History Now: Teaching History: The future of history education in NSW

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Catherine Shirley (00:02):
Welcome to the History Now 2025 podcast
series, brought to you by theHistory Council of New South
Wales in partnership with theChau Chak Wing Museum and the
Vere Gordon Charles Centre atthe University of Sydney.
In this episode, we're joinedby two leading history
educators, Jonathan Dalamorefrom the History Teachers
Association of New South Wales,and the University of New South

(00:24):
Wales, and Professor TimAllender from the University of
Sydney, who take us through someof the current issues in
contemporary history education.
They will also discuss thechallenges and complexities of
history teaching in the 21stcentury and explore the
important role that historyteachers play in engaging,
informing, and shaping thefuture of history and

(00:46):
history-adjacent fields, and howthey help nurture the next
generation of historians.

Dr Craig Barker (00:56):
Good evening, everybody.
And hello to those of youjoining us via the uh the live
stream on Zoom and those of youwho will be listening to the
podcast at a later stage.
Welcome to the Chow Chak WingMuseum.
To our guests in the room,thank you for coming out in what
has not been one of Sydney'sfinest days in terms of the
weather.
So uh well done for braving therain.

(01:19):
Um, but I can assure you itwill have been worth the effort.
Um, before I begin, I wouldlike to acknowledge that we meet
tonight on Gadigal Lands and topay our respect to the
traditional custodians of theselands, the Gadigal people of the
Eora Nation, and to acknowledgeand pay respect to the tens of

(01:40):
thousands of years of care forland and of culture that
developed in this space overthat time.
This is unceded Gadigal Land,and it always is and always has
been Aboriginal land.
My name is Craig Barker.
I am the Head of PublicEngagement for the Chow Chak

(02:00):
Wing Museum.
I'm an archaeologist and I'm aneducator, and I have the great
honor of convening the HistoryNow series for 2025.
History Now is a series oftalks presented on behalf of the
History Council of New SouthWales.
And in 2025, it's presented incollaboration with the Chow Chak

(02:20):
Wing Museum and with the VereGordon Child Centre for
Historical Investigation here atthe University of Sydney.
The series is possible becauseof the support of Create New
South Wales.
I'd like at this moment toinvite to the lectern Dr.
Jesse Adams Stein, who will saya few words on behalf of the

(02:41):
History Council of New SouthWales and about the History Now
series.
And indeed, there's no one morequalified to talk about History
Now than Jesse because Jesseconvened the series in 2024 and
whose massive shoes I'm doing myvery best to fill.
But thank you so much for beingwith us tonight, Jesse.
And I will ask you up to themicrophone.

Dr Jesse Adams Stein (03:03):
Thanks very much, Craig.
And as you can see, I havemassive shoes.
I'm here in my capacity as amember of the General Council of
the History Council of NewSouth Wales.
And I'm delighted that HistoryNow is in the hands that it is
this year in 2025.
In this fabulous auditorium atthe Chau Chak Wing Museum, and
also recorded as a podcast.

(03:25):
I just wanted to say a fewwords about the history of
history now, those historians,it's really hard to get them to
not give you a little bit ofbackground history when you get
up there.
So it's a long-running series,but it's one of these things
that's been handed around.
It's not owned by oneparticular organization or
person, but it's been handedaround over 10 years.
It was started in 2015 whenHannah Forsyth and Anna Clark

(03:48):
and Melissa Valanta got togetherand they took over the
Australian Studies SeminarSeries.
So they renamed it History Nowand really were interested in
fostering public interest inwhat was really the most
compelling work being done inthe history sector, not just
academically, but also publiclyin many different fields, trying
to really bring that work to ageneral audience, but doing so

(04:11):
in such a way that doesn'tinsult that audience as well.
So setting that tone.
And that crucial act of publictranslation might be something
that our speakers speak abouttoday in relation to history
education.
As Craig said in 2024, Iconvened History Now, and at
that point it was representingboth the History Council of New
South Wales and the UTSAustralian Centre for Public

(04:33):
History.
And over the years we've seenaudiences grow.
I think some years had abouteight people in a room, and some
years we have this wonderfulnumber that we have now.
And of course, in 2024, we wentdigital.
So with the initiative andcommitment shown by the History
Council's Executive Officer,Catherine Shirley, last year we
began to record History Now.

(04:53):
Initially, we were justclipping a microphone onto the
mic at the lecture, and we had alittle road mic.
And Catherine reallyspearheaded that and turned it
into what is now a podcast.
And so if you're looking,looking up other History Now
podcasts, you can look up HCNSWHistory Talks, and there's a
whole lot available on varioushistory of various podcast

(05:14):
platforms.
So on behalf of the HistoryCouncil of New South Wales, I'd
like to thank Craig Barker andthe Chau Chack Wing Museum for
making History Now 2025 happen.
Also just recognising theHistory Council's cultural
partners, in particular, ourmajor funder, Create New South
Wales, New South Walesgovernment.

(05:35):
Thanks very much.

Thank you, Jesse.
Now the theme of tonight'sHistory Now discussion is
teaching history, the future ofhistory education in New South
Wales, and by definition,broader Australian conversations
as well.
I've recently had the greatprivilege of conducting
interviews with staff and formerstaff, students and alumni of

(05:58):
the Department of Archaeologyhere at the University of Sydney
for what will eventually be ahistory of the discipline in
Australia, I hope.
One consistent comment in thosescores of interviews that I've
done, regardless of age, gender,country of origin, interest of
the person that I've beenspeaking to, is that they all
said that their interest inarchaeology or history was

(06:20):
sparked by a dynamic teacher atschool.
And I suspect that the sameapplies to everyone sitting in
this room tonight.
But we live in a period ofcrisis within the teaching
profession.
So what we would like toexplore tonight is the need of
or the needs rather of currentand future history teachers, the

(06:41):
challenges they face, and someof the support networks that we,
practicing historians, bothprofessional and community, both
academic and local, may be ableto provide teachers to
enthusiastically engage withstudents and to help craft that
same passion for history amongstcontemporary Australian
students that we all felt.
Teaching history in the 21stcentury is a challenge.

(07:05):
With a packed curriculum,competing interests, cultural
wars, and the challenges ofmisinformation and false
narratives compounded by theshrinking of Australian
university history departments.
How, pardon me, how can weexpect history students of the
future and their teachers todevelop the skills of historical
understanding and historicalliteracy?

(07:27):
But as you're here tonight too,there are also extraordinary
opportunities to engage studentsin ways that were unimaginable
previously.
To lead the conversation, it'smy great pleasure to introduce
two leading figures in historyeducation in this state, and
both of whom are also practicinghistorians themselves.
Both will speak for about 20minutes and then we'll have a

(07:48):
discussion afterwards.
And I will invite questionsfrom the floor if anyone would
like to contribute to theconversation.
But I'd like to begin bywelcoming both Jonathon and Tim
with one introduction and thenthey all go one after the other.
Jonathon Dallimore is theExecutive Officer, Professional
Services, for the HistoryTeachers Association of New

(08:09):
South Wales, after leaving apermanent secondary teaching
role in the New South WalesDepartment of Education.
Jonathon also teaches historymethods education classes at the
University of New South Walesand at the University of
Wollongong.
He gained his MA researchthesis in history through the
Australian Centre for the Studyof Armed Conflict and Society at
UNSW, Canberra, and with athesis examining the life of a

(08:33):
New South Wales school teacherwho, after serving in the second
AIF in Malaya and in Thailand,returned to participate in some
of the most importanteducational developments of the
post-war era.
He's contributed to a number ofbooks and educational
resources, includingco-authoring Teaching Secondary

(08:55):
History in 2021.
And Jonathon's book, TeachingHistory, A Practical Guide for
Secondary School Teachers, wasreleased earlier this year and
is a must-read for anyoneengaged with the profession.
Professor Tim Allender isProfessor, sorry, Professor,
History of Education and HistoryCurriculum with the Faculty of

(09:17):
Arts and Social Sciences here atthe University of Sydney, where
I've had the great privilege ofworking with Tim for a number
of years now on a number ofprojects.
In his more than three decadesof research, he has primarily
worked on Indian education andempire studies using
multidisciplinary approaches,particularly focused on gender
and feminism.

(09:38):
Tim's research on teaching andlearning has had a particular
focus on teacher education andon professional learning.
Tim's authored and edited manybooks, including Historical
Thinking for History Teachers in2019 and Empire Religious Osity
in 2024.
He is the co-author of aforthcoming book on visual

(09:59):
literacy and history.
And Tim was elected a Fellow ofthe Royal Historical Society of
Great Britain last year.
Thank you both for sharing yourknowledge with us.
Can I introduce Jonathon to thelectern?

Jonathon Dallimore (10:15):
Thank you, Craig, and thanks everyone for
coming out, especially given theweather and uh all the other
things that are going on.
It's really nice to be here.
Um, it's really important, too,I think, for a lot of us who
are in history education to behere to talk about the
challenges and the prospects ofteaching history uh at the
present time.
I imagine many of us are herebecause we feel the sense of
that importance.

