Lying to Children : is this Neducation?

I visited the local Public Library recently to see what was available about Ned Kelly. My search on their Computer based catalogue for anything containing “Ned Kelly” as a subject produced exactly 50 hits. After excluding material that wasn’t really about Ned Kelly or the outbreak – for example a book about John Jarratt, the actor who played Ned in the Last Outlaw TV Miniseries of 1980 -  there were 37 books and DVDs available that were actually about Ned Kelly and the outbreak. A number of these books were about Bushrangers in general and had chapters on the Kelly Gang – one was called “A Guide to Australian Folklore”, another “Great Australian Speeches” and another “The Encyclopedia of Australian Crime”. Of books specifically devoted to the Kelly story many of ‘the usual suspects’ were there, such as  “The Fatal Friendship” and 3 versions of  “Ned Kelly : A Short Life” by Ian Jones , Peter Fitzsimons book, the Corfield Encyclopedia, and the books on Glenrowan by Paul Terry and by Ian Shaw. Noticeably absent were the recent important additions to the Kelly scholarship, “The Kelly Gang Unmasked” by Ian MacFarlane, “Ned Kelly a Lawless Life” by Doug Morrissey and “Ned Kelly Under the Microscope”  Edited by Craig Cormick, meaning that our local community is seriously under-informed about where the Kelly story has gone to in recent years. I will be recommending this deficiency be corrected as soon as possible.

However the thing that surprised me most was to see that there were 13 books about Ned Kelly in the Junior Non Fiction section. This was one more book about Ned Kelly than was listed in general Non Fiction. The other interesting thing I noticed was that the majority of them were written by women. Men have written hundreds  of books about Ned Kelly and the Outbreak but I can think of only a handful of adult works that were written by  women – for example theres one about Ellen Kelly and another is about the Glenrowan hostages, and in the last few months two more have appeared, one being a collection of newspaper articles and the latest is the worthless conspiracy theory about Steve and Dans survival at Glenrowan.  What’s that all about? 

I went to the Junior Non-Fiction section to have a look at what youngsters are being told about Ned Kelly, and what I found was at once in many ways delightful,  but at the same time also disturbing in works that are supposed to be teaching history to eager and trusting young minds.

It was the illustrations in many of them that delighted me  – they were very colourful and often slightly whimsical portrayals of Bushrangers, trains, horses,  the bush and the Kelly Gang. Kids must find them really appealing! There was a minimum of gore and murder. In fact when you think about it, the Kelly story is packed with colourful imagery and dramatic events that lend themselves to illustration and artistic interpretation. 

But what of the Kelly story told in these books? These short colourfully illustrated books were aimed mostly at children of Primary School age and so the story  was necessarily highly simplified and condensed and inevitably required many omissions of fact, and glossing over of detail. However in one respect these books were consistent : Ned was almost universally portrayed as a victim, as hard done by, as someone who was unfairly persecuted by corrupt Police – the Kelly Myth, in other words. The other thing they had in common was to contain numerous errors of fact.

Heres an example from Anna Shepherds “Australia’s Most Notorious Bushrangers”

FACT FILE :

Name: Ned Kelly

Born: Beveridge, Vic 1855

Deeds: He led a gang of Bushrangers in North Eastern Victoria. The Kelly Gang carried out some of the boldest robberies ever seen in Australia.

Died: Melbourne Vic 1880

Unlike most of Australia’s bushrangers Ned Kelly only stole from Banks, and only from the rich. He never held up travellers or mail coaches. He believed he only killed in self-defense and that his actions were the result of Police persecution and unjust treatment by the authorities.

The books aimed at a slightly older audience included photos  and referenced particular events in the saga, and much of it was factual but again the tone was sympathetic towards Ned and Kelly mythology, and error-ridden. Some of it is such obvious  and deliberate misrepresentation of the truth that I am tempted to describe it as lies about Ned Kelly. Heres an example from Paula Hunts “Outlaw Son : the story of Ned Kelly”

“Luckily for the Police and Journalists on the train Ned allowed the local school teacher, Thomas Curnow to leave the Hotel with his family”

This inverts the brave school teachers terrifying heart-in-mouth deception of a known Police murderer and hostage-taker with a gun and armour and more killing on his mind, into some sort of generous act on the part of Ned Kelly. It completely discredits the heroic bravery of Thomas Curnow. It is dishonest history telling at best.

Later Paula Hunt writes:

“The Police had been incompetent in their efforts to capture the Kelly Gang. The shootout at the Glenrowan Hotel was no exception.  Several people including a young boy were fatally wounded by the Police”

Again we are reading a deliberately prejudiced view of events rather than simple History, and the real message is actually subliminal, unstated : Police are to blame for fatally wounding people.  I find it objectionable.

