This week, the NSW Department of Education released a new draft History syllabus for Years 7-8 and I’m afraid there’s bad news and there’s even more bad news. The education bureaucrats have got rid of Civics & Citizenship, ensuring that even fewer Australians will understand why it is that they live in a liberal democracy, and indeed what a liberal democracy actually is.
But they have added in a new, compulsory unit of study called ‘The Era of Colonisation. Aboriginal Peoples’ Experiences of Colonisation in Australia’. The only thing that surprises me about this unit is that they have not called it ‘The Era of Colonisation. First Nations’ People’s Experiences of Colonisation in Australia.’ Someone in NSW will be getting an angry call from ACARA for not using the correct terminology.
Predictably, the Aboriginal experiences to which they refer are entirely negative, and exactly mirror the singular narrative taught in the National Curriculum. As research into the current National Curriculum by the Institute of Public Affairs has shown, the singular, extremely uncomplex and patently untrue narrative that is drummed into Australia from primary school upwards is that the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 constituted an invasion and that the colonisation of Australia resulted in dispossession, massacres, and genocide.
Keen students of history in NSW schools will look at the ‘causes of the Frontier wars, conflicts during initial contact – Sydney Cove and surrounds. the causes of the Black Wars and Risdon Cove conflicts, escalating tensions, resistance, conflicts and significance of Aboriginal identities involved, the impact of contact and colonisation on Aboriginal Peoples’ societal structures, and the continued resistance of Aboriginal Peoples. They will finish off by looking at ‘Developments in government policies towards, and continued treatment of, Aboriginal Peoples in Australia to 1901.’ They might not be so keen on history by the end of this particular unit.
Currently, Australian schools are currently churning out referendum ready voters believe that Aboriginal Australians are systematically oppressed by virtue of their race. At the same time, schools are producing students who are barely literate or numerate. Over the last 20 years, standards in reading, science and mathematics across every socio-economic quartile – and in government, Catholic and independent schools – have been falling across Australia.
A 2022 report by the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), which assessed NAPLAN writing results from 2011 to 2018, found that the majority of Australia’s Year 9 students use punctuation at a Year 3 level. According to the report, 85 per cent of Year 9 students are constructing sentences at or below the level expected of students two years below them. It was also found that majority were also using punctuation to a Year 3 standard.
This means that they are unable to satisfactorily convey complex ideas. Luckily for the students, they are rarely asked to convey complex, let alone any ideas at all, during their schooling, especially when it comes to Australian history.
