In all human societies that I know of, it seems to be necessary for each tribe, group or nation to develop a sense of group cohesion in order to maintain their social fabric. But the trouble with the development of this group cohesion or identity is that it seems to lead to a deeply embedded ‘us against them’ psychology. Commonly this is reflected in what is misleadingly called ‘racism’, which in the modern world, is the other side of the coin of nationalism. And so, in Australia, it has been easy to slaughter Aborigines, scalp ‘chinks’, fear the ‘yellow peril’ and bash ‘wogs’ and ‘dagos’. There’s quite a bit of Brittanicus in most Anglo-Saxon Australians! And in Australian History books!

And yet, and here’s the rub, it seems to be those people who are most truly confident of their own sense of identity who feel least threatened by other races, colours, or customs. And so, if Humphrey McQueen is right when he says that ‘racism is the most important single component of Australian nationalism’, it is because most Australians still do not have a clear sense of Australian identity. We are not yet Australians. We are still torn between Britain and America as Braustericans in Brausterica. Maybe this is an advance from being Australian Britons or Austericans. But more than this is needed if we are going to make a useful contribution to the survival of the human race. In order to develop a true sense of Australian identity we must first become aware of what is unique about Australia and Australian society.

We are largely Anglo-Saxon-Irish derived population, whose conquest of the Aborigines began in 1788, with a large component of people of Mediterranean origin, a growing number of Asians and refugees, perched on the outskirts of Asia and more and more isolated form the people with whom we like to identify. Because we are Barustericans, we find it extremely difficult to come to terms with the realities of our position in the world as America’s reliable and expendable ally.

In terms of the above, most of the books assessed here are not very good. This is particularly so of the books which are written specifically as school textbooks. To look at some of them, you would wonder just which world the authors live in.

I think that the reasons for failure of most Australian school history texts serve the needs of the human race and, particularly, the Australian section of it, are firstly: most history teachers can’t shake off the blinkers of the worship of material ‘progress’ as eulogised in most studies of prehistory and ancient history (isn’t it about time that we started to really look at that we started to really look at what sort of a monster Alexander the ‘Great’ really was, or at the nature of all those lovely wars in Mesopotamia or the Persian wars, or the Roman monsters revealed to us in ‘I Claudius’?).

Secondly, most Australian history teachers can’t shake off the fact that, in the hey-day of the British Empire, most of our school history was written in order to legitimise the Empire. But the Raj won’t die while ‘history’ lives!

The third reason is that Australian history teachers suffer from the same identity problems as other Australians. Because of this, the writers of the textbooks, particularly, are unable to write Histories with a healthy Australian orientation, which also reflect and examine the problems facing the whole of the human race.

The fourth reason is that most good teachers are too drained by their teaching to turn around and do the research and writing necessary to write good books. There are no fellowships or grants for writing school, texts. And with a population of about 14 million, the market is not large enough for Australian publishers to risk real cash money in financing teachers to take leave to write good books. The result is largely one attractively packaged pot-boiler after another.

One consequence of the failure of history books to grapple with the real world is that History is seen as irrelevant by many teachers and students. Because Australian history teachers are unable to confront the problems facing Australia and to stop pretending that ‘all is for the best of all possible worlds’, the subject is becoming discredited and discarded by the more concerned teachers and students. And thus there is a switch to the more topical and ahistorical and ‘relevant’ subjects which come under the grab all title of Social Science. But this ahistorical approach to the problems of the world is a mistake. It condemns the young to living in an eternal present with no past and no future and no perspective. It presents an education designed to produce people with grasshopper minds – jumping from one thing to another. And it also contains the danger of failing to teach kids to use books as tools in a systematic and reasonably demanding way. And people who have not learned to use books as tools are deprived of much power over themselves and their lives. They can never be truly literate. If Social Science books are to be used as tools they must have numbered pages, a table of contents and a good index. And they should be of such a size and shape that they can be conveniently stored on a library shelf. It follows that the title should be on the spine.

For the purposes assessment-cum review, the books will be broken into three rather arbitrary groups. The first, and largest, group is history. The second group is politics and the third group is loosely classed as social studies or themes.

History books

Frank Crowley’s three volumes of documents: Colonial Australia 1788-1900 are not designed specifically for school use. They are comprehensive and contain magnificent indexes which make them superlative tools for teaching Australian history, even down to year seven in the hands of skilful teachers.

Crowley’s other two volumes of documents: Modern Australia 1900–1970 are deficient on the Aborigines and don’t have those magnificent indexes. What a pity! I’d suggest that it might be worth the publishers’ while to publish additional indexes and not wait for a reprint to fix things up.

