When Dutch students think about heritage, they tend to refer to it as ‘Ouwe meuk’, or ‘Old junk’ in English. Although it is posed as a joke, it also seems to reflect the way a lot of young students think about heritage, as something that is not interesting and could easily be thrown away. It also reflects a vision of heritage as something tangible and as something about the past. That is why a lot of students think it’s just a historical thing and doesn’t have anything to do with other school subjects. The Council of Europe, many policymakers and many experts of heritage education beg to differ. They also think that heritage education should be taught to all students and even have ideas about what it should look like. In this blog I will show how policymakers describe heritage education, which responsibilities we have as teachers according to the Faro Convention and what working with heritage in your (cross-curricular) classroom could look like.

Heritage policy

After WWII a lot of supra-national institutions were set up that (partly) focussed on heritage. Because they wanted people to feel responsibility for this heritage, they therefore also focussed on heritage education. Apart from maybe the most well-known heritage institution, UNESCO, the Council of Europe and the European Commission also write extensively on the subject. There are two main take-aways that we learn from these institutions:

• They think heritage education could help out with several problems societies face or wishes people in society have. Apart from strengthening the connection to political entities of students, they need to feel a responsibility to protect heritage, to contribute to heritage (activities) and to learn how to respect their own heritage and that of others. They even suggest that heritage education is an important way to promote peace and peace education, because understanding each other’s perspectives and cultural heritage helps people see other groups as humans.
• They think that heritage education is useful when it is used to learn about other school subjects, instead of making it a subject on its own. Also, heritage education could and should contribute to cross-curricular education.

Faro Convention

Most of these organisations debated extensively on what this should mean for heritage policy. Especially the work of the Council of Europe eventually led to the Faro Convention, which a lot of European countries signed and turned into local laws. Some of the agreements have implications for our responsibilities as teachers:

• Cultural heritage should be used to construct a peaceful and democratic society with attention to human rights, which you could link to citizenship education;
• Heritage is formed by changing values, beliefs, etc. and can differ between groups or persons. The interaction between people (negotiating whether or not something should be called heritage) is very important. This could link to the identity development, which every student goes through during puberty, but also to concepts of multiperspectivity and ethics;
• Heritage should benefit everyone, from all walks of life. This means that children and adolescents are also a targeted audience or targeted participants as ‘heritage workers’ (people who have a say in what should be called heritage and how heritage should be used);
• It should be identified, studied, interpreted, protected, conservated, and presented to a wider audience. Not only by scientists, but also by other people, for example students;
• People should also reflect on the ethics of presenting heritage and the diverse interpretations that are possible. This links to beliefs on what ‘truth’ is or should be when studying history or other subjects; 
• There should be attention for the economic function and potential of heritage (activities). This connects to economics education;
• Public authorities or heritage institutions should work together with other groups or persons. This makes it easy for teachers to use the expertise of heritage professionals in the classroom or to take the classroom out to the heritage institutions themselves.

In practice

So, what does this mean for the classroom context? Especially when the ideals and demands are so big, but the attention ‘on the ground’ from, for example, school principals is limited. 

Well, first of all, it might be a good idea to see what concepts of reasoning other subjects use to see how they relate to historical reasoning concepts and concepts that are relevant to heritage. For example, both history and geography use the concept of ‘multiperspectivity’, a concept that is necessary to understand why groups of people cannot always agree on whether or not a heritage site should be kept or not. For example, the migration monument in London, a source I found on www.europeana.eu, could easily be a monument not everyone agrees on, because of the hot topic migration is in our current societies.

Secondly, it could help to see what substantive concepts are being used by different subjects as well. For example, social inequality is not only a theme in history education, but also in civics or social sciences education. Intangible heritage activities that question social stratification in society, for example Keti Koti (remembrance of abolition of slavery in Surinam and The Netherlands). In earlier times wearing cotton cloths, as seen from the picture from www.europeana.eu, were used to secretly communicate between people who were enslaved by folding them in certain shapes. After the abolition, wearing them became a symbol of their struggle, not only during slavery but also in current day society.

Thirdly, a lot of learning activities in heritage are connected to the FARO-convention strategies (identifying, studying, et cetera) link to research strategies that are useful with several subjects. For example, curating an exhibition on the history of industrialisation (which objects, stories and traditions should be presented in a museum) could help to not only discuss historical significance of the tangible or intangible heritage, but also the economic significance these objects have for visitor numbers. Which story has economic value and why? What would adding different perspectives do to the economic value of an exposition? In what way does the historical significance influence the economic significance? Are there other significant arguments that are not economic or historical, but are important to me and my identity? The same is possible with intangible heritage traditions, like ‘Oktoberfest’, ‘Venetian Carnival’ or even music festivals. 

Lastly, make use of heritage professionals who are eager to help you in your classroom. Mostly, heritage institutions develop their own materials that do not always link to your curriculum and therefore are sometimes useless. If you ask them for help and explicitly tell them what you and your coworkers from other subjects need to teach with and about heritage, they are very happy to help. Finding sources, coming up with ideas about contested heritage, giving tips on learning activities that are often used in heritage education. People from Europeana, but also from other partner organisations are happy to help develop wonderful classroom activities. If you don’t feel like asking for help, you could always use the great amount of digital heritage that they have readily available for everyone.

Final remarks

Policymakers show us that they want us to teach about and with heritage and the Faro Convention showed that a lot of European countries are committed to making use of heritage (in the classroom). By discussing some aspects to look at or to look for when you would like to start using heritage in your classroom, I hope I helped you e-mail your coworker, call a heritage professional or to start searching on Europeana for digital heritage examples to use in your classroom.

If you’d like to learn more about the do’s and don’t’s of heritage education and history: Van Boxtel, C., Grever, M. & Klein, S.(2016). Sensitive Pasts. Berghahn.

If you’d like to learn more about international policy on heritage education. www.unesco.org has written several articles, conventions and policy papers on the why and how of heritage education, for example whc.unesco.org/archive/2023/whc23-45com-19-en.pdf