The story is sometimes mixed up, events are out of order and facts simply wrong:

“Red was eventually arrested and Gaoled for horse stealing and died before finishing his sentence”

“Ned knew that Kennedy would not live and believed that right or wrong the best thing to do was put him out of his misery. He shot him in the head” (Geoff Hocking :The Kelly Gang: The last of the Bushrangers”)

“To raise money for Mrs. Kelly’s legal defense the Kellys robbed banks in the Victorian town of Euroa and across the border in Jerilderie in New South Wales.  Then at Stringybark Creek in the Wombat Ranges they shot and killed three policemen who were tracking them. Now the Kelly Gang was wanted for murder.  (“Ned Kelly’s  Jerilderie Letter” by Carole Wilkinson)

1880 26^th June Joe Byrne shoots a man named Aaron Sherritt for betraying the Gang to the Police. (The person murdered was not a random “man” but a close friend of the Gangs, and there  remains to this day enormous doubt that he betrayed them)

1880 27^th June The Police hear about the murder of Aaron Sherritt. They send a special Police train carrying 200 officers to Beechworth via Glenrowan to hunt down the Kelly Gang. ( 200 officers? I hope that’s just a typo!)(Meet Ned Kelly by Janeen Brian)

Anybody with an interest in the Kelly story who read these books would see many  more mistakes – another  one is the claim that Ned was the last man hanged in Victoria!

So what are we to make of this genre? Firstly I don’t think outright errors of basic  facts are excusable. There are so many of them in every book that I looked at that I found myself becoming quite angry about this careless  disregard for basic  facts and the truth. None of these mistakes were about obscure details but, as Ive illustrated , they related to basic information and easily verified parts of the story.  Why do these writers treat children with such obvious contempt by not caring about the truth of the stories they are telling? Remember these books were all in the Non-Fiction part of the Childrens section of the Library.

Apart from a big question about the motivation of these writers, the other question that these books raise in my mind is whether or not these errors of facts are important, and whether or not its important that children are being fed a line about Ned Kelly thats not actually true, mythology as true history?

One might argue they are being taught about the value of standing up for yourself and not putting up with bullying and corruption, about bravery, about respecting your family, about caring for the poor and underprivileged, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised?  It might also be teaching kids that if you break the Law, no matter for what reason you will suffer the consequences. Nobody would dispute that these are worthwhile values, but is it acceptable to use a mangled version of history to teach them? Personally I don’t think so.

Ive been giving it a lot of thought and have realised that we have two important agendas  being mixed together in these books - one is to teach history and the other is to learn lessons from it, and I think both are being done very badly. Firstly I believe that if you’re going to teach history you have to get the facts right, no matter who your target audience is. Its disrespectful to children to write as if facts, and truthfulness are less important for them. In fact I would say that for parents there is almost nothing of greater importance than telling the truth to children and being open and honest with them. Once they catch you out trying to pull the wool over their eyes your credibility and their respect for you is on a downhill slide.

The second bit, learning lessons from history, is much more tricky. Learning them from made up stories is much easier -  in fact thats why all cultures have myths and legends, fairy stories - they are exciting made up stories that act as vehicles or frameworks for the teaching of important values and social customs and mores. Everyone knows they are not strictly “true” stories but they contain “Truth” .  But if you are going to use an actual historical event like the Kelly Outbreak to do a similar thing, your first duty is to get the story right, but if you don’t how can you expect the value lessons to be taken seriously?

Ive written before about my suspicion of Kelly sympathisers who promote themselves as educators - as “Neducators” as one of them calls himself - offering themselves to schools, promoting school camps and educational tours revealing the story of the Outbreak.  I am deeply suspicious of their claims to be telling “the truth” and of telling it in some kind of balanced way so that people can make up their own minds.  And I am deeply suspicious of their tactic of targeting  children, to uncritical young minds who can easily be persuaded of just about anything by a practiced and polished adult. However having never been on one of the Tours, or received Neducation I cant claim to know exactly what they get up to but I would hazard a guess that a survey of Kelly Tour participants and recipients of Neducation would reveal a high proportion of them viewed Ned Kelly very favourably, would regard the Kelly myths as largely the truth but would never have been told about Ned Kellys lies, about the absence of evidence for a republic, about the attempts Police made to rehabilitate him, about threatening to harm women and children.

With Kids books however, I don’t have to guess that they might not be getting a balanced and reasonable account of the outbreak - I can read what theyre being told for my self - and they aren’t! They’re being feed the syrupy fairy tale of the gallant  Ned Kelly with the occasional token reference to his bad behaviour, or rhetorical question about his right to defend himself or stand up and fight for his rights. “Was he a victim of Police abuse or merely a villain?” asks Anna Purcell, placing before young minds that tedious false dichotomy and asking them to chose! The same old “Hero or Villain” nonsense. 

These books are mostly a disgrace. They treat kids as mugs and ought to be in the Junior Fiction section of the library. Or listed as Propaganda : Not suitable for Young Children.