H. R. Cowie’s Crossroads 1, Nationalism and Internationalism. This is recommended for fifth and sixth form. It’s a very good book but with insufficient Australian orientation. A better index would help. Documents well interspersed with text.

Crossroads 2, Economic Trends in The Modern World and Their Social Impact. A superb book. Relevant, topical and comprehensive. Kids find concepts such as Marx’s idea of class difficult, so teachers need to be prepared for this. Fifth or sixth Form. At least it starts on the problems of economic growth and doesn’t just assume that it’s the greatest thing since sex!

Crossroads 3, Asia And Australia In World Affairs. Another very good book, suitable for fifth or sixth Form. But it starts at 1900 and so Australian involvement in the Boxer Rebellion, the White Australia Policy and the Gold Rushes, the Māori War, The Sudan War and the Boer War are not mentioned. There is no mention of the No Pig Iron for Japan campaign of the 1930s and the Australia/China discussion starts at 1949.

Making Australian Society series. Susan McGrath, On The Land. An excellent book, doesn’t forget the Aborigines – fighting for land rights or as food gatherers. Suitable for third or fourth Form. Could do with a better index. But teachers will have to develop their own activities. Still highly recommended.

Bruce Elder, Mass Media In Australia. In the absence of activities for the kids the language level is maybe fifth form. An inadequate discussion of media ownership in Australia. Index could be better.

Susan Drury, Writers and Writing. Nothing for the kids to do. Assumes fiction. Nothing on historians. Brief index. No entry for Aborigines. Misses opportunities such as Mrs Aeneas Gunn, Alexander Harris, or Rafaello Carboni. Language too abstract. Maybe fifth form.

Mona Brand, Transport In Australia. Misses the need and opportunity to discuss Blainey and The Tyranny of Distance. Inadequate discussion of the variety and adaptability of Aboriginal watercraft. No index entry for paddle steamers, but does discuss them. No index entry for freeways, cars, trams or buses. Fourth or fifth form.

James Bell, Mining and Minerals. A quite inadequate book. No index entries for Aborigines or Land Rights in a book on mining! No discussion of the political power of the mining companies and the way Rex O’Connor and The Overseas Loans Affair were factors in Kerr’s 1975 coup! If this book is rewritten, the editor should have another look at On The Land to see how the topic could have been handled.

Neville Drury, Music and Musicians. An extremely good book. Highly recommended. The work song elements and play song elements of Aboriginal music are underemphasised. Also he misses the chance to discuss urban or fringe dwelling Aboriginal music. For example, songs such as Arnhem Land Lullaby, Prison’s Nothing Special, Advance Australian Dark or My Home Made Didgeridoo. Split Enz are NOT Australian, they are New Zealanders.

UQP Leaders of Asia series. These range between thirty-one and fifty-one pages in length. They have no tables of contents or indexes. No titles on the spines (because of their small size). Therefore all would be difficult to use as tools.

B.J. Terwiel, Field Marshall Songkhram. This is not set in the context of British/ French rivalry in Siam/Thailand. Nor is there any discussion of why Siam should have been relatively so unaffected by the Russian Revolution and why Mussolini, Hitler and Attaturk should have caught the Field Marshall’s attention. Wouldn’t this be significant in view of Thailand’s position in SEATO etc?

Richard Rigby, Sun Yat Sen. The introduction says that it is designed for Undergraduate or Secondary School courses. Language and approach O.K. at U/G level.

Ian Copeland, Nehru of India. Quite good. But misses the chance to give it an Australian orientation by discussing even briefly, Nehru’s policies of non-alignment in the Cold War and Menzies’ hostility to Nehru and non-alignment.

K.McPherson, Jinnah. It gives the Islamic/Hindu/British background, but it is doubtful how much the unprepared students would understand of Islam and Hinduism. But, then again, this is a commentary about the content of Australian education lower down in the school.

History Replay series. These are all by Bernard Barker, who is NOT a relation of mine. Each has a table of contents but no index. They are all about twenty pages long and will not fit on a normal bookshelf. Therefore difficult to use as tools. The introductions to all six volumes summarise the contents and present the conclusions. That being so, what’s the point of the student’s working through the material? Take the one on Stalin, for example.

The period was dominated by the brooding, pedestrian figure of Joseph Stalin, who had risen to power in the Politburo by doing the routine administrative work which no one else wanted to do.

Well, there’s nothing more to be said, is there? And, of all the things that could be said of Stalin, I wouldn’t have thought that pedestrian was quite the word. The language of all of these monographs is about fifth form level.

