School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemImagining the world from the classroom : cultural difference, empire and nationalism in Victorian primary schools in the 1930s and 1950s( 2005-09)This thesis, then, is about belonging to Australia and to the world. It is about imperialism, nationalism and the quality of goodness told through the lens of primary school students in 1930’s and 1950’s Victoria. I begin by exploring in Chapter One how the joint change in psychology and politics forced profound change to the basic framework of primary school curriculum. Children’s relationship to information was reconceived, and so too were the curricular structures necessary for this new epistemology. Spatial and temporal relations between Australia, Britain and the world were thus destabilized. But we need a much finer lens, and a more subtle understanding of the mechanisms of imaginative national belonging, if we are to describe this changing relationship. I take up this question in Chapter Two by looking at the reading resources given to children, from which they learnt complex lessons about aspects of being Australian. In Chapter Three I examine the impact of nationalism – Imperial and nation-state – in defining the child’s responsibilities. I argue that the project of nation-state nationalism that I describe, forced a change from moral to civic duty, a profound change to expectations about how and for whom children should act.
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ItemTeaching the nation: politics and pedagogy in Australian history( 2004-11)There is considerable anxiety about teaching Australian history in schools. In part, such concern reflects the so-called "History Wars", which have been played out in museums and national commemorations, as well as history syllabuses and textbooks. Such concern also reveals a professional and pedagogical debate over the state of the subject in schools. This thesis problematises history education as a site of contested collective memory and argues that concern over "teaching the nation" is intensified and augmented by an educational discourse of "the child" that shifts the debate over the past to the future.