Millennials and History

I’ve been asked by a history teacher at my daughter’s school to do a number of presentations on Vietnam (specifically about conscription and the divisions it caused). Thinking about it – this is a daunting task.

The teacher in me asked her what prior learning the students had and what it was she wanted to focus on. The answer came back – social division and conscription.

How do you get these concepts and a true sense of the time across to a group of Millennials who generally have lived the good life (this is a relatively expensive private school) in a provincial city on Queensland – shielded by their wealth and lifestyles from an understanding of the historical realities of the sixties and seventies? How can they understand the tensions and debates of the time – then so stark without the distractions of the Net and the mobile?

The answer is that probably you can’t, so I’ll tell them my story, invite questions in the hope that I can turn a lecture into a conversation, and hopefully pepper it with some tips about researching the source documents and interrogating them to determine the difference between truth and spin.

If I can ignite a spark of interest that leads to honest and organised inquiry in just one or two of them, it will be worthwhile