Aveling, (ed.) The Development Of Indonesian Society. As the preface says, it is designed for ‘advanced students’. It is full of academese like ‘archetypal theories’. It requires quite a background in Indonesian culture and/or history. Once again, the authors fail to give it an Australian orientation. There are no index entries for Australia, the Waterside Workers’ Federation or the Seamens’ Union and Australia would appear to have played no part in the independence struggles.

Mirana, Modern History Essays For The Senior Student. No index. Seems designed for conventional fourth or fifth forms. The flavour of it is given by the heading for chapter 2: ‘The Inevitability Of The French Revolution". Well. That takes care of that! We are also told that Louis XVI ‘... was virtuous’ and ‘... Marie Antoinette ... was beautiful, but without firmness of character’.

Daniels and Murnane, Uphill All The Way – A Documentary History Of Women In Australia. This could be used by teachers down to form one level if the material was carefully chosen and skilfully presented. There’s a good index, but some surprising omissions. There are no entries for Caroline Chisholm, Mary Gilmore, Henry Handel Richardson, Elizabeth MacArthur or Truganini. The account of the treatment of Aboriginal women by the Bass Strait Sealers could have been balanced by the part played by Aboriginal women in The Black War.

Brian Dickey, No Charity Here – A Short History of Social Welfare in Australia. Crisply written. Could be used for fifth formers in small doses because it contains language like this: ‘… not based on an analytical or social preference for socialist solutions’. I can’t judge the index because on my advance copy the index was noted to be defective. The discussion of the Aborigines is a bit brief, but at least it is there.

J.S. Hagan (ed.), Australia and The World in The Twentieth Century. Has quite a good index with only two references to the Aborigines. As I said in ABR last August: ‘It would be more accurate to call it Australia And Britain In The Twentieth Century, With a Bit On Asia Tacked There On At The End.’ By WASPS for WASPS. There is no index entry for migrants.

J.R. Grigsby, The Turbulent Years – A History Of Australia 1770-1975. Attractively presented. It has four index entries for the Aborigines. This is a 1979 reprint of the original 1976 edition. The preface says to the student ‘… as you take your place in the making of Australian history . . . ‘and concludes that ‘. . . the story ends with the efforts of today’s pioneers to tap Australia’s known potential’. (Are you listening, Dr Pangloss?) Students whose major exposure to Australian history was this book would find it difficult, if not impossible, to understand, why some Aborigines are prone to abuse whites (or Gubbas) with phrases like: ‘You Captain Cook bastard!’ There are no index entries for the Labor Party, no Aborigines are mentioned by name, there is none for the Maritime Strike, and so it goes. Teachers would do far better to seriously consider Sue Fabian’s: The Changing Australians.

Grigsby and Gurry, Documents and Resources For The Turbulent Years. Reflects the same values as the text itself. There is no index.

Hendy and others, Foundations. This book is aimed at first year secondary students. It has quite a good index and seven authors. It is an attempt to cover in one year a four-year history course. That attempts such as this are necessary is a reflection of the drift away from ‘irrelevant’ history to more ‘useful’ and ‘relevant’ subjects. It is divided into four sections: I, Ancient West; II, Past Eastern Civilisations; III, European Society Under Change; IV, Personalities In Australian History. But there is no discussion of values, they are just assumed. For example the book claims to involve students ‘. . . in an assessment of human achievements which influence their lives today’. So the issue is prejudged.

Hoepper and five others, Horizons. It has quite a good index and is very attractively presented. The introduction gives a good outline of the rationale: ‘... students of year nine (are) to be led to the skills of forming and expressing opinions ... in the whole two-year course.’ ‘The subject matter presented and the questions posed are selections from the Queensland year nine syllabus’. But the restrictions under which syllabus designers in Queensland seem to be working may be reflected, for example, in Section VI: ‘The Age Of Revolution’. Guess which revolutions are NOT mentioned. Well, there are the English, American, French, Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions: Are you surprised to find that the Russian and Chinese revolutions are the unmentioned ones? And in a sense, the book does reflect Queensland reality when it starts with a discussion of Australian fears of invasion and the defence of Australia. Very helpful for Governments which thrive on Khaki elections.

Politics

It is my belief that any post-1975 Australian politics textbook that does not examine the office, the appointment and the powers of the Governor-General is a travesty. There also needs to be an examination of the role of the Chief Justice of the High Court – and the High Court itself. The easiest way to examine these questions is to examine the activities of Sir John Kerr, Sir Garfield Barwick and Mr Ellicott in November 1975. One of the problems of politics textbooks is that they always tend to be out of date. Furthermore, big business must be discussed in any meaningful examination of Australian politics, as must The National Civic Council in meaningful discussion of Australian pressure groups.

