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Chapter One: Introduction
1.1 Introduction
History is highly political, as both a discipline and the experience people have of it,
especially collective remembering of past and public events. This has been demonstrated in
recent years through the (so called) history/culture wars; debates that have proliferated both
in Australia and internationally. The purposes of teaching national history in schools and the
content selected to do so, has been at the forefront of many of these public debates. As
observed by Slater, “history is an often unsettling and sometimes uncomfortable subject. It is
controversial and often very sensitive. There is some consensus about its importance in the
school curriculum but much less agreement about what it is for” (as cited in Lévesque, 2007,
p. 349). How content of history is actualized in school curriculum is the focus of this project,
in particular how it relates to dominant socio-political contexts.
A ‘flashpoint’ of the connection between these public debates and schooling in the Australian
state of Queensland hit a peak in 2000-2001. The sole state-based newspaper, The Courier
Mail, initiated what has become a long running debate between its journalists, columnists,
academics, teachers, parents, education department officials and the general public about the
purposes of a new school subject—Study of Society and its Environment (SOSE)—and,
specifically the underlying philosophies that influenced its construction and the core content
selected for school students to learn. The Courier Mail went so far as taking the unusual step
of publishing the entire SOSE syllabus and quoting extensive sections from it in articles
throughout 2000 in order to persuade readers to adopt an oppositional perspective to the new
Syllabus. The perspective was, in part, that the Syllabus was far too progressive to be used in
schools to teach students important topics such as Australian history (see Hoepper et al.,
2000, for a response to reporting of the syllabus in The Courier Mail, including claims of
alleged political prejudice). These debates were also carried out in other states and by The
Australian, the newspaper with the largest readership in Australia. SOSE encompasses,
amongst other subjects, History, Geography, and Citizenship Education. It is commonly
viewed as a replacement for Social Studies in primary school and specialist subjects (such as
History, Geography and Economics) in junior secondary school. Of interest, this dissertation
is being written almost a decade since that syllabus was introduced—and despite public
campaigns calling for it to be replaced—it remains part of the core curriculum for students in
years 1-10. My personal experiences of the highly public aspects of the debates facilitated
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