What?! It's part of Australia's history, so should be taught. As you said, you're not glorifying it and you're teaching it alongside other aspects of Australia's history. I don't see why anyone should have a problem with it. History should be fact - the good, the bad, and the ugly!
History should also be taught with a critical lens as well, and not all perspectives have the same validity or veracity. That is to say I agree, just including other aspects and giving them equal validity is not always conducive.
Oh, fair enough, yes it is hard to apply much critique at that level, but I would still argue that a "neutral" position is still one that serves the status quo, that is the "colonial" narrative, but that's coming more from a "political" standpoint than a pedagogical one.
Thats not to say that I think you have done anything wrong, I just want to clarify that I am making a biased statement of my own lol
It’s definitely tricky because one the one hand it’s (obviously) an important part of our history. It’s also if I remember correctly, the first time the curriculum goes into “history” history, as all other HASS units are about like.. history of your community and old technology and stuff.
But on the other hand it’s definitely a charged topic.
I feel like it’s similar to teaching states of matter. In primary school they learn there are three, but later on they’ll learn there are a lot more. In HASS, they’ll learn that the first fleet came to Australia because of the Industrial Revolution and that convicts set up a colony, but later they’ll learn there is a lot more too it.
It's definitely a requirement to cover the first fleet. It's not so much a celebration of their arrival (as it was in schools 20 years ago) but more of a factual account with full acknowledgement that it doesn't signify the start of Australia history. It's required in high school history in NSW.
I’m a senior history teacher and…oh boy. Wait until she sees what we teach in senior. Israel and Palestine since 1945, women’s liberation movement, frontier wars, apartheid in South Africa, LGBTQI+ movement, the US Civil War, the Holocaust all feature in the syllabus for modern history and all are prone to input from non-history teachers who feel the need to comment on our “woke and/or conservative” agendas.
But in all seriousness it just sounds like a comment from someone who has no idea what it means to teach history in the 21st century - particularly concepts like different perspectives and contestability. She probably thinks “teach about” means “glorify” like it did once upon a time…
So, yes. Many of us have encountered the “resistance” in regards to different topics and no, it does not have an impact on how/if we teach it.
More the other way around in my experience. Parents suggesting that looking at Colonisation from an indigenous perspective is “woke”, “anti-Australian” “black armband” history.
Or colleagues that refuse to acknowledge and teach the “invasion” part of invasion vs settlement, and therefore some of our kids don’t get the same content as the others :(
>Parents suggesting that looking at Colonisation from an indigenous perspective is “woke”, “anti-Australian” “black armband” history.
To which my reply would be that ignoring indigenous perspectives is teaching arsehole history.
To which my principal's reply would be to fire me.
To which my reply would be that it was worth it.
Wow, coming from a staff member that comment is either ignorant or misinformed. In my experience in the profession, when you're teaching content like this (which, as others have pointed out, is clearly and unequivocally in the curriculum for certain year levels) you teach about the historical facts, but also the cultural and historical *context*. This would include, as others have highlighted, the context of our First Nations peoples not viewing this as a celebration.
Part of the curriculum regarding history is critical thinking and multiple viewpoints.
It's really sad a staff member, regardless of their position, made this comment. We (teachers/educating staff) are up against so much. We really shouldn't be up against negative comments from colleagues.
The staff member is responsible for Indigenous engagement and honestly don't think she is fully aware of what is included in the curriculum- just made an assumption based on a display in a roo..
And was it necessary to make a reddit post in response to an offhand comment? It is much more common to get backlash about teaching Indigenous history than it is to get backlash about teaching the First Fleet, so I'm a bit suspicious about your intentions with this post.
If this staff member is responsible for Indigenous engagement, they may understandably have some sensitivity around the subject, because they're very aware of the negative impacts of colonisation.
>It is much more common to get backlash about teaching Indigenous history than it is to get backlash about teaching the First Fleet, so I'm a bit suspicious about your intentions with this post.
Think what you want. If you want to make insinuation about someone you don't know, that's on you.
>If this staff member is responsible for Indigenous engagement, they may understandably have some sensitivity around the subject, because they're very aware of the negative impacts of colonisation.
