Citation

Parkes RJ. Curric. Inq. 2007; 37(4): 383-400.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-873X.2007.00392.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This article is concerned with theorizing a curricular response to what has become known in Australia as the “history wars” (Macintyre & Clark, 2003). The central debate in the history wars is over the representation of the colonization of Australia. Because History curriculum serves as an apparatus for the social (re)production of national identities, the importance of school history as a battlefield in the “history wars” should not be underestimated (Clark, 2003). This article explores as a case study the emergence of and political backlash against a critical History curriculum in the state of New South Wales, Australia, during the decade prior to the millennium. The case, reflecting similar debates over History curricula in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, provides a useful starting point for reconceptualising critical approaches to History as curriculum. Reading History curriculum as a postcolonial text, it is argued that what have remained uncontested in the struggle for histories have been the representational practices of “history” itself, and that attending to representation opens new possibilities for school History as critical pedagogic practice.