PDF (Whole Thesis) - USQ ePrints - University of Southern ...

specialist skills. A summary of four significant concerns of Lidstone (also shared by others)
include:
1. Lack of discipline specific information is seen as a major downfall of SOSE, with
gaps emerging in students’ knowledge and understanding of the specific disciplinary
knowledges of history and geography;
2. Even though optional syllabuses have been created for Geography and History for
years 9 and 10, Lidstone claims they are “...based, not on the logic of the respective
disciplines but on their own generic learning outcomes” (2000, para. 3);
3. SOSE is an incomplete version of a school subject that students should be studying.
Focusing on the subject areas of Geography and History, Lidstone writes, “SOSE
encourages parochial thinking. Queensland students are being fed a watered-down
diet of the two Internationally recognised subjects that can help them to understand
global and international trends” (2000, para. 9); and
4. Lack of rigor is also cited as a reason why SOSE should not be implemented, with the
two separate subjects, History and Geography, touted as the option to implement in
schools. Lidstone writes, “SOSE, with its tendency to deteriorate into studies of
current ‘good causes’ with no internationally agreed standards of rigour, has little
potential for seeding a lifelong love of learning” (2000, para. 15).
D. Henderson, outlines the main arguments against the SOSE syllabus, as put forth by
commentators who see SOSE as being an arena for indoctrination into politically correct, leftwing
beliefs. From this, D. Henderson argues that the main critiques of SOSE are “...flawed
in their assumptions and misrepresent the nature of the SOSE curriculum framework as a
vehicle for preparing young Australians for the future” (2005, p. 307). SOSE as a stand-alone
subject, rather than just a KLA, has received so much negative attention that it is the view of
some that SOSE as a subject will be abolished, perhaps within a National curriculum, to be
replaced by discrete humanities subjects once again:
The other alternative, which appears to be achieving growing support, is a refocusing
on individual disciplines, especially history and geography. However, the new
discipline approaches promise to be different – by incorporating higher order
thinking activities and a greater emphasis upon generic skills. Perhaps...the SOSE
title [will] become nothing more than a convenient label for school subjects. (Marsh,
2004, p. 8)
499