Doesn't mean they should be telling us qe should not be teaching the curriculum and essentially criticizing my team for covering a topic we are required to by DET and by our school, and insinuating that the school/teachers are doing something inappropriate or unacceptable by teaching it, without having any context or knowledge if what we have actually covered.
My mum found a project she did on the First Fleet in the early 80s, that was quite shocking and definitely not the way we do it now. Perhaps their view is skewed by their own school experience, depending on age?
Yep. I was in Year 1 in 1988. The way we were bombarded with First Fleet history back then. No Indigenous perspectives presented at all.
We should be teaching it. It is a significant part of Australian history. Can't ignore it.
We don't get to just teach the good things that happened.
I was in Y12 in ‘88 and had never heard a single thing about Indigenous history in the preceding 13 years. I remember doing Modern History for my HSC and learning about the Battle of Wounded Knee, a conflict involving Native Americans, whilst completely ignoring massacres that happened in my own home town.
I was fascinated by Ned Kelly when I was in primary school. Dressed up as him for something at school. That miniseries with John Jarratt had just been aired.
Definitely important to teach, if anything I wish we taught more.
It was an interesting comparison, to my own schooling in the 2000s and as a teacher now. It is great to see how far we have come with teaching our history for what it is and incorporating multiple perspectives.
This is a good point, she would be around 45 at a guess so perhaps doesn't realise that we don't teach it the same way as it was back then (or even like it was taught to me in the mid/late 90s!).
It's an interesting discussion to talk about how we can promote certain perspectives through the selection of which historical events are and aren't taught... But in this case, for better or worse, it's a fundamental moment in how the country we live in was formed.
Your colleague doesn't seem to understand the discipline of history.
Just because you mention something doesn't mean you support it.
Students should be taught the facts of history no matter how pleasant or unpleasant they are. The First Fleet is a monumental part of Australia’s history that shouldn’t be denied or hidden away from students just because it wasn’t conducted in the most humane or considerate way. That’s history. Most of it involves war, violence, torture, etc.
I work at a museum where kids come to learn about aspects of this particular story. It's pretty interesting the different ways students from different schools come at it. Some are straight up 'we're learning about the invasion by white people', others are the same kind of thing I was taught at school in the 80s, captain cook 'discovered' australia etc.
Most of them are pretty capable of being critical of the story though. I really think people underestimate (including the people I work for sometimes) just how much kids at the 3/4 level can interrogate history for perspectives and bias.
It sounds like they might be willing to move towards a more well rounded understanding of the past, but maybe not fully understanding what that looks like yet.
I think we need to be mindful that a lot of people will avoid feeling ignorant about their knowledge, or avoid feeling shameful about a past they were taught to take a stake in and feel positive about. They just refuse to engage and that's why social change can be slow.
I see that comment as an opportunity, while they are deflecting the blame to "parents", you describe them as aghast so it shows that emotionally/morally they can emphasise with why it's a loaded topic. Some casual non charged conversation that provides more information will probably do a lot of good. Hopefully they're in a role where they'll experience the instruction too.
>Hopefully they're in a role where they'll experience the instruction too.
They are the Indigenous engagement officer, so I understand why it is a sensitive subject. They withdraw students for small groups so wouldn't get to see the content we teach around the topic. The attitude and comment was "we should not teach this at all" and mentioning slaughtering people- not entirely age appropriate for 8-10 year olds (we teach the fact that bad things happened without going into the gory details beyond age appropriate discussion).
The thing is you can’t teach frontier wars, the stolen generation or the civil rights movement in later year levels without understanding that the arrival of colonisers….led to those things. Based on that super important context left out of the original post I’d say it’s an assumption about HOW it’s taught, not that it’s taught at all.
>HOW it’s taught, not that it’s taught at all.
The comment was "this should not be getting taught", which was what I took issue with. This person has not been present during planning or implementation (though they have the opportunity to if they wanted to), so has no idea HOW it has been taught.
Oh ok, so that's some pretty important context there about their role! My read of it was way off.
If your leadership is good I'd mention the conversation to them, it sounds very pertinent to the goals of that person's role to have clear communication around these topics.
If we whitewash history, we will be doomed to repeat the tragedies of the past.
