This article discusses the familiar notion of the shibboleth in situations of exclusion, focusing on the non-use, rather than the use, of language, for which I propose the term the anti-shibboleth. The article begins with an introduction to the concept of the shibboleth, giving examples from situations of violent conflict and suppression such as…

For the last five decades, the development of "Asia-literate" students has been a key objective in Australian education policy. The contentions surrounding this educational goal have been well documented by academic literatures, policy documents and media commentary. This paper seeks to redress the absence of student voices in these…

Across the world, history curriculum is often criticized for being ethnocentric or for privileging a nation's preferred historical narratives through which it imagines itself and the world. It is also a site through which ethnocentric narratives can be resisted. Within these debates there tends to be little consideration of the influences on the…

History curriculum in Australia has moved beyond its traditional British imperial roots and currently takes a world history approach. Postmodern and postcolonial approaches have challenged the dominant Western metanarrative projected on and by curriculum and the inclusion of Asia-related histories has contributed to the diversification of the…

Since 1969, over 60 Australian government and non-government policies, documents, committees, working parties and organisations have explored the need to "know Asia". In schools, this engagement is conceptualised as "Asia literacy" and disseminated in the emerging Australian Curriculum through the cross-curriculum priority…

Rudyard Kipling wrote "The Road to Mandalay" in 1892 when Burma was a British colony and Queen Victoria was the Empress of India. In the poem, Mandalay is a city some 500 miles along the Irrawaddy River from the capital, Rangoon. British troops stationed in Burma were transported on the river by paddle steamers. The picture painted of…

The book is entitled History Wars in the Classroom: Global Perspectives and examines how ten separate countries have experienced debates and disputes over the contested nature of the subject, for example the "Black Armband" and "Whitewash" factions in Australia who adopt opposingly celebratory or denigratory views of Australian…

This book is composed of 19 articles written by both Asian and American scholars on the history and present conditions of newspapers in 15 Asian nations: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, South Vietnam, Ceylon, India, and Pakistan. Two overviews of the Asian…

This resource represents a virtual library of still and moving images, documents, maps, sound clips and text which make up the history of the non-European world from prehistoric times to the early 1990s. The interdisciplinary range of materials included is compatible with standard textbooks in middle and high school social science, social studies,…