(10:35):
So um uh it is a it is a hugeundertaking, and one of the real
challenges of actually gettingsome thoughts together for this
is actually where to begin, um,because there are so many things
that I think we want to talkabout.
Um, I want to start justquickly by thanking my own
history teachers.
Uh, Craig mentioned that at thebeginning.
This is uh Fiona and Liz.
Um they were my uh senior highschool history teachers uh at

(10:58):
Shellhaven High School down onthe South Coast.
Um they were wonderful, theywere not heroic in any sense.
Um they were really uhfriendly, nice people who took
no crap.
Um, made us, you know.
I remember writing with thechalk notes on the board and
we'd copy down into our book andthat kind of thing.
But they were very open-minded,very friendly, very supportive
for a room full of 15, you know,South Coast students.

(11:21):
Um, and I I credit uh a lot ofwhere I ended up just to their
support and their enthusiasm forthe subject.
Um I say they weren't heroes inthat sense, they weren't doing
anything dramatic.
I just think they werewonderful teachers and good
people.
Um, and I suspect that's truefor a lot of people.
Um, and I think it also speaks,I guess, to my own experience,
which is that I am, I considermyself very much a history

(11:43):
teacher still.
Um, I write books and I'm nowworking for the History Teachers
Association, but I feel like myinstincts and my kind of center
of gravity still uh lies verymuch in thinking about what it
means to teach in front of youngpeople.
Um so uh my comments are goingto be limited by that.
I'm also, uh I think it'simportant to say, a 41-year-old
man, and that makes a bigdifference.

(12:04):
Makes a big difference in acontext where things like, you
know, Andrew Tate have becomefairly influential in high
schools, and there's lots ofresearch now pointing out the
real challenges that young womenhave, particularly in some
contexts in terms of teaching ingeneral, but also teaching
things that I think relate tohistory.
So, you know, I have adifferent experience to a lot of
other people in this context,and uh it's one of the real

(12:27):
challenges that I think um is iscomplex complex here, is that
you know, we're all coming atthis with slightly different
kinds of perspectives, slightlydifferent experiences and things
that we might feel are a littlecloser or further away,
depending on where we are andhow we are.
So uh I'm not speaking from theperspective at all of you know
uh some kind of profit oneducation.

(12:49):
I don't uh I don't like to talkabout education pretty much
beyond history teaching, becausethat's the the thing that I
like to concentrate on.
So my comments are going to belimited.
Um, and I'm gonna start byasking the question really I
mean, how do we even begin topose questions about what is
challenging to teaching historynow?
Because I don't know where theboundaries sort of begin and
end.

(13:09):
Um, the reality is, I think, tobegin with, that there are
enormous challenges foreducation in general.
Um, in schools, there areteacher shortages, in
universities, there are sort of,I would call it an attack on
humanities departments.
There are all sorts ofchallenges that are really
general in nature thatultimately find their way back
to the teaching of history inour particular context, but that

(13:30):
are also really difficult.
One concrete example of this iswhen you have a teacher
shortage, you're more likely tohave people in a school teaching
the subject who don't have abackground in the subject.
Well, what does that mean uhfor the practice of teaching in
in an everyday school?
I think it's a deep, deep uhkind of question that we haven't
really resolved yet.
We also have, and this is asample, I like to collect these

(13:51):
things just to point out thatwe're never living in uh you
know, Craig called it a time ofcrisis, which I think is true,
but there's this is not new.
A lot of this is not new.
These are all covers of theBulletin magazine from the 1970s
and 1980s, absolutelyaggressively in tone attacking
the role of teachers in society.
Um, you know, the idea thatwe're spending all this money

(14:12):
and we're pumping out duncesthat hasn't gone away.
Um, and that's reallydemoralizing as a teacher to
wake up in the morning.
You know, NapLeon results werereleased yesterday, to wake up
in the morning and to have themedia talk about education in
this sort of way when you'retrying to work hard and you're
getting it, you know, uh there'spressures on you from all
different kinds of angles.

(14:33):
It's a really difficult kind ofposition to be in as a teacher.
Um, so those general challengeswork their way towards teaching
history.
Um, but there are also sort ofparticular challenges, I think,
and that's what I want toconcentrate on in terms of
thinking about um teachinghistory.
Um, some of these are not neweither.
I'm gonna read to you somethinghere.
You now you're actually gonnabe my year nine class.

(14:53):
Nobody reads anymore, so I'mreading to you.
Okay, that's what happens now.
Um, and this is reasonablylengthy, but I want you to kind
of feel the guy's energy here.
This is, I'm not gonna name himfor various reasons.
Uh, but this was written in1977 in the Journal of the
Australian Uh History TeachersAssociation.
Uh, the journal no longerexists, but this was 1977,

(15:14):
responding to the keynote speechat the History Teachers of
Association uh NationalConference from 1974, in which
uh Professor John Ward stood upand delivered a really
interesting lecture in which hesaid history had triumphed over
all of its challenges.
Uh, and this person respondedwith an article, and here I
quote Today, would one not haveto admit rather sorrowfully that

(15:36):
history has not met andovercome these challenges?
In our schools, history uh hastoo often succumbed to the
unrelenting pressures and haslimped from the center of the
field to the ignominy of thesidelines where it lies battered
and forlorn.
Again, too often, those uponwhom we have relied for the
defense and the integrity ofhistory in our schools have
rushed and sold themselves outto become besiegers, even before

(16:00):
it actually the besiegingbegan, and invariably for
personal gain.
So this is a fairly heatedresponse.
History is still very muchunder attack, 1977, and seems to
be constantly surrounded byremorseless and implacable
enemies, like Phnom Penh beforeit capitulated, late 70s, Phnom
Penh uh capitulating before theKhmer Rouge.

(16:22):
Among its more or lesseffective enemies may be
numbered the dreaded memorandumnumber 21, which was a call to
make social sciences the new wayto teach history in schools,
blend it with geography, blendit with economics, and so on.
The bewitching base paper,another call for social
sciences, apparently, themurderous moderator of the
exams, the internal assessmentsthat we now all have to suffer

(16:44):
under, the abolition of otherexams for the school
certificate, the substitution ofthe will of the wisp aims and
objectives of the course contentin the junior years.
Um, in senior classes, we nowhave unit systems, restructured
HSE requirements, which haveabolished fairness and talent at
one malevolent sweep.
Approved study courses forseniors are here.

(17:06):
Marvelous idea in essence, butone that depletes the history
class.
English syllabuses, or rather,lack of them.
Immigration, the failure ofprimary education to teach
children to read and writeEnglish.
Behind all these noisybattalions stands the
Directorate of Studies with itspenchant for direction far more
than study, the dictatorship ofthe ignorant, and which is in

(17:28):
reality the camouflagedheadquarters of the social
science mercenaries, who haveinfiltrated into our school
communities with the serpentinedeviousness of the CIA.
The loyalty of its followersbeing regularly assured by
preachins and laverish offersofferings of chicken and
champers at the taxpayers'expense.
In this parade of persecutors,Memorandum 20 to 21 has earned

(17:51):
the right to an honoredposition.
Whatever the motives for itsintroduction, it's assisted in
the destruction of history byreducing it in schools.
Where once history andgeography alone competed for a
place in our curriculum, we nowshare that space with
institutionalization of socialstudies, Asian social studies,
and the social scienceintensified the struggle for the

(18:13):
most humble place in thetimetable.
To eliminate history, to waterit down to some equivalent of
the dance of the rum rebellion,I love this, the Norfolk Island
nudge or the federation fandangois not to help children
understand their heritage orbecome informed citizens.
This guy was absolutely furiousat what had happened in the

(18:34):
curriculum.
I get it, I totally get it,like parts of it anyway.
It feels like this has beengoing on for decades, that this
is not a new thing.
And so one of the challengesfiguring out actually, as a
historian, what's actually newhere in the challenges that we
face, what is new and actuallywhat is old.
Some of what he's talking aboutis still new.
We still have a crowdedcurriculum, we still have

(18:55):
pressures on our time.
New South Wales is one of theonly states where we actually
have mandatory hours, 200 ofthem in the junior school, where
history is actually carved out,has a space carved out in the
curriculum for it.
In other states, they don'thave that.
So schools are actually able toactually, you know, stop
teaching history at the end ofyear eight, the end of year
nine.
This is happening morefrequently.

(19:16):
STEM is coming into the mix ina more kind of common way.
So history is kind of battlingfor place in the curriculum.
Um, so that's one thing.
I think it's difficult to knowuh where we're at in terms of,
you know, are these new, arethese old?
Um the curriculum itself is areal challenge.
If anyone's ever tried to readthe curriculum from start to
finish, yes, so the gigglingwould tell me that you have.