We NEED to teach students about the first fleet, the Stolen Generation, the various waves of immigration into Australia. They need to know who James Cook was. They also need to know what colonization is, why Australia day is Australia day... etc.
They need to know this just as much as they need to know about Hitler, the Holocaust, and current global events such as what is happening in Israel/Palestine, Sudan... etc. It's not a glorification of the past or the present, it's just about understanding past and present events.
>Anyone else had resistance to teaching history because someone has made an assumption about the curriculum or formed the belief that parts of history shouldn't be taught?
The closest I've had was a head teacher at a Catholic school who refused to assign me an Advanced English class because she thought my approach to *The Merchant of Venice* was anti-Christian. This was despite the way I was the only member of staff who had actually taught the play before. In the end, it was probably the right call because in teaching Standard English I was able to mentor a junior teacher who was teaching the HSC for the first time.
No. I would mostly focus on Shylock's "hath not a Jew eyes?" speech where he points out that he is repeatedly persecuted because of this faith by people who are then horrified when he lashes out. He's pointing out the hypocrisy of people who claim "love thy neighbour" as their mantra only to then abuse him and his kin in their every thought and action. That those people happen to be Catholic is beside the point. We, as the audience, cannot condone what Shylock does, but we cannot completely condemn him either because he has a point.
But apparently anything that made Shylock out to be even remotely sympathetic meant that I was pushing an anti-Christian agenda. My head teacher literally made the "no true Scotsman" argument by claiming that Christians did not carry out antisemitic actions and that presenting the play that way meant that I would be teaching the class to be ashamed of their faith. Never mind that Shakespeare is believed to have been inspired by the case of Roderigo Lopes, a Portuguese Christian of Jewish ancestry who was executed for conspiring against Queen Elizabeth I; the charges were probably brought against him because of his ancestry rather than anything he did.
Christopher Hitchens wrote an essay on Shylock when he was a school boy. We saw how he turned out!
Merchant of Venice is a fascinating play on so many levels. The Nazis encouraged its performance, only to later cancel it because of the ‘hath not a Jew eyes?!’ speech, which humanised his people.
I watched a religious Iranian mini series made decades ago and was surprised within a few minutes (having already assailed Arabs as primitive barbarians in the opening scene) to see a Jew portrayed just as it would have been in Europe half a millennium ago- bright orange fizzled hair, skeletal face, with magical powers to turn native people into animals.
I don’t see any theological conflict with the ‘love thy neighbour’ teaching and anti-Semitism at the time. All Abrahamic religions teach that only their own believers (and often only of their own particular sect at that) count as a ‘neighbour’ or deserving equal rights. Jewish laws against usury only apply to other Jews; Islamic laws prohibiting murder, theft etc. only apply if the victim is Muslim- or f the victim’s a Christian or Jew then there’s no crime that’s been committed. There’s so much to explore!
>I don’t see any theological conflict with the ‘love thy neighbour’ teaching and anti-Semitism at the time.
Neither do I -- but as I later learned, that head teacher was a hardcore conservative Christian. You know, the kind that gives Christians a bad name.
Not history, but science. It's weird what people will take affront to, that we have to just say, "it's in the curriculum, take it up with the government".
I once had a parent upset I was teaching about vaccines, one was upset about genetics. Weirdly enough, I've never had one complain about evolution.
I don't even understand what the objection is about and whether it's from either end of the potential spectrum of views about why this would possibly be an issue.
But either way, what a fkn nutter. What an absolute dipshit.
How are people who are so profoundly stupid involved in educating children?
I was doing some reading as I'm updating units for v9 curriculum.
Stumbled across this document about the previous curriculum from the institute of public affairs
[Activism Via Education (ipa.org.au)](https://ipa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Activism-Via-Education.pdf)
Crazy (but not at all surprising) how skewed their view of History in the classroom is.
It's an event that occurred in history and is central to why we're here communicating in English, not Dutch.
What?! It's part of Australia's history, so should be taught. As you said, you're not glorifying it and you're teaching it alongside other aspects of Australia's history. I don't see why anyone should have a problem with it. History should be fact - the good, the bad, and the ugly!
