Heritage

Contentsassessment points for peace education based on heritage55to Teaching optionThe following key words can help in the assessment of reference frameworks for humanstories in relation to underwater cultural heritage:• Familiarity: A useable story is one that is familiar to the students. The studentscan place themselves in the situation of the story, which resonates with their ownexperiences.• Conceivability: Familiar stories are also conceivable for students. While manystories may contain incomprehensible and inconceivable elements, it is importantfor these stories to be recounted in a conceivable manner. It is importantto illustrate how people cope with inhumane things in a humane manner. It isthe human story behind the war at sea, regardless of how difficult it was in somesituations.• Diversity: In addition to providing historical background, a useable story showsa multifaceted image of people. This means that stories that focus purely on sensationaleffects and the heroism of the war are unsuitable for use in educationalsettings. Although these stories might be exciting, they play on sentimentality,and rarely lead to the type of involvement we have in mind.• Challenging character: A useable story is also a story that is not yet completelyfinished. A story with cut-and-paste answers is less enlightening than a story thatstimulates students to ask questions.tt Teaching tipIt is not easy to comprehend how innocent children and citizens, who had nothing todo with the First World War, died when the ocean liner RMS Lusitania sank in theIrish Sea on its way from New York to Liverpool. In the late afternoon of 7 May 1914,a German U-boat torpedoed the Lusitania about 11 miles off the southern coast ofIreland. The ship sank in 18 minutes, and 1,198 men, women and children lost theirlives. The eyewitness accounts of survivors reflect the human story behind this wartragedy (see http://www.rmslusitania.info/). 6• See and compare similar stories from the sinking of the Gustloff, Centaur orLaconia.6 The Lusitania Resource [Online] Available: http://www.rmslusitania.info (Accessed 30 September 2014).