(19:38):
Um, and I mean, I actuallythink a huge portion of my job
is justified on the basis that Ikind of read curriculums all
the time and hopefully can makesome sense out of them for
people who can't, um, includingother teachers half of the time.
Um, and I sort of make thejoke, but I think it's a real,
real important issue is thatcurriculums are often, they look
and feel like insurance policydocuments.

(19:59):
Um, you know, when when you getinto a car accident, you ring
up and they say, Didn't you lookat clause 14.2 point, you know,
part A?
And I say, sorry, I didn't.
Um, you know, and you'reentitled to this, this, and the
other thing.
This is a bit like reading ahistory curriculum document.
And so no wonder when we getpublic commentary on the history
curriculum in the media andother places, a lot of it is
just completely inaccuratebecause it's hard to read an

(20:21):
insurance policy document.
And so people latch onto onesentence and think it means X
when it actually means Y.
So getting a public discussionoff the ground around curriculum
is really complicated.
Uh, and sharing what it meansto teach this subject in in
schools is actually reallycomplicated because it the
curriculum itself is difficult.
In addition to that, um,actually getting through the

(20:42):
content that we're required toget through is really hard.
We teach in in New South Wales,basically from year seven to
ten, we teach uh you know, uhthe emergence of Homo sapiens
200,000, 250,000 years ago tothe present day.
Fit that in in 200 hours.
I challenge anyone to dojustice to that.
Throw on top of that that we'resupposed to do civics, we're on

(21:02):
top of that, we're supposed todo uh historical thinking, on
top of that, we're supposed todo literacy, on top of that,
we're supposed to do any numberof other things.
How are we going to do thatjustice?
It's almost begging for us tofail.
Um, so one of the unfortunatethings I often say to my young
uh history teachers who arecoming through university is the
first item of clothing you needto buy as a history teacher is

(21:23):
a hard hat.
Because you'll teach it wrong.
No matter what you do, you'llbe teaching it wrong for
somebody.
So that's a difficult thing toget your head around as a young
emerging teacher.
Um, then we have the kind ofchallenge of the rhetoric and
the investment.
Um, if you listened to therhetoric, you'd think that
people were pumping money intothis scene.
Right?
You look at the newspapers andthey they the the you know,

(21:45):
Craig mentioned the culture warsand this idea that history is
absolutely crucial to ourculture as Australians.
And if anyone puts their footwrong, you'll get smacked on the
wrist very quickly as a historyteacher.
But if you do something right,there are very few people there
to reward you.
Um, we see uh this whencurriculum debates come up.

(22:05):
There will be absolute war overa single dot point in the
curriculum that misses theentire sort of sweep of what the
curriculum is trying to teach.
And this will blow up into ahuge problem.
And so you'd think, okay,great, well, these people
obviously value history, thesepublic commentators, the
politicians, and so on whocomment on this.
The answer is they don't.
I mean, look at what'shappening to history departments

(22:26):
across the country at themoment.
Uh, in my local town,Wollongong, they've just
decimated the history departmentthere.
No one's putting their hand upto put money behind that.
I think that's reprehensible.
Um, so we talk about it in away that we we value it, but who
at the end of the day isactually putting money into it,
who's actually carving out time,who's actually sort of uh, you
know, investing uh that thattime and money into uh the

(22:50):
discipline, it's sometimesdifficult to know where that
comes from.
Uh on top of that, I think uhit's not just a money thing,
it's an intellectual challenge.
I think it's really interestingthat sometimes it feels to me,
anyway, that education has aremarkably anti-intellectual
kind of thread to it.
Um, it often comes down to verymuch, you know, who's got the
money and where that's going tobe placed.

(23:11):
But the fact is, in myexperience, anyway, uh becoming
a history teacher is deeplychallenging in an intellectual
sense.
It doesn't just take time andit doesn't just take money.
It takes a lot of reading, ittakes a lot of patience, it
takes a lot of trying things outand having them not work in the
classroom and sometimes beembarrassed.
I mean, I thank my lucky starsthat um I became a teacher

(23:34):
before, you know, social mediaand mobile phones and stuff like
that were running rampant.
I mean, I was able to makemistakes in more or less
private, right?
Um, it's much harder to do thatnow.
But it does take a lot of timeand effort.
Um, and again, I ask thequestion where where is the
investment coming from?
I think history teachers areworking really hard on this, and
they have for decades.
Um, and sometimes that's notmatched uh in other quarters.

(23:56):
Um, another big challenge ineducation uh that we find, I
think this is I'm borrowing herefrom an English uh history
teacher, Michael Fordham is hisname, and he he works closely
with a woman called ChristineCounsel who used to teach uh
history education at Cambridge.
And they have a littleexpression that I like.
It's like night nice and sortof simple to get your head

(24:17):
around, um, and that is thisnotion of educational
genericism.
And so that one of their kindof criticisms of education is
that it's really lost a kind ofreally a strong sense of
disciplinarity.
That education has kind ofbecome very much about very
generic goals and goals that wewould probably generally agree
to in some regards.
So, for example, they point outone of the common ones now is

(24:40):
that you know we need to beteaching critical thinking.
Who who wouldn't agree withthat?
Fantastic.
But how do you actually teachcritical thinking?
It's a very complicated task.
Um, so their argument isactually if you if you go and
have a look at how historyteachers often operate, they
teach history very critically.
A lot of the time, we'realready doing this.

(25:00):
But this idea we have to bedoing more critical thinking.
And often what this ends upbecoming is kind of a generic
curriculum object that the onlyreal critical thinking is when
students are outside theboundaries of a discipline,
working in an interdisciplinaryway, working on a project where
their science teaches there andtheir English teachers there and
their history teachers there,and they're doing this, you

(25:22):
know, breaking new ground as a12-year-old kid.
Um, and the argument them theymake is that actually uh this
does all sort, this genericgoals does all sorts of damage
to the the subjects that weteach because they take up so it
these goals take up so muchadditional time.
Literacy becomes a you know anadditional thing that we've got
to teach as a generic goal,right?

(25:44):
No one disagrees that weshouldn't be teaching literacy.
That's obviously uh somethingthat we should be prioritizing.
But again, we're already doingit in history.
So we're getting all of theseexternal things that we've got
to teach in addition to thesubject, in addition to the
content, that makes the jobreally, really challenging.
Um, and one of the ways thisshows up, I mean, I've seen this

(26:05):
at universities.
Um so you know, I can I can sayin some universities, the
amount of hours that areallocated in initial teacher
education programs tosubject-specific time and
subject-specific subjects.
So, how to teach history ifyou're at university studying to
become a history teacher, thehours for those subjects in some
universities have beendrastically reduced.

(26:25):
What's what what have they,they haven't sort of reduced the
number of courses you've got todo to become a teacher.
What they've added in is ageneric subject on assessment or
a generic, you know, uh subjecton literacy.
Not saying they shouldn'tnecessarily be there, but we're
taking subject time out of a lotof young teachers' uh training
to do generic things that don'tnecessarily always give them a

(26:47):
lot of specific tools to work inthe subjects they should teach
in or will end up teaching in.
I think that's shortchangingthem.
I would say that because Iteach the subject specific
subjects and I want more hoursback, right?
Um, so it perhaps you could saythat's sort of my bias in this.
But I think the uh the argumentis at least worth putting the
question on the table.
Are we serving young teacherswell uh by putting too much

(27:08):
generic stuff into a curriculum?
Of course, uh the other pointthat these guys would make is
that of course we've got to havesome generic content in there,
you know, and schools do have tohave generic content.
They're not saying everythingshould be done within subject
boundaries.
Um, so given all of that I'vesaid, I'll finish up really
quickly.
Um, given all that I've said,um you might sort of worry, uh

(27:29):
wonder uh in fact, um, whyhistory actually has survived at
all in some sense, because thechallenges are actually very
significant.
But in fact, I think relative,uh here's the positive story.
I think relative to thechallenges, history's actually
doing really well in many waysin New South Wales.
Um, so here uh you can see,sorry, the the first graphs have
covered up a little bit, butthis is basically data I've

(27:51):
crunched going back to the uhbeginning of the HSC in the late
60s.
And you can see that the numberof history students, uh perhaps
easier to see on the right, hasbeen reasonably stable if you
kind of look at it across thesort of general trend from the
60s to now.
That's the good part of thestory.
But if you look at the yellowline, that's the absolute number
of students who are doing theHSC.
So we've kept absolute ground,about 10,000 students doing

(28:14):
modern history, sort of thing,but we've lost relative uh
relative ground.
But the fact is, um, as well,if you look at things, if we
look at, say, the humanities,um, modern history is still one
of the most popular humanitiessubjects in the HSC.
There's a hundred and somethingsubjects in the HSC.
Um, modern history is in thetop 10, ancient history is in
the top 15.