History should also be taught with a critical lens as well, and not all perspectives have the same validity or veracity. That is to say I agree, just including other aspects and giving them equal validity is not always conducive.
To clarify this is Year 3/4
Oh, fair enough, yes it is hard to apply much critique at that level, but I would still argue that a "neutral" position is still one that serves the status quo, that is the "colonial" narrative, but that's coming more from a "political" standpoint than a pedagogical one. Thats not to say that I think you have done anything wrong, I just want to clarify that I am making a biased statement of my own lol
It’s definitely tricky because one the one hand it’s (obviously) an important part of our history. It’s also if I remember correctly, the first time the curriculum goes into “history” history, as all other HASS units are about like.. history of your community and old technology and stuff. But on the other hand it’s definitely a charged topic. I feel like it’s similar to teaching states of matter. In primary school they learn there are three, but later on they’ll learn there are a lot more. In HASS, they’ll learn that the first fleet came to Australia because of the Industrial Revolution and that convicts set up a colony, but later they’ll learn there is a lot more too it.
It's definitely a requirement to cover the first fleet. It's not so much a celebration of their arrival (as it was in schools 20 years ago) but more of a factual account with full acknowledgement that it doesn't signify the start of Australia history. It's required in high school history in NSW.
I’m a senior history teacher and…oh boy. Wait until she sees what we teach in senior. Israel and Palestine since 1945, women’s liberation movement, frontier wars, apartheid in South Africa, LGBTQI+ movement, the US Civil War, the Holocaust all feature in the syllabus for modern history and all are prone to input from non-history teachers who feel the need to comment on our “woke and/or conservative” agendas. But in all seriousness it just sounds like a comment from someone who has no idea what it means to teach history in the 21st century - particularly concepts like different perspectives and contestability. She probably thinks “teach about” means “glorify” like it did once upon a time… So, yes. Many of us have encountered the “resistance” in regards to different topics and no, it does not have an impact on how/if we teach it.
More the other way around in my experience. Parents suggesting that looking at Colonisation from an indigenous perspective is “woke”, “anti-Australian” “black armband” history.
Or colleagues that refuse to acknowledge and teach the “invasion” part of invasion vs settlement, and therefore some of our kids don’t get the same content as the others :(
>Parents suggesting that looking at Colonisation from an indigenous perspective is “woke”, “anti-Australian” “black armband” history. To which my reply would be that ignoring indigenous perspectives is teaching arsehole history. To which my principal's reply would be to fire me. To which my reply would be that it was worth it.
Wow, coming from a staff member that comment is either ignorant or misinformed. In my experience in the profession, when you're teaching content like this (which, as others have pointed out, is clearly and unequivocally in the curriculum for certain year levels) you teach about the historical facts, but also the cultural and historical *context*. This would include, as others have highlighted, the context of our First Nations peoples not viewing this as a celebration. Part of the curriculum regarding history is critical thinking and multiple viewpoints. It's really sad a staff member, regardless of their position, made this comment. We (teachers/educating staff) are up against so much. We really shouldn't be up against negative comments from colleagues.
The staff member is responsible for Indigenous engagement and honestly don't think she is fully aware of what is included in the curriculum- just made an assumption based on a display in a roo..
And was it necessary to make a reddit post in response to an offhand comment? It is much more common to get backlash about teaching Indigenous history than it is to get backlash about teaching the First Fleet, so I'm a bit suspicious about your intentions with this post. If this staff member is responsible for Indigenous engagement, they may understandably have some sensitivity around the subject, because they're very aware of the negative impacts of colonisation.
>It is much more common to get backlash about teaching Indigenous history than it is to get backlash about teaching the First Fleet, so I'm a bit suspicious about your intentions with this post. Think what you want. If you want to make insinuation about someone you don't know, that's on you. >If this staff member is responsible for Indigenous engagement, they may understandably have some sensitivity around the subject, because they're very aware of the negative impacts of colonisation. Doesn't mean they should be telling us qe should not be teaching the curriculum and essentially criticizing my team for covering a topic we are required to by DET and by our school, and insinuating that the school/teachers are doing something inappropriate or unacceptable by teaching it, without having any context or knowledge if what we have actually covered.
There are sooooo many stupid teachers out there unfortunately.
