The national curriculum and history school textbooks in australia and the russian federation

Abstract

History has special signifi cance in decision making about what should be emphasised in a national curriculum for whilst it is concerned with phenomena that no longer exist, in another sense “the past is not dead at all; it exists through the ways in which we understand the past, and in the personal, cultural and intellectual inheritance we each have” (Portal 1987, p. 13). In analysing the new content of the national curriculum in history in Australia and in the Russian Federation, we examine how the new curricula position new representations of the nation and historiography and how this is foregrounded in history school textbooks. We are mindful of the ways in which curriculum documents are indicative of efforts of governments at particular times to secure the nation’s past in the present with an eye to securing the future (Attwood 2005) and the curriculum’s offi cially defi ned status as an instrument in the process of ideological transformation and nation-building. The chapter also examines how history texts are both implicit and instrumental in this process in terms of what content and skills should be selected and emphasised. It is structured in two parts with a focus on the history curriculum in Australia and the Russian Federation, respectively. The chapter concludes with an identifi cation of some of the features of nation-building discursively positioned in history curricula and textbooks in both nation-states.