Winter 2004

Talking History

Putting passion back into primary history

Favouring the uncontroversial over the dramatic, passionate and tragic aspects of history robs primary school students of opportunities to connect with the big ideas of humanity and its story, argues PAUL DUFFICY.

Sian: But why didn’t they just kill Pemulwuy instead of killing innocent people that didn’t have anything to do with it? Miss, it doesn’t make any sense because, like, they go out and kill all these other people and it’s not fair for them because they didn’t do anything.

Roldao and Egan (1992) tell the tale of the substitute teacher who takes over a year six class for the day. Before her are two prepared lessons: The structure of the local community and Torture instruments through the ages. We are asked to consider with which topic it would be easier to engage the children in the class. Their point echoes the concerns raised by Jerome Bruner a quarter of a century earlier about the passivity of simple knowledge-getting and, crucially, the ‘embarrassment of passion’ in the social studies curriculum.

Citing the portrayal of Columbus in popular social studies texts in the United States as an easy-going and well-adjusted young man with a helpful big brother, Bruner comments everything in the story is there except the essential truth—the fanatical urge to explore in an age of exploration, and the sense of an expanding world.

Such neutral accounts supposedly connect more directly with children’s lives. For Bruner and Roldao and Egan the exact opposite is true. Myths, legends and fairytales capture the imagination of the child because they preserve the power and tragedy of the human condition—and its ambiguity, too. Instead, Bruner sees the non-controversial and the banal: usually a version of events without argument and debate, without puzzles and unresolved questions, and without passion.

Of course it is one thing to criticise the safe and the sanitised versions of history, but it is another to plot a course where children can be assisted to connect with the big ideas of humanity and its story.

But can it work in theory?

Made: Um ... I want to ask a question. If Governor Phillip wanted to make friends with the Aborigines, why did he chain Bennelong up then?

Craig: Maybe he didn't like, um, Bennelong in the first place. Why would you chain up your friend and then …

James: Probably because … he's trying to make friends to learn their language to take over the land.

Aziz: Yeah.

I think we are always using a theory of some sort when we come to plan a lesson. It could well be a theory that has connections to the educational psychology of Piaget. We might design lessons with the belief that it is best to begin ‘where the children are at’. Possibly our theory is connected to the work of Lev Vygotsky, a Russian educational psychologist from early last century. Vygotsky and other sociocultural theorists argue the need to teach, not where the child is at, but where the child might go. For Piaget, development led learning. For socioculturalists, learning leads development.

This theory is very exciting for teachers. It connects with recent initiatives like the Queensland productive pedagogies framework and the New South Wales quality teaching initiatives. It is a useful lesson-design tool because it encourages us to ask fundamentally different questions. Rather than What do the children know?, the sociocultural perspective helps us ask the more productive, forward thinking question: What do the children need to think about? The corollary is a series of further questions including: How can I help them do this? What do they already know about this issue? How can I organise what we know? These questions, which emphasise the dual drivers of high challenge and assisted performance, can spiral through many if not all classroom activities.

Practising passionate history

Khalida (on guerilla war versus traditional battle): It could be a disadvantage because um, like Erdem said, um the Aborigines have um spears and like other things and the white people have guns and the guns like, they’re pretty quick to shoot, and um ‘cause they would have got them loaded and everything ready before the, the battle begun, and with the surprise one, um, it could be good for the Aborigines because um like when the white people, when they sneak up to the white people, the white people wouldn’t know they’re coming and they could kill them.

Recently I planned and co-taught the Stage 2 British Colonisation Unit from the New South Wales Human Society and Its Environment K–6 Units of Work (Support Document). It is recommended that the Unit is taught over 8 to 10 weeks. The topic is vast, covering Cook’s voyage; Aboriginal resistance; results of colonisation; and the contribution of other groups to Australia’s heritage. To give the children some space to practise doing what real historians do— puzzle, ponder, gather evidence, debate, argue and interpret—we decided to focus most of our attention on the resistance element. To come at this complex and much debated topic we chose to explore the Aboriginal tools and weapons of resistance, thus narrowing the children’s historical gaze to facilitate the likelihood of passionate engagement with some big ideas of history.

Once we had done this we came to the drama of first contact. We showed the children a video called Alinta: The Flame. It depicts the first contact between a group of Aboriginal people and two escaped convicts. The video asks the viewer to engage with such ideas as resistance, cruelty, justice, customs, fear, friendship, curiosity, tradition, technology, horror, sorrow, law, trust and so on.

Luke: Miss but on the Alinta video it’s different to the Pemulwuy story about … you know … why isn’t there a sorry day for the English because, um, well if the Aborigines didn’t kill English … it was just like, Aborigines kill English, English kill Aborigines.

These are the big ideas of history and being human. They have the potential to promote deep engagement. The weapons and tools had strong resonance and familiarity to the children’s own lives and so helped them to think about a wide range of issues. To scaffold their comprehension of the video we showed a brief segment from the movie Independence Day, which depicts the reactions of people to the arrival of aliens. This connection to the here and now gave voice to a range of views around the idea of first contact between peoples.

Passion of a different kind

In the same way as it is important not to leach history of its passion and drama, it is equally important to give young children the opportunity to try their minds at passionate debate in which what they believe (and not, in the first instance, what they know) is on the line. Too often in our classrooms we put things around the other way.

References

Board of Studies (1998). Human Society and Its Environment Syllabus K–6, Board of Studies, NSW.

Generation Films (1982). Alinta: The Flame (Women of the Sun, Episode 1), Generation Films in association with Channel 0/28 Multicultural Television Special Broadcasting Service, Sydney.

Roldao, M & Egan, K (1992). ‘The social studies curriculum: The case for its abolition’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, April 20–24.

Paul Dufficy is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au