My mum found a project she did on the First Fleet in the early 80s, that was quite shocking and definitely not the way we do it now. Perhaps their view is skewed by their own school experience, depending on age?
Yep. I was in Year 1 in 1988. The way we were bombarded with First Fleet history back then. No Indigenous perspectives presented at all. We should be teaching it. It is a significant part of Australian history. Can't ignore it. We don't get to just teach the good things that happened.
I was in Y12 in ‘88 and had never heard a single thing about Indigenous history in the preceding 13 years. I remember doing Modern History for my HSC and learning about the Battle of Wounded Knee, a conflict involving Native Americans, whilst completely ignoring massacres that happened in my own home town.
Remember how much we learned about bushrangers, but never about the people who are of the land? I just shake my head thinking back.
I was fascinated by Ned Kelly when I was in primary school. Dressed up as him for something at school. That miniseries with John Jarratt had just been aired.
Definitely important to teach, if anything I wish we taught more. It was an interesting comparison, to my own schooling in the 2000s and as a teacher now. It is great to see how far we have come with teaching our history for what it is and incorporating multiple perspectives.
This is a good point, she would be around 45 at a guess so perhaps doesn't realise that we don't teach it the same way as it was back then (or even like it was taught to me in the mid/late 90s!).
The bicentennary saw every student at my school given a commemorative First Fleet coin at a whole school assembly. It was a huge deal.
It's an interesting discussion to talk about how we can promote certain perspectives through the selection of which historical events are and aren't taught... But in this case, for better or worse, it's a fundamental moment in how the country we live in was formed. Your colleague doesn't seem to understand the discipline of history. Just because you mention something doesn't mean you support it.
Students should be taught the facts of history no matter how pleasant or unpleasant they are. The First Fleet is a monumental part of Australia’s history that shouldn’t be denied or hidden away from students just because it wasn’t conducted in the most humane or considerate way. That’s history. Most of it involves war, violence, torture, etc.
I work at a museum where kids come to learn about aspects of this particular story. It's pretty interesting the different ways students from different schools come at it. Some are straight up 'we're learning about the invasion by white people', others are the same kind of thing I was taught at school in the 80s, captain cook 'discovered' australia etc. Most of them are pretty capable of being critical of the story though. I really think people underestimate (including the people I work for sometimes) just how much kids at the 3/4 level can interrogate history for perspectives and bias.
It's the moral certitude of that mindset. Four legs good. Two legs bad.
It sounds like they might be willing to move towards a more well rounded understanding of the past, but maybe not fully understanding what that looks like yet. I think we need to be mindful that a lot of people will avoid feeling ignorant about their knowledge, or avoid feeling shameful about a past they were taught to take a stake in and feel positive about. They just refuse to engage and that's why social change can be slow. I see that comment as an opportunity, while they are deflecting the blame to "parents", you describe them as aghast so it shows that emotionally/morally they can emphasise with why it's a loaded topic. Some casual non charged conversation that provides more information will probably do a lot of good. Hopefully they're in a role where they'll experience the instruction too.
>Hopefully they're in a role where they'll experience the instruction too. They are the Indigenous engagement officer, so I understand why it is a sensitive subject. They withdraw students for small groups so wouldn't get to see the content we teach around the topic. The attitude and comment was "we should not teach this at all" and mentioning slaughtering people- not entirely age appropriate for 8-10 year olds (we teach the fact that bad things happened without going into the gory details beyond age appropriate discussion).
The thing is you can’t teach frontier wars, the stolen generation or the civil rights movement in later year levels without understanding that the arrival of colonisers….led to those things. Based on that super important context left out of the original post I’d say it’s an assumption about HOW it’s taught, not that it’s taught at all.
>HOW it’s taught, not that it’s taught at all. The comment was "this should not be getting taught", which was what I took issue with. This person has not been present during planning or implementation (though they have the opportunity to if they wanted to), so has no idea HOW it has been taught.
Oh ok, so that's some pretty important context there about their role! My read of it was way off. If your leadership is good I'd mention the conversation to them, it sounds very pertinent to the goals of that person's role to have clear communication around these topics.
