The Australian Prime Minister John Howard has announced that all Australian high school kids will be taught compulsory subjects on Australian history; Gallipoli and the Eureka Stockade being two core subjects.  Newspapers are claiming this to be a ‘radical’ move, but why?. Why was Australian history NEVER a compulsory subject in the schools?.

Since the direction of education was placed in the hands of loony and clueless trendies many subjects that were the mainstays of a child’s education feel by the wayside. Too much political correctness was involved; too much onus on not offending certain kids from certain cultures mean’t that parts of Aussie history had to go untaught and, at best, ignored. It is time that all this nonsence stopped. When I went to school we were taught that Australia was settled by the English with convicts – that day was January 26 1788. By the time my three elder sons were at school in the 90′s the ‘trendies’ had interfered enough with education so that now the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 was known as the ‘invasion’. Australia Day, 26th January, had now been renamed ‘invasion day’.  Unfortunately a proportion of the Australian population aknowledged this – idiots that they are.

Even such landmarks as the landing at Gallipoli disappeared from the school syllabus; learning about our own hero’s was dropped so that if you today mention ‘The man with the donkey’ to any school kid you will just get a shrug of the shoulders.  How many kids these days realise that many Australian soldiers were POW’s of the Japanese during WWII?. Not many I would say. Teaching that in the classrooms was too sensitive a topic given the high level of Japanese investment in Australia during the 80′s - can’t hurt their feelings you see.

Yes, the teaching of Australian history until now has lain in tattered shreds, like the Eureka flag in that picture above, but soon teachers will be teaching the kids there all about how our identity came to be. The good and the not so good parts of our history, and lets face it, all nations have events in their past that were not too great. But Australians have much to be proud of. Let’s hope the kids come out feeling proud, and informed, as well.