Teaching history.(Letter to the editor)

SIR: It is with some surprise that I discovered that I had been caught up in the history wars by being named (and shamed!) in the January-February issue by Keith Windschuttle. Mr Windschuttle identifies me as having publicly endorsed a history unit on SIEV-X, and by implication he suggests that I believe that there was a conspiracy and that I am a hater of the Howard government. He is wrong at every point.

When the Australian rang me to ask about the unit on the sinking of the SIEV-X my reply was that I had not yet seen the unit, but that St Aloysius' College would consider using it. The reason for my comment was simple. The author of the unit was an old-boy, and I knew teachers who had been involved in the unit's creation, and in principle I believe in looking at something before judging it. I doubt if Mr Windschuttle has actually seen the unit, and he certainly knows nothing of my views.

A reading of the unit shows that it does contain a broad range of sources, including government and military source material. There is no overall attempt to force a particular conclusion on students. It is essentially a source analysis exercise--modelled in part on a popular Year 10 unit taught at St Aloysius' on the Kennedy assassination. The SIEV-X unit's introduction reads:

 
   During your investigation you 
   will be presented with a great 
   deal of evidence, some of it very 
   conflicting. You will be asked to 
   evaluate this evidence and make 
   decisions on the basis of your 
   judgment of its validity. The 
   answers and observations which 
   you present must be supported 
   by the evidence which you 
   consider is reliable. If you are 
   uncertain and unable to reach a 
   definite conclusion at any point, 
   you must disclose this and 
   explain your reasons. The 
   reliability of evidence is judged 
   by the examination of the 
   nature, origin and motive of the 
   source. 

The material allows the conclusion that there was no conspiracy.

As a History teacher it strikes me that the content in this unit contains less bias than some textbooks I have seen--one text, for example, gives a predictable account of the Dismissal but never gives the result of the 1975 election. Indeed, I understand that some of Mr Windschuttle's "political activists" dropped out because the decision was made to keep in the SIEV-X unit a wide range of sources, rather than include only those which pointed to their programmed answer.

We have a very strong History program here at St Aloysius', with all our Year 7-10 students undertaking almost twice the hours required by the state, and with nearly two-thirds of our senior students doing elective history--one of the highest proportions in the country. It is doubtful that we will use the unit because it does not easily fit our Year 11 curriculum, and because I am not convinced that there is enough substance in the issue to merit the time spent on it. If we were to do the unit, perhaps in Year 10, it would be strictly as a source analysis study with the purpose of training the boys to look critically at and analyse a range of sources. Such training is a priority in the modem curriculum and is an important preparation for an information-rich age.