(28:35):
So I'd love that to be bigger,the absolute number to be
bigger, but we've held ground ina really interesting way
against a proliferation ofsubjects and other things like
that.
Um, so uh I think there's areally interesting sort of set
of questions around why that'sthe case.
I'd bring it down to a fewthings.
The fact that teachers haveremained passionate, that's
crucial.
Um, at the moment, I thinkteachers have remained generally

(28:57):
well trained in their subjectbecause people like me were able
to do a Bachelor of Artsbecause we had history academics
at universities.
And then we were able to do uheducation on top of that.
I found that a really powerfuluh mode of learning to teach
history.
We've had some politicianswho've thrown their weight
behind it.
Special mention to Bob Carrhere, who actually sort of put a
floor under history in NewSouth Wales by saying 200-hour

(29:20):
minimum.
Um, we've also had institutionsand many people actually in
this room.
It's really nice to see so manypeople from museums and
libraries and so on who haveactually lent their weight
again, their institutionalweight to history in schools in
in all sorts of different ways.
Um and I think history actuallyremains popular amongst the
general population.
I think that's still the case,actually.
Um, despite what the media willtell you that it's all gone to,

(29:43):
you know, it's all gone to thedogs and it's all woke and all
the rest of it.
It's just not the case.
Um, it's not the case on theground.
Um the last thing that I wantto quickly finish on uh is just
my kind of uh big starting pointfor what the future looks like,
because that's part of the thequestion here.
I don't have any sort Sort ofreally um you know heroic
answers to this.

(30:03):
And in fact, one of the thingsI've been kind of thinking about
a lot over the last few yearsis is trying to look away from
the waves that are crashing onthe surface and to look for
something that's a bit deeper,to look for a current that we
can find that might take usforward, not two years in the
face of AI or to you know in theface of uh declining history
departments or whatever it mightbe, but that might carry us

(30:24):
forward over in the next decadeor two.
Um and this actually comes froman old uh argument that was
made um by Stuart McIntyre, thelate Stuart McIntyre.
He had a debate with uh a verywell-known his uh historian of
education and former historyteacher, Alan Barkin, who was
based at Newcastle University.
Um, and they had an exchange ina in an Australian Journal of

(30:45):
Education in 1997, and they werebasically saying, what's gone
wrong with history 1997?
Crisis is old.
Okay.
Um and Stuart McIntyre's answerhad just resonated with me the
moment I read it.
He said, We can't controleverything, but what's in our
control, we can focus on thesethings.
And I think he's absolutelyspot on as a starting point.
It's not a complete missionhere or a vision for what we can

(31:06):
do.
But he says, I think it wouldmake sense for history teachers
wherever they are.
Let's play that broadly, inuniversities, in schools, in
cultural institutions, peoplemaking podcasts, whatever it is.
He says, We should focus onthree things as history

teachers (31:19):
knowing history, learning about the facts of the
past, learning about the storiesthat give it coherence, and
discussing those.
That's important.
If I teach a 10-week topic onWorld War I and my kids can't
remember that it broke out in1914, it's frustrating, but it
happens, right?
But that's my aim.
I want them to know somethingabout World War I at the end of
the day.

(31:39):
They can't do anythinginteresting with the subject if
they don't know things.
The second thing he says, weshould introduce them, depending
on where they are in their kindof learning, to the doing of
history.
Learning to read a document,learning to make sense of a
document and draw a conclusionfrom it, learning to, as silly
as they might at 13, make anargument.
My five-year-old son's just gotinto cricket, he's terrible.

(32:02):
I don't I don't poke fun athim.
I go, well done, mate, greathit.
And I'm throwing the ballslowly because he's not Steve
Smith on the cricket pitch.
I play to his strengths.
So at where they are in intheir learning, doing history
and beginning to build thoseskills up over time.
And I love the last one.
He's borrowing Greg Denning'sidea here of performing history.

(32:24):
Ultimately, teaching history tomy mind is a performance.
That doesn't cheapen it.
I think it actually makes itreally even more valuable.
Um, standing in front of theclass and telling them a story
that hopefully gets theirattention, reading a document
with them that again gets theirarrests their attention, a diary
entry from the First World Waror whatever it might be that
you're talking about.

(32:45):
Um, in in culturalinstitutions, showing artifacts
and teasing out the stories thatpeople are so good at in their
own way.
And, you know, I think there'sthere's ways to do this that
are, I said here, popular.
Let's put schooling in that inthat classic uh in that
classification.
We're not talking about peoplewho have got a PhD or want to
have one necessarily, they'rethey're being forced to sit in

(33:06):
my history class.
And so I've got to do that in atailored way to that audience,
knowing, doing, and performing.
But I can kind of do the samething when I teach history at
university, and they areaspiring to be a history uh
teacher.
In fact, Greg Denning did thisin wonderful ways.
I never met him and never sawit in action.
But he used to actually getstudents to his master's degree

(33:27):
program and he'd say, You've gothalf an hour to go away and
come back and perform to mesomething about history that
brings this life to life foryou.
And on the spot, they wouldhave to do something on the spot
in a really creative way.
And he says, If you can't dothis to me, how are you going to
do it to the general public?
So it's a really interestingchallenge for us, I think.
Um, and hopefully we can pickup some uh more of this in the

(33:49):
questions.
Thank you very much.

Professor Tim Allender (33:54):
Thank you very much for this
invitation, Craig, and theothers involved in uh the museum
and um History Council, that'sright.
And I'd like to acknowledge umthe Gadigal people, past,
present, and future uh on landnever ceded.
Um I'm going to take slightly,I'm working around Jonathan's
passion, which is justfantastic, and really we need to

(34:16):
hear that, to um embroider someof the academic side perhaps of
history as a discipline, butalso I'm aware that there's a
quite a few of you in theaudience that aren't history
teachers.
So I'm going to spend a coupleof first slides very quickly
talking a little bit about thatcraft before um I move on to the

(34:37):
other more substantive stuffthat I want to talk about.
I'm a product of Victoria, andit used to be general studies.
I'm really aging myself now.
I'd love to be able to show youmy teachers, but I don't know
if they'd still be aliveactually.
But I noticed a former student,uh, a school student of mine

(34:58):
from many years ago now, andit's lovely to see you.
And it's I've had somewonderful conversations with
people that are interested inart and other fields that aren't
particularly uh opposite tohistory in the first instance,
but it just shows you what amagical discipline it is and how
it draws people in.
And um I want to talk a littlebit about that too, um, in the

(35:21):
time that I have.
Um, first thing I'd just sayfor I taught for 12 years in
schools.
I'm not necessarily someonethat's got their head in the
clouds, hopefully, as anacademic here.
And I loved every minute of it,you know, I really, really did.
It was just such I'd come outof my master's a lot of solitary
work in um archives and thatsort of thing.

(35:44):
And to be able to be aperformer in front of kids, you
know, and getting theminterested in this in the
subject was, you know, you closethe gate or the door.
Most classes, not all of them.
Some of them you think, oh mygod, I'm glad that's over.
Others, you know, I just think,I don't got paid for that.
You know, it's just such anindulgent almost thing to do, to

(36:05):
be able to teach passionately.
And one of the gifts I think ofour discipline is that really
uh students bring a lot of itinto the classroom in certainly
ways that need to be negotiated.
But they have some sense ofhistory, most of them, whether
it's through their families,grandparents, who are great

(36:28):
storytellers, of course,hopefully, if they're still
around, if they're lucky, um,popular culture, you know,
films, all that sort of thing.

And I really love this phrase: all history is a negotiation (36:35):
undefined
between familiarity andstrangeness.
And I think history teachers dothe strangeness bit by
formularizing history as a craftand initiating students into it
as a formal discipline,hopefully if they go on to

(36:56):
university, but in other fieldstoo, where they can use a
historical lens to understandthings better.
Uh, Jonathan mentions Bob Carr,you know, and he's a hero for
us, history in New South Wales.
And when you hear it, hear himtalking um on, you know, even
recent issues, um, his hisnarrative is enriched in ways

(37:20):
that many other commentatorsaren't, because he knows his
history, you know, it makes adifference, really does, of
course.
And I'm speaking to theconverted, of course, here, but
it's a precious subject.
Um, okay, what do historyteachers do?
Well, I I'm not going to, theseare the two quick slides, but
you know, things like that, youknow, they're using their

(37:41):
judgment.
If they're going to teachfeminism, probably going to
think, well, that's going to bea senior class concept.
I'm not going to teach it perse, because I know my students
don't have, like I have, astrong contextual knowledge of
historical um place.
So it's no point talking aboutfirst wave, second wave
feminism, and third and fourthwave all in the same breath,

(38:05):
because we understand, ofcourse, what those um um
conflicts were about because weknow the history context, but
school kids don't.
So they're going to makechoices about that, another kind
of choice that a skilled,history-tamed teacher knows what
to do.
Now, this is not a recipe.
Teachers teach it in alldifferent ways, and that's the

(38:26):
wonderful part of it.
But let me just go through someof the others there.
Federation, you know, it seemsvery dry, but then you want a
performative teacher to think,well, to say things like, Well,
could we do that today?
Could we get our states toagree to be in a federation
today?
What was different comparednow, compared to then?
Um, you know, Germany betweenthe wars, one of my favorite

(38:49):
ones, and I'm really, reallypleased it's now the core
section of modern history,because it teaches kids so much
about the human condition, youknow, how a modern industrial
state could end up electing theNazis, you know.
What's the conflict there?
You know, what's the contestthere?

