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Heritage training event launched
Sri Wahyuni , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Sat, 11/01/2008 10:41 AM | The Archipelago
The Indonesian Heritage Trust (BPPI) and the Netherlands Institute for Heritage (Erfgoed Nederland/EN) on Friday opened a week-long training course on heritage education for primary school teachers in Yogyakarta.
"This is a pilot program and Yogyakarta was selected as the first region to host it," Laretna T. Adishakti, chairwoman of the BPPI's Education and Cultural Landscape Interest Group, told The Jakarta Post over the phone Friday.
Sita, as Laretna is popularly known, said 12 primary schools would participate in the program, held between Oct.1 and 5, with each sending its headmaster and two teachers.
Sita added the program was part of the implementation of a memorandum of understanding between the BPPI and the EN on heritage education programs for schools in Indonesia, signed on May 5.
The program will run until Sept. 2009 as a BPPI initiative, as it bids to help promote heritage awareness in Indonesian society.
"The BPPI asked the EN to cooperate in this program because of its knowledge and experience regarding the matter in its country," Sita said.
Other considerations for partnering with the EN included the fact Indonesia and the Netherlands shared the same heritage.
"Both countries are in the process of reaching an agreement on the shared heritage," Sita said.
Heritage education, according to Sita, was a teaching and learning approach using available information -- either natural heritage, tangible and intangible cultural heritage, or cultural landscape heritage -- as basic subject sources.
Through such an education, she went on, people could understand more about their history and culture, and help position developments in the historical perspective framework.
"Understanding heritage will help develop the community's appreciation of what our ancestors left us, and help improve our awareness of the importance of preserving this for the future," she said.
"For this reason, it is important to give schoolchildren an education in heritage because they are the next generations to decide on future heritage preservation."
The training thus aims at popularizing and developing heritage education in Indonesian children from a very early age, she said.
It is also designed to develop heritage education manuals and toolkits that the EN can implement in future for its international program on the matter, Sita added.
Participants in the training program will attend lectures as well as visit a number of heritage sites across Yogyakarta.
The sites include Prambanan, Kotagede, Panggung Krapyak, Yogyakarta Palace's Jeron Beteng, Paku Alaman, Lempuyangan and Kotabaru.
By the end of the training, they will be required to present the heritage education teaching and learning plans that they will implement in their respective schools.
