The history summit.(Letter to the editor)

SIR: In his Latham lecture (January-February 2007) Keith Windschuttle gave a very poor account of the deliberations of the History Summit.

The Summit decided to stipulate for study a dozen or so open-ended questions. Windschuttle cited only three of these. He could have cited three others which deal with subjects too little studied in schools and whose absence Greg Melleuish highlighted in the paper he prepared for the Summit:

 
   Why were the Australian 
   colonies so prosperous? 
      What religious faiths have 
   Australians held and what have 
   been their influence? 
      How did Australia's 
   democratic traditions emerge? 

Windschuttle omitted to say that all the questions have to be pursued through time--at least a century; in some cases two centuries or more. This is to prevent the partial treatment of subjects now so common. For instance, teachers will no longer be able to deal with the Vietnam War and avoid all mention of the First and Second World Wars. The question about war deals with the whole of the twentieth century.

As students pursue these questions they will be dealing with the whole course of our history. This process will be reinforced by the second element of the ...