Since 1961, Teaching History, the journal of the History Teachers' Association of NSW, has provided well-written and thoughtful articles on the teaching of history. Volume 57, number 4, 2023, was a good example. It included David Stephens suggesting some questions that students could ask when visiting the Australian War Memorial or other war memorials: 'The study of History is about asking questions. Excursions to historic places and memorials, and standing in the presence of historic objects in museums, allows an immediacy with the past and gives us the opportunity to ask pertinent and pointed questions.'
A couple of examples:
Do you need to wear a military uniform to fight for your country?
Just over 100,000 Australians have died in our overseas wars. Also, between 20,000 and 100,000 First Nations people died in Australia at the hands of settlers, police, and soldiers from 1788 to at least 1928, in what has become known as the Frontier Wars. No-one knows the exact number killed in the Frontier Wars because bodies were burned and buried, and official records destroyed. Yet contemporary media reports leave no doubt that people believed this was war.
Do you see any difference between, on the one hand, First Nations people who defended Country on Country and, on the other hand, men and women in uniform who went overseas to defend Australia? Should the Memorial commemorate both types of defenders?
...
Do we make too much of Victoria Cross winners?
Why do soldiers receive the Victoria Cross (VC)? The wording on the medal is ‘For Valour’ (see figure 6) but some people have said VCs were given out to make other soldiers fight harder. Does that make sense?
According to historian Professor Peter Stanley, ‘The emphasis on “Anzac VC heroes” ensures that Australia sees glory in its war history rather than the horrific reality’. Do you agree?
Is it possible for someone to be a hero at one time – and perhaps receive the VC for it – and a villain at other times? Should the War Memorial depict such people? Do you know of a recent case that might fit this description? What do you think about it?
Then there was a report from Professor Stanley himself on a recent New South Wales Premier's Anzac Memorial Scholarship (PAMS) Year 10 and 11 students' tour to Singapore and Darwin. Professor Stanley was 'Tour Historian' and had this to say about one highlight of the tour:
The visits to two war cemeteries, at Kranji in Singapore and at Adelaide River in the Northern Territory, were especially emotionally demanding. I was impressed with how maturely the students approached their responsibilities at these places. Students were asked to devise their own brief commemorative ceremony (and not merely to observe the formalities of the traditional service), a particularly challenging expectation. Fittingly, at each, rather than replicate a basic remembrance ceremony (minus the flags and music) they referred extensively to the experiences and stories of the individuals they had researched and whose stories they had told.
Professor Stanley skewered the often-exaggerated claims about civilian deaths during the 1942 bombing of Darwin - 'it cannot possibly have been a thousand, probably not more than about 290'- despite the local tourist industry's yearning for a larger figure. His article concludes with a description of a First Nations student laying a poppy on the grave of Frederick Prentice MM, an Indigenous Great War soldier from Katherine:
For all of us, this was an emotional highlight of the tour – not only did a First Nations student lay the poppy, but he followed up that conventional gesture with a heartfelt speech, speaking to Frederick in language to acknowledge that we were visiting his Country. That informal but moving ceremony occurred on the final full day of the tour, a sign perhaps of how the students had learned not just ‘about’ history, but about how to ‘do’ history, and that the doing of it occurred in real time on the spot, and in the heart as well as in the head.
Just for contrast, our sister site, Honest History, has dredged from its vault some reviews of 'literature' still rolled out in some schools at Anzac time. It seems there's still a way to go for people, including students and teachers, wanting to take a sophisticated, evidence-based approach to Anzac.
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