(39:09):
And what does that teach us tooabout the human condition going
forward?
That's another dimension that atrained history teacher would
probably take, or something likethat.
We all sort of know thosethings because most of us are
trained in history, but it is avery specific form of language
and understanding and knowing.

(39:29):
We don't realize sometimes thatwe have it, you know.
Um, multiculturalism, you'renot going to put that on a mind
map and get kids to sort of tellyou what it means because kids,
if they're worth their salt asadolescents, are going to say to
themselves, well, this is amoral lesson coming.
I know what all the rightanswers are, but it's not going

(39:51):
to teach me anything.
And this is sort of like, youknow, valueless.
But us, you know, a strategicteacher is going to teach around
that by looking, getting kidsto look at family history or
some other kind of um, you know,podcasts of another kind where
where people are talking abouttheir life journeys, or maybe
even interviewing, you know, avery old person that's probably

(40:13):
a little bit lonely.
Get them to talk about theirhistory.
And more often than not,there's going to be a
multicultural lens in that thekids don't realize that's
actually happening.
Teachers know how to do that.
Good experienced teachers too.
Australian history, Jonathanmentioned, you know, uh Stuart
McIntyre.

(40:33):
Um, you know, um, in the uhshaping document years ago with
the beginnings of the nationalcurriculum, he's saying, look,
don't treat Australian historyas constrained within national
geographical borders.
Think about the influences fromoutside, think of the
Enlightenment and the whole ideaof what formed society, the

(40:56):
ideas around that.
Think about other nationalhistories that aren't Europe
that have shaped Australia aswell.
Um, and citizenship, you know,you if you look at a very
experienced teachers, I had theprivilege of being able to do
that in Queensland, you know.
And they're doing a lot of thisis an ancient history classes

(41:18):
in particular that I canremember.
They're doing a lot of timetravel backwards and forwards.
What did citizenship mean inthe ancient world?
What's the same?
What's different?
The rape of the Sabine women,for example.
And of course, the last thingis we've got this wonderful
subject that really, you know,that's got fabulous content, you

(41:43):
know, that we can really engagekids with.
We're so lucky that we havethat, you know.
Um, despite, of course, asJonathan so rightly says, all
these threats that we have to itto what we can do in a
classroom.
Now, I'm not going to talkabout those, but that's what
else teachers taught do, don'tthey?
Uh, you know, in syllabuses,those of you who are in front of

(42:04):
me today, you know, politiciansdon't see that side of things.
They argue about usuallycontent constituencies, like why
isn't Vietnam in there?
You know, or the history wars,you know, this sort of
wrong-headed idea earlier on,you know, is it Henry Reynolds'
foot paint footnotes that we'rereally talking about here, or
are we actually talking aboutsomething entirely different

(42:26):
that is the historian's craft?
You know, it's not postmodernmishmash to use the phrase of a
former prime minister.
Uh, it's much, much more thanthat.
We know all of that stuff, sojust let me get off that.
Uh, Nessa, you know, I thinktoo, when you I think Jonathan
touched on this as well.
Whenever you're sitting inconsultative committees, um, you

(42:48):
know, um, trying to fathom howwhat the next syllabus is going
to look like, you know, you'reonly one stakeholder amongst
many.
Uh, sometimes it feels a bitlike the Tower of Babel where
everyone's sort of talking aboutdifferent things, but you
imagine it's the same narrative,you know, and it feels like
it's clumsy and not thatsatisfying.

(43:09):
And Jonathan really pointed outbeautifully, if I may say so,
the reasons for that that Iwon't go into.
His syllabus developmentgenerally is a bit slow in
incorporating new theorization,but I have to acknowledge and
would like to acknowledge Nessa,and particularly with
historical thinking concepts,they're actually in the past
concept, the previous syllabusas well as the current one.

(43:31):
And that's really, reallyencouraging to see, you know.
Okay.
Um, we've got this stuff.
Jonathan's talked about italready.
Um, you know, we just a littlebit of history of history, if
you like, you know, historyextension.
Um, McGaugh earlier on, uh,Barry McGraw came up with the
idea that we've got a crowdedcurriculum, you know, yet again

(43:54):
that problem.
Getting rid of all the threeunit subjects as they used to be
in all subjects.
Um English, maths, um, science.
Bob Carr says, well, history'sgot to go in there as well.
That's the fourth extensionhistory subject.
And that was really strategicbecause when the national

(44:16):
curriculum came along, what arethe four subjects that are
developed first as the fourprimary ones?
Yeah, history's in there aswell.
And that's really, reallystrategic.
We've got, um, and as Jonathanrightly says, you know, we have
um, you know, we're one of thefew states left that has history
as a discrete subject, seven toten.

(44:39):
It's there's been a lot ofslippage in other countries and
other countries and otherstates, almost feels like other
countries when it comes tohistory.
Um, you know, um, and we've gotuh the um yeah, history
elective as well, and that'ssort of really inquiry-based
learning, which I really like,actually, you know.
So New South Wales is rich onthis stuff, you know, and it's

(45:02):
doing, you know, we we've got towatch it, haven't we, Jonathan?
We've got to watch, we've gotto protect this thing because
it's really, really precious.
Just a couple of things thatI'd point out that um I don't
know, Carla, if you'd agree withthis, but you know, there's a
bit of a worry about FirstNations when you teach that with
contact history andcolonialism.

(45:22):
It's too early.
Yes.
Um, you know, it's uh you youthink about the complexities of
the whole issue of contacthistory, First Nations and
colonialism.
Year seven, year eight.
You know, this is sort of arecipe for teaching it in a
token way yet again.
Because kids aren't at thecognitive level to be able to

(45:46):
understand its full complexity.
It's a lot better than theprevious syllabus, though, where
it was in stage from memoryfrom stage in the last part of
primary school, so stage three.
I think I think I'm correctthere.
We've got this other issuethough, that the syllabus is far
too Eurocentric, and that's areally hard one to win.
I've tried.
I've really tried.

(46:07):
Um, and it will come in time,but here's just an example of
just one group there um of um umof Indian students.
I like to use the statisticsaround language rather than
ethnicity, because if if it'slanguage in the home, that
probably means there's a verystrong cultural referencing in

(46:29):
that home rather than you knowbeing of Indian extraction as
such.
And you know, that's prettystark.
The Chinese dimension wouldmatch that.
And yet, you know, theRenaissance, the Reformation,
what does that mean to an Indianstudent or a Chinese student?
You know, we've got to thinkabout that more.

(46:49):
Part of the the I have to say,part of the pullback the other
way is of course teachers,experienced teachers have a lot
of resources on these areas andare reluctant to give them up.
Uh that goes, by the way, forexample Germany between the
wars.
And it was very clever thatthey made NESA made that the
core because it became sohegemonic when it was a an

(47:11):
optional subject as a 20thcentury study.
Something like 65% of the statechose it out of eight options.
Um it's that's another sort offorce that comes from the
profession, perhaps working backthe other way, but that's a bit
of a problem, you know.
We have to be able to embraceour multicultural country far

(47:34):
better when it comes to theteaching of the subject, in my
view.
The future.
Just a few last slides and andthen I'll stop.
Um yeah, I mean, there's a lotof money, isn't there?
You know, $87 billion is spenton um on uh funding of education
generally.
That includes building newbuildings and recurrent
expenditure and all the rest ofit.

(47:55):
But it's a lot of money, isn'tit?
You know?
What about just a little bit toestablish some architectures
around teacher-to-teacher acrossschools mentoring as such?
I feel a little bit disabled,quite frankly, when you talk
about professional developmentat universities.
I actually think experiencedteachers there, the researchers

(48:17):
in the field, they know whatworks in a classroom.
They've got a lot to give therest of the profession, much
more than I have, as a teachereducator at uni.
And we really need to push thatone and recognize it much more.
Um, they are researchers intheir classroom, even though if
you ask them to write down whatthey're doing, they'd find that

(48:38):
really hard to do, probably,many of them.
Because it is tricky.
I find it tricky when I'mresearching in in into
classrooms um when I've donethat in the past.
Um we've got all this stuffaround deprofessionalization of
teachers, you know.
Um, and I, you know, andJonathan's mentioned the NAT
plan thing and all the negativesaround that and the need to

(48:59):
direct teaching, you know, itsounds so good.
Direct teaching, let's controlit and make sure that these
nasty teachers don't start, youknow, waffling on about
secondary kind of stuff as such.
I think too, I've probably gotthis on the next slide.
I'm not sure, but I'll I'll goto the next slide just, yeah.
Um, just a few.

