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than the combination of history, geography, business studies and citizenship education into
one, general school subject that SOSE encompasses, for reasons beyond party politics. Bolt
points the decision to combine subjects as “who knows for sure, but it’s allowed education
ideologues to drop content-based teaching of traditional subjects and switch to teaching of
mere opinions without alerting to what they are up to” (2000, n.p.).
This type of statement ignores that a significant body of criticism of the SOSE syllabus
comes from specialist teachers, adhering to the academic discipline approach, and who, while
not necessarily disagreeing with the strands, values and general content of the SOSE syllabus,
may disagree with integrating a variety of social science subjects into one. Some see this as
resulting in a loss of specialty skills required in their disciplines, as they consider SOSE to be
too broad and general—given time restraints in schools—to deal with skills and processes
effectively. However, in a practical sense, it is a difficult issue to resolve, due in no small part
to an increasingly crowded curriculum that places more and more demands on teachers.
Reinstating Geography and History as standalone subjects is suggested by some educators, in
order to return academic rigor and disciplinary skills to schooling. Those, such as John
Lidstone 20 (Lidstone & Lam, 2001; Lidstone, 2000), base assertions on more concrete and
educationally-relevant (as distinct from populist) arguments and claim that the SOSE
syllabus, with its focus on strands rather than disciplines has resulted in a deskilling of the
school population, further intensified by the demands of an ever-increasingly crowded
curriculum.
Speaking from a geography discipline perspective, Lidstone argues that the splitting of the
school subject Geography has resulted in the subject being “...severely weakened...as the
integrative study of patterns on the world’s surface and threatened to undermine much of the
vital scientific basis to environmental understanding (Lidstone & Lam, 2001, p. 65). Lidstone
and Lam also assert that the current Queensland SOSE syllabus does not cater adequately for
the development of specific discipline-derived skills in students. There is emerging
evidence—mostly anecdotal at this stage—to suggest that students are not being equipped
with the specialist skills required for humanities disciplines, but further research may indicate
the degree to which university students, including pre-service teachers, struggle with
20 Associate Professor in Education at Queensland University of Technology and co-chair of the education
committee of the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland at the time of making his initial statements
criticising the SOSE syllabus.
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