(Transcript from World News Radio)
Last month, the federal government announced a review of Australia's recently-introduced national schools curriculum.
The government said what it called Australia's 'Western civilisation' was a critical aspect that needed to be a focus in the classroom.
On the political level, that triggered a backlash from critics suggesting the government was reigniting the so-called history wars.
Ron Sutton looks into the significance for -- as well as the reaction from -- ethnic and Indigenous communities.
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The federal Education Minister, Christopher Pyne, calls it "our Western civilisation".
The Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia hears it as "the sense that we are English".
As a result, the head organisation representing Australia's migrant communities is alarmed at Mr Pyne's plan to review the national schools curriculum over the next few months.
The Minister announced the review is being headed by two sharp critics of the new curriculum.
He questioned the need for the three curriculum themes, or so-called cross-curriculum priorities: Australia's place in Asia, Indigenous Australia and sustainability.
"There are two aspects to Australia's history that are paramount. The first, of course, is our Indigenous history, because, for thousands of years, Indigenous Australians have lived on this continent. The second aspect of our history is our beginnings as a colony and, therefore, our Western civilisation, which is why we are the kind of country we are today."
The honorary president and past chairman of the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia, Pino Migliorino, says that is a big worry.
Speaking for the Federation, Mr Migliorino says the planned review and the words behind it mark a setback in Australia's efforts to develop an integrated society.
"It worries me that we are still, if you like, maintaining the sense that we are English where, indeed, we are not. Certainly, we have -- and respect -- the English institutions which actually founded the basis of our society. But, unless we actually understand that we are a multicultural society, and the impact that has in terms of our own identity in legitimising both our current (place) and our past, we won't actually achieve the type of integrated society we want."
The new curriculum, first rolled out three years ago and still being implemented across parts of the country, represents a major step in the teaching of Australia's multicultural heritage.
The curriculum has brought back history as a specific subject in primary schools after two decades where many states and territories taught it merely within other subjects.
The president of the History Teachers' Association of Australia, Louise Secker, says it introduces students early to the concept of multicultural Australia.
"In primary schools, we've got much more of an explicit teaching about Australian history, which includes discussion about Australia being settled, and the types of people who've come to Australia, and the different types of celebrations we have, and that kind of stuff. So I think the biggest change, if we can actually simplify, is in primary school, where history was not a discreet discipline and, you know, it wasn't in any way standardised."
Now, it is standardised -- but only to an extent.
At one point in the latter years of primary school, the new curriculum lists five areas of history to study but has options in three of them to tailor the teaching to local interests.
For example, says the chairman of the board of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, Professor Barry McGaw:
"One is, 'Take an immigrant group and study its experience -- why did they come, where did they go when they came here, what did they do and how did they fit in?' So, if you're teaching west of Brisbane in what was a coal mining area around Ipswich, you might study the Welsh migration at that time and understand why place names -- Ebbw Vale and so on -- are all directly from Wales. Depending on where you are from in the country, you might look at different migration patterns."
Louise Secker, from the History Teachers' Association, says that framework and flexibility has opened doors for many teachers and students of all school ages.
"It might be more relevant for you to teach something which is based in the South-East Asia region because that actually has more relevance to your students. Or it might be more engaging for your students because that's what they're thinking of doing in the future, of working in that particular region of the world. And schools know the kids. And that's the thing that I find about this review -- we are talking about teachers who teach students. They teach disciplines, but they teach students. The curriculum is designed to teach them particular skills, but we are focused very much on our students, and I think that's kind of been a little bit lost in some of this discussion."
Pino Migliorino, with the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Council, says the new curriculum has been successfully embedding the notion of cultural diversity.
He believes reviewing it before it is fully implemented can only be an ideological move, an attempt to reshape the narrative away from acknowledging that diversity.
Mr Migliorino says certain stories of Australia's history which are, only now, becoming clear show how much that diversity has been hidden in the past.
"I find it still extraordinary that we are uncovering stories around Indigenous Diggers (soldiers) in the First World War or Italians changing their names so they could fight in the Australian forces and things like that, which actually speak to the creation of an Australian identity which, indeed, has a multiplicity of ethnicities behind it."
Kaye Price is associate director of the University of Southern Queensland's Centre for Australian Indigenous Knowledges.
She worked on the indigenous Advisory Group on the national curriculum.
Kaye Price says the group was able to influence changes that have been very important to Indigenous people in history, geography and the arts.
"For example, the whole story about the Stolen Generations wasn't brought in (previously) until, I think, from memory, Year 10, where the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community felt that it should be brought into the curriculum much, much earlier. There was a big push, especially from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities around the country, and it was ultimately changed. If the Australian curriculum is kept -- and this is from our perspective -- kids from quite a young age, within the school setting, participate in NAIDOC* Week, in the raising of the flag, they participate in Sorry Day, so to leave it until Year 10 before they find out why they're doing this is really not acceptable."
Under the national curriculum, primary students start out learning about Indigenous family structures, oral traditions and kinship issues.
They then move on to historical sites of significance, Indigenous language groups and early Indigenous contact with foreigners, especially Indonesians and the Dutch.
Professor McGaw, from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, cites one particular remark that stuck with him as the curriculum was being shaped.
"There was a rather nice comment made to me by one of the members of our Indigenous advisory group on one occasion. He said to me, 'For our young people, the curriculum should surely be a mirror in which they can see themselves and not just a window through which they look at other people and their cultures.'"
And Professor McGaw says, under the curriculum, even within areas like maths, there are opportunities to look at Indigenous history and cultures.
"Year 4 maths in primary school, in geometry, kids are learning about symmetry. And so the content is all about the maths of symmetry. One of the Content Elaborations for teachers to be stimulated by, to think about, is, 'You might look at symmetry in Aboriginal art.' So if you have a teacher with Aboriginal kids in your class, or even if you don't, it's a way of just bringing into the curriculum aspects of that history and culture. And if you look at Year 10 mathematics, where they're doing statistics and learning about ways to summarise major distributions of data, one elaboration says, 'Well, you might take the (overall) Australian population and its characteristics -- its age distributions, its gender distributions, and so on -- on the one hand and the Torres Strait Islands on the other.'"
Kaye Price, who was on the Indigenous advisory group, says the process left her worried that what's not included as mandatory Indigenous content would not get taught.
And she says there weren't enough Indigenous perspectives incorporated into the curriculum in areas such as science, maths and English.
Now, though, Dr Price is concerned about the effects of the review on the achievements that were made.
"I'm worried that we could lose what we have. We hear a lot about (it being a) 'black-armband history',** we hear a lot about, 'There is too much (material) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander within the curriculum,' when we who are dedicated feel that there's not enough."
Louise Secker, with the History Teachers' Association of Australia, worries, too, about losing what has been gained.
She says, in the new curriculum, students can learn both about their own backgrounds and about the value of other students' backgrounds around them.
But Ms Secker says Australia is not alone in reviewing its curriculum, and she suggests there are political motives similar to those that have arisen elsewhere in the world.
"Japan has just introduced a mandatory section in their curriculum about talking more explicitly about the disputed islands as being the Japanese islands. And England, in preparation for the centenary of World War One, there's a huge debate about whether it was a just war or whether, actually, Britain had a role in being an imperialist nation initiating it. So these debates about the role of history in schools, Australia is not alone in having these debates. So it's a very interesting time that we're living in. Very conservative governments in these countries are really talking about the curriculum is too politicised, but what they're saying is that it's got an agenda that they disagree with."
