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Where we’re at, like

by
May 2008, no. 301

History’s Children: History Wars in the Classroom by Anna Clark

NewSouth, $29.95 pb, 178 pp

Where we’re at, like

by
May 2008, no. 301

This is an honest, modest report of what students and teachers across the country think about the teaching of Australian history in schools. Anna Clark has allowed her subjects to speak for themselves; being a scrupulous historian, she has not edited their offerings. So we hear words like these: ‘Now they’re having like record numbers [at Anzac Day], and like huge ceremonies all over Australia and they’re like young people that respect it’; and ‘Reading a textbook, when you have to like read three pages of a textbook, and then the teacher’s like, “Do the questions”...’ An enduring value of this book will be its record of teenagers’ spoken English in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It makes for rather tiresome reading, but it is salutary to be constantly reminded of where students are at, like.

John Hirst review 'History’s Children: History Wars in the Classroom' by Anna Clark

History’s Children: History Wars in the Classroom

by Anna Clark

NewSouth, $29.95 pb, 178 pp

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