(49:20):
Oh, yeah.
I'll just one other thing I'djust say about AI.
I'm a little bit worried aboutit.
I think it's going to be reallyexciting, and I'm not resisting
it.
I don't really know what it isyet.
Uh, really don't.
Um, there's a lot of umcertitude around what's uh
secure assessment and what'sinsecure assessment at

(49:40):
university at the moment.
But then when you ask um theexperts in the field what is AI,
they really struggle becauseit's just changing so quickly,
as we know.
Um, but I have a terriblysinking feeling that when AI
does visit schools and it'salready well in there, of
course, now ahead ofuniversities, I think too.

(50:02):
Is it going to be a force for akind of a further separation of
administrative umdecentralization where there's
no middle management,particularly for young teachers?
Um the Harvard Business Schoolmodel on steroids, you know,
that that worries me a bit aboutthe the organizational

(50:25):
implications of um um of AI.
The last point I want to makeis just about cross-disciplinary
approaches.
The the really, really goodnews about history is that it's
a strong discipline, you know,and I can reassure you all, if I
may, as a teacher that a writerin disciplinary fields, other

(50:46):
disciplinary fields, historystays strong.
It's quite happy to be, youknow, combined with other areas
like visual studies, uhcitizenship, we know about um
museum studies, of course.
Um understanding better gender,you know, what what how gender

(51:06):
is such a powerful force inunderstanding others.
We don't realize just howpowerful that lens is.
School kids need to know moreabout that.
But we've got other stuff therelike holograms and the Jewish
Museum.
Um yeah, um, you know, justHolocaust survivors, you know,
uh talking and who are no longerwith us.

(51:28):
But the technology is sofantastic now there that you
know you can have two sons ortwo children of the Holocaust
survivor.
You can actually ask the personwho's got who's no longer with
us questions and they'll getanswers.
It's after about two days ofinterviews with that person
whilst they're still alive.
But the technology isextraordinary, and kids really

(51:50):
can get into this stuff usingnew technologies as such.
Um just a few last ones.
Uh I won't I don't want todwell on these too much because
I I don't want to take up toomuch more time, but um there's
some stuff there like MyHeritage Um at Time or AI Time

(52:11):
Machine, um which is anextraordinary technology that's
AI at the moment that's lookingat new new new acronyms for
VIPA, all that stuff, which ismeans to teach kids how to
understand and detect forgeriesonline, going through images and
looking at the image itself.

(52:32):
That stuff's coming too.
I'm pretending here that I'm anexpert on AI, but I'm not.
But I can just see a little bitof stuff coming that's really
exciting for history teacherstoo.
The last ones that I justmentioned are just the um the uh
issue about boys.
I think we've got a lot morework to do with boys in schools

(52:57):
and using history to help themunderstand their place and give
them new voice.
We have people like Alan Garnerand Julia Gillard and others
that have started to talk aboutthis, and Jonathan, you touched
on it as well.
Um, you know, it's it's it'sreally, really important that we
find new ways of giving them avoice and understanding their

(53:20):
history, particularly as thewars thankfully start coming out
of the syllabus of the the waythey were traditionally taught
as such.
And that's fine.
Thank you.
And the last one is just justthe whole role of protest and
its its place in history, itsvalidity, respectful, peaceful
protests, and how social changehappens, you know.

(53:43):
Um I I'm a bit of a marcher,you know, the the sorry march
over the bridge, uh domesticviolence marches last year and
and Gaza last weekend.
You look around and you thinkwhy are these people here?
What's brought them here?
And I like to think it'sthey're teachers, partly, but I

(54:04):
have a sinking feeling thatwe've got more work to do here
because it feels much more likeit's culture and family that
have brought most of thosepeople to those marches.
And I don't really know.
I'd like to know more aboutthat, but I think the insurgent
history teacher really famous ina schooling setting, aren't

(54:24):
they?
You know, if you want adissatisfied dominant staff
room, go to the history one, youknow, they'll tell you all
about the things that are, youknow, because they decode things
as part of their job as historyteachers.
I'd like to see a little bitmore of that imparted into for
the rising generation ofstudents so that we protect our
our really vibrant democracythat we're lucky enough to have.

(54:47):
Thank you very much.

Thank you, Tim.
I'll ask both you and Jonathanto join me up on the stools.
Um, and uh uh I will shortly uhopen the uh floor for questions
as well too.
So start formulating some of mythank you both very much.
Um you've covered a lot ofground in your respective 20
minutes, so thank you.
But um I'd I'd I want to startupon, and I love your your both

(55:15):
of you commenting about thepassion of history teachers and
the performative aspect as well,that we might come back and
revisit as well.
But I want to jump on what yousaid, Tim, that uh teacher
teachers being researchers intheir classroom and teachers
knowing what works in theclassroom.
So starting with a positiveresponse, in terms of the

(55:36):
conversations you have withteachers and seeing students,
what's working currently?
What are what are schoolstudents responding to in
history classes that they're notnecessarily doing so in
English, maths, science, andother academic or other
curricular disciplines?

Professor Tim Allender (55:50):
Thank you, Craig.
Um, I think the one thing Iwant to say is I get away from
ideas like best practice orrecipes about how to teach
because it's such a a veritablefield.
Um, I think what works forteachers though is when they're
really, really interested, andexperienced teachers do this
really well, and they'll they'lltalk to you about reflecting on

(56:14):
practice uh, you know, forhours if you if you let them,
you know.
They're really, reallyinterested in trying new ways of
doing things and keepingthemselves refreshed by teaching
things in different ways assuch.
Um I think they know theirstudents.
Um, and I think um no one yearwould be the same if I went back

(56:38):
to that class and looked at thestudents being taught again by
that same teacher, even thatsame topic, I would find it
quite different.
So it's the adaptability of theteacher to be able to reach
their students and tap into whatmight really grab them as such,
and it's different each year,really, as such.

(57:01):
That's an unsatisfactoryanswer, I think, because I'd
love to be able to sort ofstratify it more than that,
Craig, but I'm really reluctantto do that.
Um, but this is part of themagic of the historian's craft
in a classroom.
It's highly specialized stuff.
That's what I'm trying to getacross.
So it's important to takeJonathan's point up, you know,

(57:23):
with universities having historydepartments, formal training of
history teachers as such.
Um, I think the federalgovernment's getting away from
uh starting to look at theMorrison government about um
changing the the hike in feesfor art subjects.
And I'm really looking forwardto that because it all chimes

(57:44):
into the same issue.

Certainly the uh certainly the current
campaign from the AustralianHistorical Association launched
earlier this week.
Um so if you're not at a chanceto uh to sign, um please do so.
But uh Jonathan, would you liketo add?

Jonathon Dallimore (58:00):
Oh, just quickly, I mean, I think I echo
all that.
Um and I mean I I do thinkhistory is one of those subjects
where it does, I know this isnecessarily popular to say, um,
but you know, the idea that thatteaching is very relational um
is is unpopular in some circles.
It's like there's this moretechnical approach that we can
have and it's this is effective.
But I I I can't get away fromthe fact that history is deeply

(58:22):
relational in the sense that ifa student, a group of students
don't really know and trust me,it makes it very difficult to
have a con conversation withthem, a proper discussion that
goes anywhere productive arounda thorny issue about migration
or you know, a contemporaryissue that that is not
additional to the curriculum.
These a lot of these things areactually in the curriculum,

(58:43):
right?
Um, so um, and and and I thinkthis is one of the unique things
about teaching history is thatit it is it is very challenging
in that regard.
And it takes a lot of time tobuild up a lot of relationship
with these students.
I mean, my last school I was atfor a while, and so I taught
some of the students in yearseven all the way through to
year 12.
And so you could kind of justwaltz into a class almost, like,

(59:04):
and they kind of know you, andyou you're you're 30% down the
track.
It just makes it so mucheasier.
Um, and they know if I ask thisquestion, Mr.
Bellymore's not gone rogue andhe's not gonna be, you know,
imposing this view on me.
He's gonna do that thing wherehe opens up a discussion and I
get to have a say, but there'sprobably gonna be a difference
of opinion.
It's really hard to do thatwhen you're new to a school or

(59:24):
you know, new teacher, A, buteven new to a school as an
experienced teacher, that'sreally hard.
So well, I think at the end ofthe day, like for me, a huge
part of it is never gonna beenough.
But I think a huge part ofbeing a really good history
teacher is being passionateabout the subject, and it's just
not anywhere in the teachingmanual.
You know, like the Australianteaching standards, it doesn't
say gets enthused about subject,you know, it just doesn't say

(59:45):
that.
And it should, it should belike 50% of the the the
structure, you know.
But everybody knows, like youhave a a a teacher who's not
into it, and you're justprobably not going to get into
it.

