Saturday, May 21, 2011

What Australian schools don't teach their kids about history and geography

In Australia, the state of teaching history and geography in primary school and high school is terrible.

Each successive grade has its own version of Aboriginal history and then everything else gets glossed over or ignored. Aboriginal history is important, but it must be within proportion and not at the expense of everything else.

Consider how gigantic the Pacific region is and then consider how many don’t learn a heck of a lot about it in school.

The following could be some questions that would probably be answered wrong by many of today’s high school graduates simply because the school system failed to teach the subject.



  • What year was Darwin bombed; by whom; and why?



  • What effect did the end of World War 1 have on Australian regional power?



  • What did the Australian coast-watchers do?



  • Who was Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith and what did he accomplish?



  • Name ten countries that are located in the Pacific Ocean region.



  • Why was the battle of Coral Sea so important for Australia?



  • What happened at Balibo?





  • How would your children score with those questions?

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    4 comments:

    Locum said...

    A society which does not know about her history is doomed.

    Bushranger 71 said...

    Eric; the Battle of the Coral Sea was not the most significant action of WW2 concerning Australia. In my view, that was the fierce 6 months Guadalcanal campaign for which this nation owes America an unrepayable debt for their sacrifices.

    Anonymous said...

    My 14 year old got 6 out of 7 (couldn't answer the WWI question, although he had a good crack.)

    My 12 year old got 4 out of 7 (couldn't answer Balibo, Coral Sea and WWI).

    Unknown said...

    Certainly it wasn't the most important battle, however it was important and stopped Japanese plans to come around the south and have a crack at Port Moresby. I think many of those battles were important. And yes the quality of the schools are variable to the point of being dangerous.