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Monash Memo - 27 June 2001

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Monash makes history in schools

The National Centre for History Education will be established at Monash's Gippsland campus to make history more exciting and engaging for Australian primary and secondary school students and their teachers.

The Centre, funded by the Federal Government through the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs, will develop new primary and secondary school curriculum resources and form a national association for history education. Much of the material will be freely available on the web.

Centre director Associate Professor Tony Taylor, from the Faculty of Education, said the project would involve input from colleagues at the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University, as well as practising teachers, the Australian Heritage Commission, and other historians and educators.

"It's been more than a year since Australians realised that most of us did not know the name of our first Prime Minister," he said.

"Since that time, Edmund Barton has become a household name but the Centre for History Education has plans to make Australians even better informed.

"We want to awaken interest in teachers and learners of history in discovering more about our shared past, and to learn from it for the future."

In 1999, the Federal Government appointed Dr Taylor to head an inquiry into history teaching in Australian schools.

His report, 'The Future of the Past', highlighted the need to strengthen the place of history in the school curriculum.

He found many teachers, both primary and secondary, were not trained in teaching history and a significant number felt the subject was being crowded out of the classroom by other subjects.

As a response, the government launched the $2.3 million National History Project, which included $1 million to establish the National Centre for History Education.

The National History Project also includes funding for two history seminars. The first, on Australian history in schools, was recently held in Canberra.