Well, I guess that segues quite nicely into
the performative aspect as well.
That that uh Of you, but inparticular, Jonathan, you um
spoke about you know, is perhapsdrama training part of the
process as well as historytraining.
Um, but again, uh given thatstorytelling aspect of
historical investigation aswell, are there ways of

(01:00:15):
creatively weaving that creativeprocess into the way that we
teach history?

Jonathon Dallimore (01:00:24):
Yeah, yeah.
I look, I think absolutely.
I and I think you know,performance to me is not, again,
I tried to sort of say this,um, but to me, performance is
not a kind of a performative,you know, in the in the negative
sense, um uh concept.
It's it's a it's an affirmativething about what teachers do.
And it means all sorts ofdifferent things.
I mean, uh when I write, I'mperforming.

(01:00:45):
This is Greg Denning's point,is that you know, a performance
is um the movie Gladiator, it'sit's the the the play Hamilton,
it's someone teaching in aclass, it's someone making a
podcast, it's someone actuallywriting an essay.
That's a performance of aparticular kind.
It's it's um people frommuseums here, uh, when you take
a student around an exhibit,it's bringing all like this dead

(01:01:06):
object to life for them.
And that takes a real skill, Ithink, you know.
Um, so I do think I do thinkthere's a really creative side
to that with teachers.
Um, and the point of it, Ithink, is not to just uh, you
know, education is not a systemof entertainment, but the
reality is there has to be someconnection, some hook, some
entry point into the subject tobegin to think about it in

(01:01:29):
increasingly complex ways.
So if I go into a class of14-year-olds who are not
academically performing verywell, and I say, hey guys, you
know, let's read, uh, we weretalking about Edward Sayed out
there.
We're gonna do Orientalism nowwith the 14-year-olds, they're
just gonna glaze over and belike, what is going on?
You know?
So we show a photograph and wesay, What do you what do you see
there?
And and let's have a talk aboutthis.

(01:01:50):
And, you know, somethinghappened in the playground.
You use it as the connection.
Um, that's to me what it meansto be performing.
It's all organic, it's allconnected to the students.
And the ultimate aim is that webring them into a space that
they may not have thought aboutbefore.
I mean, I think this is one ofthe real tensions of teaching
history, is it's ultimatelyyou're using these things that

(01:02:11):
are familiar, you're using thesethings that they might be
interested in to take themsomewhere they may not have
thought about before.
That's what I think theultimate aim is.
I mean, I really like GertBiesta, you know, the
philosopher, he's Dutch, Ithink, philosopher.
And he says that there's thiswhole silly discussion between
teacher-centered andstudent-centered education.
And he says, actually,education's about the world.
I think that's a brilliantreframing of the discussion,

(01:02:32):
world-centered education, wherewe're all looking outside
ourselves to something a littlebit bigger.
Some kids it's that much, andsome kids you get that much.
It's you've got to you've gotto be sensitive to that.

Professor Tim Allender (01:02:44):
I I couldn't agree more, and I don't
want to say more because Ithink that's really summed it up
um superbly.
I'm passionate, you know, youneed to be passionate, clearly,
it's obvious with school kids,uh, much more than maybe even
university students, althoughyou need it there too.
Because they do connect withyou personally, uh, they want to

(01:03:04):
understand you um as much asyou dare share with them.
And that can be just a littlebit, you know.
It's a very personal thing,learning history.
But you can unpack stuff downwithout them realizing.
And of course, they don't hearanything about syllabuses or,
you know, inquiry-based learningor that's our language, not
theirs.
But I I do what sticks, whatwhat was a big lesson for me was

(01:03:27):
when I was in one of thosecurriculum committee meetings,
you know, not making muchheadway.
And uh the discussion wasaround key competencies coming
from K right up to year 12.
And the discussion was arounduh sources.
And you know, it's and the andthe person was talking about
this was talking about it's acontinuum from K to 12.

(01:03:51):
And I spoke, I do thissometimes ahead of time, and I
shouldn't have.
And I said, Well, I don't knowabout you know, a kindergarten
kid learning about sources, andI got sat back on my backside
very quickly by a primary schoolkid, said, Yeah, you know, what
about a kid that you brings twophotographs to school one of

(01:04:14):
say they're both of his of theirmother, I won't gender it.
Um one's their mother is agirl, one is a mother now.
Can they work, can theyunderstand the difference in
source?
And of course they can.
So I learned something thatday, you know, and it's stuck
with me since.
Um we mustn't forget the K to12 continuum and how that works

(01:04:38):
through.
At least we don't repeat stuffnow at secondary school that's
been taught in primary school.
Um, but we've got a bit more ofa way to go to be thinking
about those younger years too,and how that learning is
progressing when we get them insecondary school as uh as
history students.

Dr Craig Barker (01:04:59):
Look, I'll open the floor now.
Um, so if anyone does have aquestion, just raise your hands,
but wait till I come acrosswith the microphone.
I'll also invite any commentsfrom experiences, either if
you've worked as teachers or asa student.

Question 1 (01:05:13):
Thanks very much for a very informative
conversation.
Something that's crossed mymind a lot is comparing World
War II to Star Wars.
And with Star Wars, it'sobviously fictional.
We know the we know the movies,but there's this whole genre,
you know, of technical manuals,genealogies, maps, histories,
timelines, this wholefictionalized background that's

(01:05:35):
been created for Star Wars thatsome people are really
fascinating and they really wantto get they want to get the
facts right.
There's a Star Wars canon, theyget very upset if there's you
know misalignments and they theytry to explain them.
Now, on the other side, I findWorld War II fascinating because
it's got all the drama of StarWars, what actually happened.
It's got its own prequels,World War I, it's got the its

(01:05:57):
sequel, which is the Cold War.
But my question is, what is itdo you think compels people to
be more interested in afictionalized environment like
Star Wars neglecting somethingthat actually happened?

I um I have there's a distinction for
me.
I don't like that where factsor content is deliberately
consorted, you know, to make ittidy and acceptable to uh an
Anglo-Saxon middle class.
I'm thinking of films likeEnigma, uh where um what was his

(01:06:37):
name?
Um Jerry is quietly walkingacross Trafalgar Square with the
pigeons flying up at the end ofthe film, uh wife in hand and
two children.
That's to me corrosive becauseit doesn't tell the real story
and I won't bore you with thedetails.

(01:06:58):
I do though love fiction andhistory or history-based fiction
because it really is a greatway of getting children and
anyone really to think visuallyabout the past and to think in
complex conceptual ways withouteven realizing you're doing
that, you know.
Um, I'm not sure about StarWars and World War II.

(01:07:21):
Uh, I have to think about thatone, but it's an interesting
parallel that you make there.
Yeah.

Just to say that uh yeah, so I mean, this
comes down to knowing yourclass.
Like I've taught a class wherethere was a bunch of boys who
were right into that kind offantasy stuff, and you know, you
try to use it to youradvantage, but the challenge is
that you, you know, the timeconstraint is so so obvious.
And the other side to it for meis that as you said, I think,
you know, like a lot of theseevents when you know them really

(01:07:52):
well, like World War II is asdramatic and interesting as Star
Wars will ever be, you know.
Um, and I think maybe thereason we like Star Wars is
because we know about World WarII, actually, not the other way
around.

Uh there was a hand over this, yep, and then
you.

Question 2 (01:08:09):
Hi, um, really interesting talk, guys.
I just had a question.
I'm like a very recentlygraduated uh high school student
who did modern history andhistory extension.
And a big thing that was like areally main concern for me
coming out of the curriculumreally recently was um the lack
of incentive to actuallyresearch beyond the curriculum.
Like after the HSE exams, I hadstudents that never wanted to

(01:08:33):
read about like World War II orthe Cold War ever again.
They didn't want to look at itbecause it just gave them like
this flashback of writing essaysover and over again.
So, what's like your comment onis the curriculum like too
saturated?
Are we making high schoolstudents, especially like older
high school students, doing toomuch, maybe?

Yeah, that's a good question.
I don't know if there'll everbe a satisfactory answer to
that.
Like sometimes I think yes,sometimes I think no.
It's really tricky.
Um, I mean, it I mean, I hadthe same experience.
I gotta be honest.
Like, we, you know, when I didthe HSC, we did Nazi Germany and
everything was Germany.
75% of it was Germany.
So when I got to uni, I justdid all Russia.
Because I was like, I'm done,you know, with that stuff.

(01:09:13):
And it was it was a bitovercooked, you know.
Um, so I had the similarexperience in the sense that the
things that I'd spent all thistime on um in school, I kind of
wanted to move a bit beyond.
Um, and there was also no examat university, so it felt a
little more open in how weactually were able to approach
things.
Um, and I don't know, I hadthat reverse experience of um

(01:09:34):
the uh what do you call it, theextraneous, the motivation, the
external motivation of the examseemed to have a negative effect
on me.
And when they took the examaway, I started to read heaps
and do more.
You know, I don't know whatthat was, but it's sort of how
it functioned for me.
So I I kind of had thatexperience in that sense.
But yeah, look, I think the thecurriculum is demanding,
there's no doubt about that.

