Most school students think our history is too "boring and dry" because it's not taught well Taking part in the 30-day Australia Day quiz is model West Coast Fever player Ashleigh Brazill, Associate Professor Ted Wilkes, lawyer Patti Chong and model Laina Stagoll. AUSTRALIAN history is misconceived as "boring and dry" because it is often taught poorly, WA historians claim. University of Notre Dame Australia Associate Prof Deborah Gare said she often struggled to convince new undergraduate students that "Australia's history matters" because of what they were taught at school. "The problem has always been that our students often leave school feeling that Australia's history is boring and dry as dust," she said. That was certainly my own experience, and recent evidence suggests the problem is widespread across the country. Australian history is often taught appallingly badly. A cross-section of West Australians sat an Australia Day quiz written by Associate Prof Gare, Curtin University Associate Prof of History Bobbie Oliver and Murdoch University Prof Emeritus in History Bob Reece. Among those to sit the 30-question quiz this week included respected Aboriginal elder, Associate Prof Ted Wilkes, prominent Perth lawyer Patti Chong, West Coast Fever vice captain Ashleigh Brazill and Miss Universe WA contestant Laina Stagoll. Most were quick to answer that John Curtin was Australia's Prime Minister during World War II and that AC/DC originated in Perth. They also knew why we celebrate Australia Day on January 26 and knew that Alan Bond's Australia II won the America's Cup in 1983. But many did not know that sandalwood was WA's first profitable export, nor that the Boer War was the first overseas conflict for which West Australians volunteered to serve, or that William Dampier visited the Kimberley coastline 100 years before Captain Cook landed at Botany Bay. Associate Prof Gare, who leads the university's history program, said Australian history was too heavily skewed towards the eastern states and January 26 had little relevance to WA. "It was the day on which the colony of New South Wales was established and no more," she said. The anniversary has nothing to do with the origins of Tasmania, WA or South Australia. Further, and despite the aspirations of the Australia Day Council, January 26 appears to celebrate the 'coming of civilisation' which has dreadful implications for our acknowledgment that Aboriginal nations already lived here. Associate Prof Wilkes said Australian history - as taught in schools - was not a "true and correct history." He said we did not celebrate the fact that "we are the oldest living culture probably on this planet" and that further education would break down many barriers. "We all know that histories are written by the mainstream population, or the conquerors, as they say," he said. I've read a lot of the history of this country and I've focused on the South-West of WA, and the trauma doesn't come through in the education syllabus. There are some traumatic experiences for people in history and particularly us Aboriginal people. It's not all one way - it must have been hard for white fellas to come in and try to occupy a land that was so different to where they came from. But. . . the poverty of Aboriginal Australians today is a direct result of that trauma so we need to understand that. Australia has a black history, it has a white history and they should both be told without any inhibitions about the truth and the facts. Associate Prof Oliver said the new national curriculum gave teachers more opportunities to teach local history and opened up history to primary students. "It's far, far better than what it was before and in a lot of cases it's up to what initiative teachers can show, how much training they can get and how much time they get to develop the curriculum," she said.