘I’m all for the compulsory teaching of Australian history in schools,’ she argued. ‘But planting the seeds of ideas and learning means more than getting the facts straight.’^[24]

Comments such as these begin to define an understanding of history that moves to a more complex consideration of national benefit through critical engagement. Such a view contends that history can help us understand why people disagree over the past, and why historical interpretations change over time. Indeed, it confirms that history is as much about contemporary values as it is about trying to understand events, ideas and beliefs from another time and place.

History educationists have attempted to codify these complex skills of historical understanding in a way that enables students to learn about the importance of the subject while retaining its complexity in the classroom. This doesn’t mean the facts are not important, or that the national story should not be taught. Of course students need to know ‘what happened’ in Australia’s past. But they should also engage with the discipline beyond that national knowledge. This is a call for ‘historical literacy’, a term I borrow from history educationists Tony Taylor and Carmel Young. They acknowledge that knowing the nation’s story is essential — but so too is learning historical skills, reconciling different perspectives and developing students’ own judgements and ideas about the past.^[25]

The concept of historical literacy builds on research by North American scholars such as Peter Seixas and Sam Wineburg, who argue that the value of history education lies precisely in its complexity. Simplistic national affirmations actually cease to be ‘history’ because they forego the fundamental elements of the discipline such as critical engagement, understanding why historical interpretations differ, and reconciling the values of the past with the present. School history ‘should provide students with the ability to approach historical narratives critically’, Seixas explained. ‘We need to teach students to think historically.’^[26] Wineburg has similarly criticised what he termed the ‘textbook mentality’ of history education, which presumes national historical knowledge simply needs to be known rather than understood.^[27]

These pedagogical approaches to the subject insist on teaching an approach to history that can accommodate contrasting opinions and shifting understandings. To that end, says Seixas, ‘This is the promise of critical historical discourse: that it provides a rational way, on the basis of evidence and argument, to discuss the differing accounts that jostle with or contradict each other.’ That means ‘it would be self-defeating to attempt to resolve these arguments before we get into the classroom, in order to provide students with a finished truth,’ he continued. ‘Rather, we need to bring the arguments into the classroom.’^[28]

The work of Peter Lee and Ros Ashby in the United Kingdom has also questioned any approach to history education limited to nation-building. Again, this doesn’t mean national content is irrelevant, but for history education to have intellectual merit beyond national affiliation it must have an intellectual component. ‘Students need to know about the past or the whole exercise becomes pointless,’ Lee acknowledged. ‘But understanding the discipline allows more serious engagement with the substantive history that students study, and enables them to do things with their historical knowledge.’^[29]

By encouraging this deeper approach to the past, the nation-building potential of history education lies in its capacity to develop a national engagement that stems from students themselves. This is certainly the belief of American scholars Linda Levstik and Keith Barton, who both confirm the democratic potential of the subject, and insist that it is ‘uniquely privileged to provide the shared sense of national identity necessary for democratic participation.’^[30] Indeed a complex history education is needed to cope with a complexity of voices and perspectives in a liberal democracy.^[31]

This is not to say I am unsupportive of a more consistent and coordinated national story for schools. Historical literacy demands that students need content and context to engage with the past, and knowing Australian history is fundamental to that context for Australian students. But they also need to be able to work with this history. Students and teachers deserve a subject that expands their historical understanding and analysis, rather than limits it to a project of patriotism — and it is to the classroom that I finally turn to consider their thoughts on history’s place in Australia.