Tunis, Tunisia, 11-13 February 2005
Event
A Regional Workshop on the Practical Manual: Introducing Young People to Heritage Site Management and Protection was held in Tunis involving teachers, from 7 countries in the Arab region, in the discussion and evaluation of pedagogic and curricula approaches for the protection of historic sites and cities.
Objectives
The ultimate aim of the workshop is to ensure that the general public involvement, responsibility, sense of ownership and thereby, support in conserving heritage are improved by providing information on cultural heritage, preservation, and value of both communities at different levels.
Specific objectives of the workshop
- Encouraging the participation of school teachers in conservation and awareness programs aiming at safeguarding heritage sites and cities in the Arab region;
- Providing teachers with a variety of pedagogic tools and approaches to introduce heritage education in school curricula;
- Testing with ASPnet teachers the manual "Introducing Young People to Heritage Site Management and Protection" and assessing its applicability to their own context;
- Receiving the teachers' comments and suggestions in order to improve the 2nd edition of the manual.
Recommendations
The participating teachers agreed on:
- Heritage can successfully be introduces in schools;
- Young people would be interested in the proposed activities in the Manual if they are presented clearly to pupils;
- The main obstacles in achieving the objectives set in the Manual are related to:
- The lack of support by the senior officials at the Ministries of Education and Culture
- The lack of time devoted to such activities in schools systems
- The difficulty to establish interdisciplinary programs with other teachers
- The costs of transportation which do not enable students to visit sites nation-wide
- Close cooperation should be established between schools and educational services such as museums and cultural heritage sites etc.
- Collaboration between the ministries of education and culture needs to be improved in order to facilitate introducing heritage in school curricula
- Teachers are ready to deal with the challenges, but decision-makers still need to take further steps towards raising public awareness for the protection of heritage sites in the Arab States
- Organization of similar regional activities should be considered with the involvement of concerned decision-makers to facilitate and support school initiatives.
Participants
27 participants, of which 19 teachers from 7 Arab states; 2 representatives of the UNESCO Amman Office; 3 participants from ICCROM; and 3 participants from OWHC (Organization of World Heritage Cities)
Countries represented
Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Syria and Tunisia.
Organizers
The workshop was initiated in cooperation with OWHC (Organization of World Heritage Cities) and with the participation of the Aga Khan foundation of Syria, the Association de Sauvegard de Madina and ICCROM.
Tunisia