Hugo Robinson, "Caesar, the Rubicon, and Me," History Matters, (28 October 2015)

My short film is intended as a supplementary educational aid for history teachers at Holy Cross College, a Catholic boys school in the suburb of Ryde that has been operating since 1891. With primary sources from Holy Cross College's own archive, I have created a short film aimed at educating students in Year Nine about the First World War. The intention here, however, is to use some of the stories of former Holy Cross students in order to better contextualise the event for the students. I believe this is important in the understanding of both world and local history as it helps those who usually show very little interest in history to find some form of emotional or relatable connection. My inspiration for this idea of using seemingly “small-time” characters in explaining world history comes from E.H Carr's “What is History?” the prescribed reading for the second week of this course, which posed a question that has remained in my thoughts since. Carr points out how Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon has been held in such high esteem by historians that it is perceived as worthy of preservation. However Carr asks an important question. What about the other million people that also crossed the river that same year? I think that this has influenced me more than anything in not only telling a basic history of the First World War, but also in thinking about stories which haven't quite made the cut for more academic historians. 

My project, however, has changed since my proposal due to suggestions from Holy Cross itself. I think that this itself displays a very interesting part of public history; that organisations know how their history should be displayed best and most effectively. On this I agree with them – not only should I keep in mind that is it their history on display, but also I must be mindful of their target audience. Originally, my project was intended to be three short films, of around four minutes in length, about World War I in relation to Holy Cross College. However, after a number of reviews and discussions with teachers who offered to use my short film as a teaching supplement for next year's Year Nine students, this had to be changed drastically. This is because we figured that the students would work better from one five minute film rather than having to pay attention to a total of twelve minutes of footage on a topic they would not have started yet. The second alteration came in the content itself. Originally, my film(s) would look more closely at the lives of the Holy Cross old boys. But after discussion on how we could re-purpose this work for education, we decided it was best to place more of an emphasis on basic facts of the First World War itself. However, this is not to say that the lives of the old boys were not inserted. As mentioned, I have included three brief stories that will work in conjunction with work to be devised for the students for next year.

My film begins with a quote from ex-student Corporal Jack Collins, who was killed in the First World War.

It was written in a yearbook in 1914 and describes the general mood and sentiment of the time. During the period, the school was in the full throes of military fervour, with a cadet corps and military drills as part of daily routine. Having completed so far three years of academic history, I felt that the next part of describing a basic history of the war was a little underwhelming. When I discussed this with one of the teachers at Holy Cross he told me that this was more than enough for a fifteen year old boy who knows very little about the war outside of ANZAC day. I thought this was satisfactory to leave it as is. I also had to remind myself that this video would be used in tandem with a proper in-depth syllabus run by the teacher in 2016. This reflects a particularly important lesson that I myself learned from this course; being used to writing academic history for certified scholars, high-grade essay writing becomes increasingly easier every time you do it. However, when trying to create material for a much younger audience with either little to no interest in history, things become a tad more complicated. For instance, facts and events had to be simplified to a greater degree and compressed so that the students' attentions could still be held. The production techniques I employed to achieve this include a simple voice over, simple text captions, a changing soundtrack (in order to keep things interesting) and constant colour footage from the National Archives to keep the students interested. Not only must the history you present be important to those digesting it, the presentation itself must suit the audience.

Because of this connection my video would be having with the classroom, I decided that the best resource to use for basic facts on the war would be Dennett and Dixon's Key Features of Modern History. This textbook is currently used by the school as a First World War teaching resource, so I thought that it would be beneficial to keep my work in parallel with Dennett and Dixon. For this reason, my film covers roughly the same topics. It begins with causes for the war, who fought the war, technological advances, Australian involvement, life in the trenches, the home front and the role of women. Some basic facts about the loss of life in the war were also used to paint a picture of how costly the war was. I found that by intertwining the histories of three of the alumni of Holy Cross, we could hope to get the boys interested and inspired into learning a little more about their history as a school. As mentioned before, because of my project, two history teachers at Holy Cross have decided to do a few lessons dedicated to more history to do with the school in relation to the war and I'm quite pleased with this. I think that this film will help the boys, therefore, grasp background knowledge to the First World War and their later work in school history.

To conclude, I think my project fits the target audience but also achieves its goal of using the history that Holy Cross College has given me effectively. As each organisation looks to have a different purpose in helping the community, I think public history needs fit around their strategies and goals. In this way I am pleased that my work was put into action with Holy Cross and could actually find some sort of use. By modelling it around their goal to educate young boys, the film has taken directions I didn't originally anticipate. However, I see no issue with this whatsoever as their history belongs to them and not the historians themselves. Therefore, I believe that my work with Holy Cross College and the film I have produced, adequately suits the needs of my chosen organisation.

— HUGO ROBINSON 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bruce Dennett & Stephen Dixon, Key Features of Modern History, 4th ed.(Sydney: Oxford University Press, 2008)

Centenary Magazine of Holy Cross College Ryde, 44th Volume, Published 1991