There’s an old educational principle that you should proceed from the known to the unknown. This being so, the ideal way to teach politics would be to START with the politics and power relationships of the school. Educationally it would be a wow. But think of the implications. Be that as it may. I am always troubled by this thought when I teach politics. You’d really get to the nitty gritty of the meaning of democracy, wouldn’t you?

M.T. Gilchrist and four others, Forces and Issues In Australian Politics – A Media Resource Book. No index. This is a useful resource within a conventional framework but it was published four years ago. I can’t really see that it does anything that Mayer and Nelson’s Readers don’t do more com­prehensively.

Bob Selinger, Decisions! The Process of Government In Australia. Published in 1979. No index. The preface says that it is intended for years seven to ten. Not all the pages are numbered. Very attractively presented. Has the fact that the author teaches at a Boys’ High School anything to do with the book starting with a boys’ adventure story: Lord of The Flies? At this level starting with the politics of the school would be an ideal way of introducing the subject. This book basically legitimises the system that operates in Australia. That’s fair enough, if there has been a real examination and criticism of the system as part of the process.

Social Sciences

Peter Hollingsworth, Australians in Poverty. Has an index, but not primarily designed as a text book, so there are no questions or exercises. It could be used as low as fourth form by a skilful teacher. And deserves to be. There is a good discussion of Aboriginal poverty. This book would be inexplicable to students who accept many of our histories at face value as stories of ‘Progress’.

Ron Andrews, The Niuginians. He is the author of many Geography texts. The book has an index and seems suitable for use at about Year Ten. It seems to be a geography teacher’s response to the drift away from geography. The book has four sections: sociology; geography; history; commerce. I find it difficult to think just what niche it would really fill.

L. Donovan and two others, Look Again – Social Education for Junior Secondary Students. No index. This book is oriented towards the students in Victorian Junior Technical Schools. I think it is one of those that represent the move away from history. It covers, English, geography, social studies health, hygiene, and also seems to be an attempt to develop self-awareness in a social context. A conscious attempt has been made to present the material in a non-sexist way (photo of girl on motor bike). But I think that the kids with a poor self-image for whom it seems designed, are the very ones who would turn away from its tendency to babyishness. However, I’m prepared to be corrected.

Discussions – A Social Program for Australian Schools. This series is one of those in which the books can’t be used as a tool. There are no indexes and many pages are not numbered. The books also represent the ahistorical trend mentioned earlier. But they also reflect the concern of teachers who are aware of some of the problems facing Australia and the world to bring examination of these into the schools.

Unit l. To Punish or Reform – Crime, Police and Justice In Australian Society. This book makes the same assumptions about the nature of crime that are made in every book I have seen with the same aim. It opens with a two-page photo of the Labor Party’s Bill Hartley (and other demonstrators) struggling with police during an anti­Springbok Tour. The caption is ‘Police Battle With Demonstrators’, but there is no examination of the issues. What about starting with white collar or corporate crime, or tax avoidance schemes? What about Aboriginal law and concepts of crime?

Unit 2. Urban Living – The Australian Way. Starts with the Latin proverb: ‘A Great City A Great Loneliness’. I feel that the book does not really examine the pros and the cons of the city. The cons are more or less assumed.

Unit 4. The Black Australians, Aboriginals – The Past And The Future. An amazing list of references at the end, including Rowley’s three books – for Junior Secondary kids? Much of the material is inaccurate: ‘Today many Aboriginals claim that their ancestors arrived in Australia nearly 30,000 years ago’. In my experience this is more a white view than an Aboriginal one. And ‘inaccurate’ is too kind a word for this: ‘Despite the efforts of the British Government to protect the Aboriginal, conflict soon arose’. Aborigines, and many whites, would not argue that the conflict was not ‘despite’ the British qovernment, but because of the invasion in 1788.

Unit 7. God Bless Australia – The Power And Influence Of Religion. Some of the language is incredibly sophisticated for the intended audience. This is really an examination of some aspects of the Christian religion. There’s no discussion of Jewish religion, Islam or Aboriginal religion.

Unit 10, Censorship in Australia. The book recognises three types of censorship: political, military, moral. Apparently there is no political censorship in Australia, because the author is forced to turn to Russia for examples. The links between newsagents and the daily papers would do with examination here. The author might find political censorship close to home.

Unit 11. A Woman’s Place – The Role Of Women In Australian Society. Once again, language far too sophisticated for the capabilities of the students. The series claims to ‘present a wide range of arguments, interpretations and values. Often these conflict. It is left to the student to take his own rational decision about the issues involved’. The author of this book does not do this. She makes statements which brook no contradiction. Shrieking at the students won’t do the women’s cause any good.