It is a matter of public shame that while we have now

Host: The schoolyard was silent long after the children had gone home. A few autumn leaves drifted across the empty asphalt, swirling between rusted swings and graffiti-marked benches. In the distance, the Australian flag hung limp on its pole, motionless against a sky the color of ash and forgetting.

Host: Inside an old staffroom, under the tired glow of fluorescent light, Jack and Jeeny sat across a scarred wooden table scattered with papers, coffee stains, and curriculum sheets. A torn poster on the wall still bore the words “Celebrating 100 Years of Federation.”

Host: The silence carried a faint hum — the echo of forgotten voices, the ghosts of stories untold.

Jeeny: (reading softly from a yellowed page) “Henry Lawson once wrote: ‘It is a matter of public shame that while we have now commemorated our hundredth anniversary, not one in every ten children attending Public schools throughout the colonies is acquainted with a single historical fact about Australia.’”

Host: She set the paper down, her eyes burning with a quiet, restrained anger.

Jeeny: “He wrote that more than a century ago, Jack. And I wonder — has anything changed?”

Jack: (leaning back, weary) “Maybe not enough. But history’s a luxury now, Jeeny. Kids are learning to code, to compete, to survive. Nobody hires you for knowing who Lawson was.”

Jeeny: “That’s not the point. History isn’t for hiring — it’s for anchoring. It’s what reminds us who we are.”

Jack: “Who we are doesn’t matter when who we become pays the bills.”

Host: A clock ticked somewhere in the corner — slow, relentless, marking the erosion of both time and memory.

Jeeny: “You sound like a bureaucrat, not a teacher.”

Jack: (dryly) “And you sound like a poet lost in a syllabus.”

Jeeny: “Maybe poets should write syllabi. Then children might learn to care.”

Jack: “Care doesn’t fit on a timetable, Jeeny. We’ve got standardized tests now. Metrics. If it can’t be measured, it doesn’t exist.”

Jeeny: (bitterly) “So Lawson was right, then. We’ve commemorated ourselves into amnesia. A nation that celebrates its past without remembering it.”

Host: The wind outside rose, rattling the windows. The flag flapped once, then fell still again — as if the country itself were sighing.

Jack: “Look, I get it. You want them to know about the gold rush, the convicts, the poets, the wars. But kids today are different. Their heroes aren’t explorers — they’re influencers.”

Jeeny: “Then we’ve failed them. Because explorers built the path they walk on. Without memory, Jack, even success is hollow.”

Jack: “You think memory feeds anyone? History doesn’t pay rent. It’s nostalgia packaged as virtue.”

Jeeny: “It’s not nostalgia — it’s conscience.”

Host: The air grew heavy, thick with old dust and tension. Jeeny stood, pacing near the window, her reflection trembling against the glass.

Jeeny: “You know what Lawson understood? That a country without memory isn’t a country at all — it’s a marketplace. We’ve traded our stories for convenience.”

Jack: “That’s romantic, but wrong. History divides people. Look around — every time we talk about the past, we end up in arguments about who owns it.”

Jeeny: “Because we never learned to share it! That’s what education was supposed to fix. A child who knows their history learns to see everyone’s struggle, not just their own.”

Jack: “Or they learn who to blame. You think teaching them about colonization will make them proud?”

Jeeny: “No. It’ll make them honest.”

Host: Her voice cracked, not from anger but from sorrow — the kind that lives in those who’ve watched truth decay slowly into convenience.

Jack: (softer now) “You really believe history can save us?”

Jeeny: “It’s the only thing that can. When you forget your beginnings, you repeat your mistakes. Look at us — still arguing over the same wounds that never healed because no one taught us how they started.”

Jack: “You mean the colonization, the dispossession, the silence about the First Peoples?”

Jeeny: “Yes. And the silence after. You think Lawson was just talking about facts? He was talking about shame. About forgetting that people existed before the textbooks started.”

Jack: (quietly) “He was bitter, though. Always angry at the world.”

Jeeny: “Because he loved it too much to lie about it.”

Host: A moment of quiet followed — long, deep, the kind of silence that holds respect. Outside, a child’s laughter echoed faintly from the street, a strange melody against the dying light.

Jack: “I used to teach history differently, you know. Told stories instead of dates. Made them act out the Eureka Stockade, debate the Federation. They loved it. But then the department cut hours. Said it wasn’t ‘career-oriented.’”

Jeeny: “So you stopped?”

Jack: (nodding) “For a while. Then I realized — maybe I stopped because I stopped believing it mattered.”

Jeeny: “And does it matter now?”

Jack: (after a pause) “Hearing you — maybe it does.”

Host: The rain began, slow at first, then steady, drumming on the tin roof with a rhythm like unwritten history. Jeeny returned to her seat, her eyes fixed on the flagpole swaying in the storm.

Jeeny: “Do you know what’s worse than not knowing your country’s history, Jack?”

Jack: “What?”

Jeeny: “Teaching children that history doesn’t matter. That forgetting is normal.”

Jack: “You make it sound like remembering is easy.”

Jeeny: “It isn’t. But it’s sacred. Every generation has to fight to remember.”

Jack: “And if they don’t?”

Jeeny: “Then the ghosts of the past become the architects of the future.”

Host: Her words echoed through the empty room, bouncing off walls that once held laughter and now only held echoes.

Jack: (after a long silence) “So what do we do?”

Jeeny: “We start small. One story at a time. A lesson, a poem, a conversation that doesn’t vanish when the bell rings. Lawson wrote in anger, but maybe he was also writing a challenge.”

Jack: “To who?”

Jeeny: “To us.”

Host: The storm outside reached its height — thunder rolling through the suburbs like a memory demanding to be heard. Jack stood, walked to the window, and looked out at the flooded schoolyard, where the flag twisted wildly, half-visible in the lightning.

Jack: “You know, maybe this country’s still being built. Not with concrete and politics, but with words — with people who refuse to forget.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe remembering is our national sport. We just stopped training.”

Host: The lights flickered, the rain softened, and the world outside glowed with the faint gold of streetlamps reflecting in puddles — small, trembling mirrors of a country still searching for its reflection.

Host: In that fragile stillness, they both sat back down. Papers wet, coffee cold, but hearts quietly ignited with something old and unteachable — conviction.

Host: And as the rain eased, the echo of Lawson’s century-old lament seemed to whisper through the open window:

“To know one’s country is not to memorize its dates — but to feel its story beating beneath your own skin.”