Kulturkampf

[Potato]

In today's least surprising news, young people, raised on a diet of social media outage and political advocacy dressed up as education, claim to be more interested and knowledgeable about indigenous history while having less actual knowledge of that history than older people.

https://theconversation.com/younger-australians-show-greater-interest-in-indigenous-histories-but-know-less-about-them-new-research-286958

Younger Australians aged 18–39 proved more interested in and felt more knowledgeable about Indigenous histories. In fact, Indigenous history was the leading area of interest and knowledge for these age groups.

Around 40% of younger Australians were most interested in Indigenous history. By contrast, one-quarter or less of those aged 50 or over said they were interested in Indigenous history.

The difference was even starker when it came to levels of claimed knowledge. Around one-third (34%) of those aged 18–29 said they knew most about Indigenous history, but this dropped to 13% of those aged 50–59, and only 6% for those aged 70 or over.

More to the story

These findings demonstrate a clear generational divide. However, other results in the survey indicate that the gap in knowledge between younger and older Australians may not be all that it seems.

When asked to indicate whether they were aware of seven specific events in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, only three received majority recognition from respondents overall.

The remaining four received minority recognition, with around 1 in 10 Australians saying they were unaware of any of the listed events.

Again, age proved the key factor in determining awareness of these events, but here the trend reversed. While younger Australians claimed greater knowledge of Indigenous history, they ranked lowest on these key events.

In general, awareness levels trended upwards with age. The exception is the Frontier Wars, for which there was minimal difference between the youngest and oldest cohorts (35% versus 39%).

No listed event received majority recognition from those aged 18–29, though the Rudd government’s apology to the Stolen Generations came close with 48% recognition.

By contrast, more than 70% of those aged 70 or over said they were aware of most events. The exception was the Howard government’s denial of the Stolen Generations, which received 58% recognition.

Maybe if they spent less time bleating about imaginary genocides online and more time learning about the actual history, we might get somewhere. Until then, nothing will change.