From history horror stories to historical literacy

October 2004

Students who think Gough Whitlam is the leader of a 90s rock band, the battle of Gallipoli took place during World War Two and medieval Scottish nationalists decorated themselves to look like Swedish tennis fans are just some of the history horror stories that have entered into school mythology in Australia. But as Michele Martin reports, a leading history educator wants to move beyond the horror stories to teach history in a whole new way.

A real-life history horror story told by the director of the National Centre for History Education at Monash University, Associate Professor Tony Taylor, involves a 15-year-old girl in his 2001 modern world history class confusing former Beatle John Lennon with Russian Revolution leader Vladimir Ilych Lenin.

"When I started teaching the Year 10 class, I gave them a pre-test, just to see how much they knew," says Dr Taylor, who now teaches in the Education faculty at the university's Gippsland campus.

Dr Tony Taylor: Historical literacy an important part of life as a whole. Photo: Heath Missen

"A girl I'll call 'Kirstie' responded to questions asking what she knew about Lenin, why he was famous and how she knew this, with the answers: 'Singer in the Beatles. Made good music. Listen to their music.'

"While at first glance this seems both funny and tragic, it's not really so strange that a girl of 15 would not know who Lenin was and what he did, particularly before she'd even started studying the Russian Revolution."

Dr Taylor says the problem is that history horror stories have regularly been the stuff of politically inspired finger-pointing and injunctions to introduce lists of memorable facts to be absorbed and regurgitated.

"But this is history as a form of cod liver oil. You must take it because the facts and narrative are good for you," he says.

"I believe successful history teaching stems from presenting historical topics as in-depth issues or problems to be resolved, in a narrative context, and through developing historical literacy."

Dr Taylor defines historical literacy as a range of abilities and understandings required to grasp the nature of history, including:

• understanding historical events and realising their significance within a broader historical context
• understanding the shape of change and continuity over time, the open-ended nature of historical study and the reality that there are often multiple narratives surrounding events
• developing research skills such as gathering and using evidence, analysing sources and identifying the origin of sources and their ownership
• understanding and dealing with the language of the past
• knowing and understanding key historical concepts such as causation, motivation, empathy, the provisional nature of historical explanation and the partial or complete nature of reconstruction through evidence
• using, understanding and evaluating information and communications technology-based historical resources such as online archives
• making connections between the past, the self and the world today understanding the processes and context of professional and public historical debate
• recognising and analysing different forms of creative history representation via film, music, fictional writing and multimedia
• understanding the moral and ethical issues involved in historical explanation
• understanding the use, value and limitations of scientific and technological methods to investigate the past
• using historical reasoning, synthesis and interpretation through a variety of the above historical literacies to explain the past.

Historical literacy is an important part of life as a whole, not just school life, says Dr Taylor, because history is not merely about understanding what happened in the past, but about using that understanding to develop an informed moral, political and social view of the world.

Action
For further information, contact Associate Professor Tony Taylor on +61 3 9902 6365 or email tony.taylor@education.monash.edu.au.