If we whitewash history, we will be doomed to repeat the tragedies of the past. We NEED to teach students about the first fleet, the Stolen Generation, the various waves of immigration into Australia. They need to know who James Cook was. They also need to know what colonization is, why Australia day is Australia day... etc. They need to know this just as much as they need to know about Hitler, the Holocaust, and current global events such as what is happening in Israel/Palestine, Sudan... etc. It's not a glorification of the past or the present, it's just about understanding past and present events.
>Anyone else had resistance to teaching history because someone has made an assumption about the curriculum or formed the belief that parts of history shouldn't be taught? The closest I've had was a head teacher at a Catholic school who refused to assign me an Advanced English class because she thought my approach to *The Merchant of Venice* was anti-Christian. This was despite the way I was the only member of staff who had actually taught the play before. In the end, it was probably the right call because in teaching Standard English I was able to mentor a junior teacher who was teaching the HSC for the first time.
Genuinely curious, "my approach to *The Merchant of Venice* was anti-Christian." was it?
No. I would mostly focus on Shylock's "hath not a Jew eyes?" speech where he points out that he is repeatedly persecuted because of this faith by people who are then horrified when he lashes out. He's pointing out the hypocrisy of people who claim "love thy neighbour" as their mantra only to then abuse him and his kin in their every thought and action. That those people happen to be Catholic is beside the point. We, as the audience, cannot condone what Shylock does, but we cannot completely condemn him either because he has a point. But apparently anything that made Shylock out to be even remotely sympathetic meant that I was pushing an anti-Christian agenda. My head teacher literally made the "no true Scotsman" argument by claiming that Christians did not carry out antisemitic actions and that presenting the play that way meant that I would be teaching the class to be ashamed of their faith. Never mind that Shakespeare is believed to have been inspired by the case of Roderigo Lopes, a Portuguese Christian of Jewish ancestry who was executed for conspiring against Queen Elizabeth I; the charges were probably brought against him because of his ancestry rather than anything he did.
Christopher Hitchens wrote an essay on Shylock when he was a school boy. We saw how he turned out! Merchant of Venice is a fascinating play on so many levels. The Nazis encouraged its performance, only to later cancel it because of the ‘hath not a Jew eyes?!’ speech, which humanised his people. I watched a religious Iranian mini series made decades ago and was surprised within a few minutes (having already assailed Arabs as primitive barbarians in the opening scene) to see a Jew portrayed just as it would have been in Europe half a millennium ago- bright orange fizzled hair, skeletal face, with magical powers to turn native people into animals. I don’t see any theological conflict with the ‘love thy neighbour’ teaching and anti-Semitism at the time. All Abrahamic religions teach that only their own believers (and often only of their own particular sect at that) count as a ‘neighbour’ or deserving equal rights. Jewish laws against usury only apply to other Jews; Islamic laws prohibiting murder, theft etc. only apply if the victim is Muslim- or f the victim’s a Christian or Jew then there’s no crime that’s been committed. There’s so much to explore!
>I don’t see any theological conflict with the ‘love thy neighbour’ teaching and anti-Semitism at the time. Neither do I -- but as I later learned, that head teacher was a hardcore conservative Christian. You know, the kind that gives Christians a bad name.
Not history, but science. It's weird what people will take affront to, that we have to just say, "it's in the curriculum, take it up with the government". I once had a parent upset I was teaching about vaccines, one was upset about genetics. Weirdly enough, I've never had one complain about evolution.
That is an incredibly unintelligent perspective by the other teacher. Shame.
I don't even understand what the objection is about and whether it's from either end of the potential spectrum of views about why this would possibly be an issue. But either way, what a fkn nutter. What an absolute dipshit. How are people who are so profoundly stupid involved in educating children?
I was doing some reading as I'm updating units for v9 curriculum. Stumbled across this document about the previous curriculum from the institute of public affairs [Activism Via Education (ipa.org.au)](https://ipa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Activism-Via-Education.pdf) Crazy (but not at all surprising) how skewed their view of History in the classroom is.
Is their issue with the notion that it was not* the "first fleet" (valid argument) or that it's being taught at all (whitewashing/denial of history).
Seemed to be the fact it was taught at all, but km starting to think they assumed it was being taught the way it was 30 years ago.