Black Armband History
John Howard's stubborn refusal to offer an apology for the policies that failed our indiginous people was disgraceful and reason enough on its own to finally flush the unflushable one around the S-bend. But he or whoever coined the phrase "black arm band view of history" was on to something. The new National curriculum in History has a fundamental weakness and it is a result of the black arm band which many of our educators seem to wear.
We teach or are meant to teach Australian History as if it were simply the history of the large island (and don't forget the smaller ones) that constitute the Commonwealth of Australia. When I was at school Australian History began with Dirk Hartog (1616), then nothing until 1770 and then after 1788. In the meantime we learned about what had been going on in the places from whence Hartog, Cook and Phillip came. That's to say we learned about the history of the people who descended from those who arrived in 1788. The omission of Aboriginal history was a mistake but perhaps an understandable one. Not only was it not valued, it wasn't known. It still isn't known really, without records (aside from what is interpreted from art) and some sadly limited oral history the history of the time before European settlement is blurred to say the least.
Now we include the time before the arrival of Cook (I think calling it an invasion is silly). But in our guilt ridden rush to give no further offense to anyone, including more recent arrivals from non-european countries we gloss over or ignore the history and thus the cultural background of the group that still make up the bulk of our population. The heritage of the child at school in Dublin or London (not so sure about London these days) is still pretty close to the cultural heritage of kids at school in any Australian town. It's an Anglo history and our anglo guilt makes us push it aside.
It matters because it was from a study of the history of our anglo heritage that we derived our anglo values. The black arm bandits use anglo values as a term of derision now but it's anglo values of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and freedom of association that have given them that liberty.
There's said to be a crisis of "values" in our schools and public schools were famously accused of failing to teach Australian values. The response was to try to deconstruct defined values into their component parts and them teach them like mathematical formulae. This was one of our sillier ideas.
Hidden among the stuff that we used to learn in History was a highly effective hidden curriculum in values. There were heroes (this word is used in its non-gender specific context folks) who did great and brave things. There were triumphs of the rights of individuals over the state like Magna Carta, the Reform Bills, the ship money case. There were ancient examples of the roots of our democracy like Themistocles in Athens and there were more modern exemplars too from Keir Hardie to Emily Pankhurst.
Throw all that away and what's left. About maybe 5% of our cultural heritage. It's an interesting 5% but it's still a very shitty deal, as they say at Goldman Sachs.