PUBLIC LECTURE: Teaching the Nation

Abstract: The "History Wars" have come to dominate discussion of Australian history in recent years, and have been waged over various national sites of celebration and commemoration. Anxiety over Australia's past has intensified as debate grows over how to teach 'our history' to 'our children'.

Arguments rage over whether to teach the colonisation of Australia as an 'invasion' or a 'settlement', and whether students need to know Australia's first prime minister. Meanwhile, many school children still think Australian history is boring and irrelevant. This paper examines the politics and pedagogy of Australian history education at a time when the nation's history, and how to teach it in schools, seems more hotly contested than ever.

Biographical note: Anna Clark is an Australian Postdoctoral Fellow in history education at Monash University. Her PhD study, Teaching the Nation: the politics and pedagogy of Australian history, has recently been published by Melbourne University Press. With Stuart Macintyre, she wrote the History Wars (Melbourne University Press 2003), and in 2005 published Convicted!, a history book for children (Hardie Grant Egmont).

ALL WELCOME. NO RESERVATION IS REQUIRED.

This public lecture precedes a one-day Seminar on History School Textbooks: a comparative and historical perspective, co-presented by the Institute of Advanced Studies and the History Discipline at The University of Western Australia.

For more information about the seminar, including how to register, please visit www.ias.uwa.edu.au