History Teachers’ Association of Australia Questions the National History Curriculum

Sydney Morning Herald, 18 March 2009

While the History Teachers’ Association of Australia (HTAA) has welcomed the National Curriculum Board’s (NCB) proposal to teach history as a separate subject, they have also expressed concern about the ‘advanced’ skills that primary students were required to demonstrate under the draft curriculum.

The HTAA argued in its submission that ‘there is a strong feeling that what is proposed for the primary years is far too ambitious in terms of both content to be covered and the conceptual capabilities assumed for students at this stage’.

The draft curriculum indicates that primary students would be expected ‘to be able to examine and critically assess the value of available primary and secondary sources, study human motivation, develop an understanding of viewpoints held by the people of the past and recognise causal relationships between events and draw conclusions about their historical investigations’.

However, the HTAA argued that the amount of time that could be devoted to history in primary schools would be insufficient for the content and skills outlined in the draft curriculum.

Mr Paul Kiem, The HTAA’s President, also argued that additional training would be essential to prepare teachers for the new national curriculum. Mr Kiem stated that ‘we are proposing to have history taught from primary through to the end of high school in a fairly sophisticated manner. We need teachers to have at least an undergraduate degree with a major in history and some teaching method.’

 

 

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