- Title
- Treading on sacred ground? Confronting the Anzac myth in higher education
- Creator
- Kilmister, Michael; Bennett, James; Ford, Margot; Debenham, Jennifer
- Relation
- History Compass Vol. 15, Issue 8, no. e12395
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12395
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell Publishing
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- The Anzac legend, with its firm grip on popular abstractions of Australian history, nationhood, and identity, incites trepidation in the university History teacher like few other topics. Casting a critical eye over the Anzac metanarrative can also be disquieting for students unfamiliar with scholarly History and method because their conceptions of identity, both individual and national, are disrupted. In the tertiary classroom, popular understandings collide not only with scholarship but also with professional and ethical requirements. In a generic History course, which includes many teacher education students, our trepidation to teach Anzac is highlighted. We argue that many young people belong to a state‐sanctioned conceptualisation of Anzac. This highly nationalistic interpretation is partly reinforced in schools, by certain sections of the media as well as other corporate and political interests. Prompted by the centenary of Anzac, the article suggests that an appreciation of students' existing knowledge and conceptions of the subject become the starting point for engaging with such a contentious topic. This is especially important because the Anzac legend is an evolving, malleable myth that means different things to different people. The article argues that eliciting students' views on Anzac as an entry point enables tertiary teachers to craft strategies to overcome the resilience of the myth.
- Subject
- Anzac; SoTL; higher education; Central Coast (New South Wales); national identity
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1346568
- Identifier
- uon:29892
- Identifier
- ISSN:1478-0542
- Rights
- This is the peer reviewed version of the above article, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12395. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
- Reviewed
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