(01:09:54):
Um, there's upsides to thattoo, in the sense that I think
history in the senior years,maybe I have no evidence for
this, so this is a total hunch.
But one of the things thatmight be helping keep history a
little bit buoyant is that ithas a reputation as a strong
subject that's solid.
It's negative too, because ifyou you don't like reading and

(01:10:15):
that sort of stuff, it itobviously is a really chat a big
challenge.
But I think we maybe we'regetting a lot of um a bit more
academic of the academicstudents taking modern history,
for example, now.
I don't know.
Um, and more of them are doingthat than say that used to do
something like economics,because the numbers of economic
students has declined rapidlyover the you know the last few

(01:10:35):
years.
So it might actually be playingout in a in a positive way that
we can't really see yet.
I don't know.
That's a tricky one to answer.
It's it's a really it feelslike alchemy sometimes
curriculum, doesn't it?
Because you're like you'recalibrating things and then sort
of like not knowing exactly howit works, and then it just
seems to do its thing, right?
Yeah, it's hard.

Thank you, Jonathan, and what a great
question.
Um I think one of the mostprecious parts of history in New
South Wales is historyextension, because it gives
students uh an entree into whatuniversity history looks like,
but even more than that, what anhonest thesis might look like.
Um it's that special.
The idea of what I'm what's myquestion?

(01:11:18):
How am I going to research it?
How do I know that I found youknow new stuff basically?
Marvel's for teachers, becausethey're usually small classes
and there's a tutoring,mentoring thing that's much
stronger.
Um, but the the structurebehind extension history in a
much simpler form, I've seen inBengali schools for little

(01:11:41):
children asking the samequestions, you know.
What am I what's my question?
How am I going to find outabout it?
And how will I know I've foundout about it?
You know.
Um it's incredible when youlook at some of the projects.
Um, there was one a few yearsago that topped the state, and
it was looking at magazinesabout Jackie O, Jackie O Nassus.

(01:12:05):
And of course, you know,there's a lot of mentoring
involved in that.
You can't look at all themagazines because you want to
run out of time, you want tosnapshot it and all the rest of
it.
And the question, which wasformed after the research was
sort of done, and you can seethis sort of thing developing,
was did Jackie O really exist?
And they're looking at thedifferent angles of the

(01:12:28):
magazines over three periods.
And the clever conclusion was,no, she didn't.
And that's a really postmodernhighbrow theoretical conclusion
to come to without the studentnecessarily not knowing that,
you know, and it it has magiclike that, and we're so lucky to
have it.
And whenever revisions of thecurriculum happen in New South

(01:12:51):
Wales, the first thing I look atis are they keeping extension
history?
Because it is, as Jonathan wassaying, it's a very important
anchor for history uh claimingits academic credentials.

Question 3 (01:13:04):
Yeah.

Question 4 (01:13:10):
Hey, um, I am a curriculum lead at an
educational publishing company,so have a lot of um similar
experiences kind of trying tonavigate those curriculums and
understand what they mean.
Um I'm interested in thathistory, the new history
syllabus that you showed just onscreen before.
Like, what are some of the umthings that you're really
excited about with that newcurriculum that's coming into
implementation soon and thingsthat you're nervous about,

(01:13:32):
things you're concerned about?

Um, great question.
I mean, I think there's lots tobe excited about.
There's a lot of continuity init.
I mean, you know, the the thingthat Tim was mentioning before
about the skills and concepts,they're sort of familiar to us
now.
I think we can kind of carrythose forward.
Um, there's lots of topics thatwe know are generally popular,
you know, going even back toAnna Clark's research about, you
know, Australians at war tendsto be one of the most popular

(01:13:58):
topics when any research is doneon student attitudes.
That's not universal, but itseems to be the case that they
get into that a bit more thansome other things.
And that's there in aninteresting way.
Um the fact that there's, youknow, opportunities for schools
to select their own topics is inthe syllabus as well, still.
That was sort of you knowdefended by history teachers
pretty hard because we know thatlots of schools like that

(01:14:20):
freedom to design their owntopic that sort of fits the
students at their school a bitmore.
Um, so all of those things arereally good.
Um Nervous, I think the pointabout uh I've just been working
on a collection of resortresources for the um, you know,
the Australian Wars film uh thatby Rachel Perkins, and and that
stuff for year eight is makingme nervous because it's I mean,

(01:14:43):
it's in it's incrediblyimportant and powerful content,
but you know, I'm reading like400 page books on it that like
excite me.
And then I think how do I turnthat into something for you
13-year-olds who don't likereading necessarily and don't
like history necessarily, andtheir parents at home are
saying, don't worry abouthistory, that's not an important

(01:15:04):
subject, because that happens.
Like, I don't really know whatto do about that.
Um, and I think this goes backto the heart of a lot of the
things around history.
I think this is not a criticismof the general public saying
there's an elite over here, usthe history teachers, and
everybody else who's ignorant,but it's like anything, you
know, it's it's like we aredealing with this on a
day-to-day basis.
So there's there isinstitutional knowledge that we

(01:15:26):
do have and is often notlistened to, and it's
frustrating.
But you know, um, in thepolitical debates about a
curriculum, they go, we need adot point on this.
And I say, The kid, they're notgoing to remember it.
You can put it in there if youwant.
And I'll teach that in eightminutes because it's deadly
boring and they're 13.
I'll I'll teach that in eightminutes and I'll move on to this
other bit that will actually dosomething with 13-year-olds.
So, you know, the I think theparticularly politicians, let's

(01:15:47):
just do that.
Um, politicians think that ifwe get that in, it'll translate
into this whole generationcoming out the other side with a
complete knowledge of thatthing.
It just doesn't happen.
Um, so I I kind of sometimes inthese debates, you're like, go
for it, and I'll fix it on theother side, you know.
Um, so that's a ch I thinkthat's gonna be a challenge,
definitely.
And I think my last point,overall, I think the curriculum

(01:16:10):
is still really dense.
There's a lot of stuff in it.
And for all the talk aboutdecluttering the curriculum,
they just didn't do it.
So let's be honest.

Um, I'm gonna be a bit flippant just to
finish up on.
I I'm quite excited aboutDonald Trump because so much
rich discourse is coming out ofthat for school kids to decode
and to use the discipline toreally understand what's going

(01:16:45):
on there.
You know, you're entitled toyour opinions, but you're not
entitled to alternative factswould be a starting point.
Kids love dynamic like that inyou know, in active history
classes and where there'sthere's a really vibrant,
hopefully, discussion and debateabout issues as such.
You've got to be careful, ofcourse, because not everyone,
let's face it, will share myviews on any of that, probably.

(01:17:08):
But um there's dynamic comingfrom the modern world that
really is going to it makeshistory so much more vital if
the teacher, the agency of theteacher, the professionalism of
the teacher in the classroom asa trained history teacher is
protected.
And that's the caution that Ithink Jonathan really nicely

(01:17:31):
brought out earlier in his talktoday.
We've got to we've got to watchthis, you know.
It's not a given that historyis going to stay in the
curriculum as a dominant subjectarea.
So um that's that's the worrypart, yeah.

Well, regrettably, we're out of time.
And I think um I certainly havea lot more questions, but um,
I'd uh just like to uh thankeveryone for coming out tonight
on the the cold, wet uh evening.
Um we hope we thank you foryour supportive history now.
We hope you can join us forfuture events.
There'll be promotions for theAugust uh events very, very

(01:18:09):
soon.
But sneak peek on the 27th ofAugust, our colleagues in the uh
Department of History here atthe University of Sydney will be
hosting a panel on creativehistory making, which will be
one of the History Now seriesevents as well.
So I hope you can join us forthat one and the other talks.
A big thank you to thewonderful team from the History

(01:18:30):
Council of New South Wales, andthank you, Jesse.
But can I ask everyone?
Can I ask everyone to pleaseput your hands together for Tim
Allender and Jonathan Delymore?

Catherine Shirley (01:18:42):
Thank you for joining us for this podcast.
If you'd like to hear more,subscribe to our series via your
favourite streaming platformand join us for our next History
Now episode, the 2025 WoodMemorial Lecture in History,
Creative Histories aConversation.
For a full list of HistoryCouncil cultural partners, along
with a list of other podcastsproduced by us, please visit our

(01:19:05):
website, HistoryCouncilnsw.org.au forward slash
podcasts.
I'm Catherine Shirley, thankyou.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Burden

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}History Now: Teaching History: The future of history education in NSW

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Burden

All Episodes

History Now: Teaching History: The future of history education in NSW

Stuff You Should Know