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opposes the notion that a person is born with a fixed identity – that all black people, for
example, have an essential, underlying black identity which is the same and unchanging” (as
cited in Lister and Wells, 2001, p. 86). Therefore, despite textbooks being presented as a
keeper of all factual and ‘true’ knowledge, it is apparent that because the knowledge
presented, through the groups and events it represents, has changed so much over time, the
notion of the textbook as keeper of an unchanging knowledge is challenged and it becomes
apparent that critical engagement with this type of text needs to take place.
4.3 Conclusion
In concluding this chapter and to introduce the three data analysis chapters that follow, two
personal recollections of schooling are included as a matter of interest. Although this type of
personal experience does not form the purpose of this project, what it does demonstrate is the
link between curriculum, memories of schooling and the long-lasting impact it has on
students. The following personal recollections signify that students carry the impact of their
schooling into their adult life. To begin, the following extract from a speech made by Robert
Hughes on 14 th January 1992, links his perspectives of his education experience with the
perceived changes to History curriculum that have occurred over time. In particular, Hughes
draws on monocultural versions of history and the move to multicultural perspectives.
So you might say that my upbringing was monocultural, in fact classically colonial,
in the sense that it concentrated on the history, literature and values of Western
Europe and, in particular, of England, and not much else. It had very little
relationship to the themes of education in Australia today, which place a heavy stress
on local history, the culture of minorities, and a compensatory non-Anglocentric
approach to all social questions. ‘Multiculturalism’ has been a bureaucratic standard
there for the best part of twenty years now, and its effects have been almost entirely
good. It reflects a reality we have in common with the even more diverse, but
culturally reluctant, USA – which, put in its simplest terms, is that the person on the
bus next to you in Sydney is just as likely to be the descendant of a relatively recent
arrival, a small trader from Skopelos, a mechanic from Palermo, a cook from Saigon,
a lawyer from Hong Kong or a cobbler from some stelt in Lithuania as the greatgreat-grandchild
of an Englishman or Irishman, transported or free. The length of
one’s roots, as distinct from their tenacity, is no longer a big deal in my country,
whatever passing pangs of regret this may induce in the minority of Australians
whose families have been there for most of its (white) history. By the 1970s
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