PESHAWAR: Speakers on the second day of a workshop stressed the need for integrating elements of cultural heritage into school syllabus, adding that preserving and promoting cultural diversity would lead to boosting country’s soft image across the world.

The function was held in the main hall of the Area Centre, University of Peshawar, on Wednesday.

Experts on culture, art, curriculum development and senior teachers from Swat, Mardan, and Peshawar participated in the event.

The speakers said embedding different activities in various school subjects would make classroom environment more friendly, interesting and attractive for young students.

They added it would encourage students to conduct research and develop a critical thinking and explore new dimensions of the text.

They said our youth should know the significance of our cultural heritage and its role in transmitting knowledge to the next generation with an objective to encourage durable peace, interfaith harmony and carrying along a progressive world view for sustainable development of different communities.

Sajida Haider Vandal, CEO of Trust for History, Art and Architecture of Pakistan (THAAP), while opening the second session pointed out that KP’s rich cultural heritage could be best preserved and promoted by raising awareness in youth because they would be able to relate modern day ideas and concepts through their own heritage knowledge and experiences born out of their land and people.

Ms Vandal said that teachers could play very important role in safeguarding our cultural assets and they could do so only through an approved school curriculum where elements of both tangible and intangible heritage could be integrated to promote national cohesion and mutual harmony.

Jawad Aziz, country officer of Unseco, said that cultural heritage and knowledge bearers could be best saved through education because it could be marketed at an industrial level and students could take it as career in their future life.

Abdul Munsif Khan, director of Provincial Institute for Teacher Education (PITE), said that schoolteachers required gaining in-depth knowledge of different phases of education including embedding of cultural heritage in our education system. Unless teachers knew the importance of every single topic, there would be no substantive change in the behaviour of the students, he said.

Participants were given a field visit of Sethi House museum where the tour guide explained details of the various sections and chambers of the early 19th century site. The teachers were asked to prepare lesson plans for teaching different school subjects to achieve the desired results.

Mehwish Abid, an expert, on the occasion said that teachers would first prepare a resource kit and later on gather different material on tangible and intangible cultural heritage for inclusion in the school curriculum under the KP education department’s policy.

Published in Dawn, September 10th, 2020