New government, new history curriculum?

With the election of a new Federal Government this weekend, comes some uncertainty for educators, particularly historians. There are a range of issues for schools such as sources of school funding, funding equity, technology integration and interference in curriculum. For the HSIE teacher perhaps the most important of these is that Tony Abbot has indicated that he intends to rewrite the Australian Curriculum for history. 

Without getting into the political arguments of the left vs. right views, I'd like to explore the implications of such a rewrite. If you would like to explore the politics of the issue in more detail there is a great blog post from theconsciencevote. Instead I'd like to explore the practicalities of a rewrite. 

Resource development
Substantial funds have already been spent nationally on developing a range of resources for the Phase 1 subjects for the Australian Curriculum, including History. This includes government educational bodies, professional teachers' associations, non-government organisations and private companies. In addition teachers themselves have invested a great deal of time familiarising themselves with the new curriculum and creating resources. It would be an incredible waste of money, time and effort to have to throw out some of these resources due to a rewrite. 

Professional development
A great deal of time and money has been invested in the development of professional learning for teachers to aid the implementation of the History Curriculum nationally and the new NSW syllabus in this state. In addition schools will have paid for relief time for teachers to undertake the professional learning and will have also dedicated time in Staff Development Days. Again, much of this will be wasted if a major rewrite is on the cards. 

NSW re-write
In NSW the inefficiency of a rewrite will be compounded due the the process of the Board of Studies already re-writing the Australian Curriculum for implementation in NSW. If the government chooses to rewrite the Australian Curriculum it will then need to go back to the Board of Studies to create a "new" new NSW syllabus incorporating the Australian Curriculum. In addition this would then also serve to delay the rewriting of the Phase 2 subjects in NSW which could mean subjects like Geography, Business and Economics are delayed even further. These subject are already a long way off without further interruption. 

Teacher time
Teachers will be required to spend time familiarising themselves with changes, modifying resources (which they have only just written) and undertaking more professional development. This is a huge waste of time considering staff have already been through this process for the Australian Curriculum. I am constantly frustrated by the negative views of teachers in mainstream media, particularly around issues such as efficiency and effectiveness. The endless bureaucracy that governs education and the constant view of politicians that they know best, only serves to burden teachers with endless, time-consuming tasks with little benefit to students.

Competing stakeholders
What politicians of all persuasions fail to realise is that teachers are the ones who bare the brunt of the non-stop changes and additions to the formal and informal curriculum. Every time an issue arises in the media, call-back radio becomes inundated with calls about what needs to be added to the curriculum and mainstream media tells us all about the failures of education. A drunken yobbo urinates on a war memorial? Clearly when he was at school he didn't learn enough about our war heroes. The Cronulla riots? Schools don't teach students about the Australian way of life. What results is an ad hoc patchwork of initiatives and policies with little thought to how it all fits together. Or alternatively, we end up with a syllabus that has been so strongly determined by political agendas that it fails to take into consideration the interests and needs of students (did I hear someone say 9-10 Australian History and Geography?).

My advice to politicians of all persuasions is get out of the way of the educational experts. Let teachers get on with their jobs of engaging students, and keep your politics out of our classrooms.

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For more reading:

Are the history wars really history? Abbott thinks not.
The Culture Wars are back.
Coalition government to review to review unions and ALP presence in history curriculum.
He's wrong, historians say as Tony Abbott reignites history wars. 
Rewriting History