Heritage

Contentsassessment points for peace education based on heritage69Past and presentpa Pedagogical approachStudents often attempt to put themselves in the position of someone else based ontheir own context, situation and emotional experience. Making the past topical (i.e.encouraging pupils to imagine themselves in a situation in the past) must always occurin a well-considered and conscious manner. It must be rooted in knowledge andinsight into a historical context and into processes and mechanisms.tlTeaching limitationWhen becoming acquainted with the past, we often come across two approaches: onethat has a deficit perspective and the other a differential perspective.• In a deficit perspective, we proceed from the present, assuming that the peopleof today are more civilized and humane than were the people of the past.• From the differential perspective, we ascertain that life in the past was differentfrom life today, without claiming that life was therefore worse and that situationsare now much better.Neither of these views is useful to educators if taken to the extreme. Having studentsdiscover that people have improved over time provides no answers to the questionswe face today. On the other hand, there is little hope if we approach history as a completelyopaque cycle of events in which all we can do is wait and endure.In contrast to these approaches, remembrance education assumes that people todayare able to learn from the events of the past, but this does not mean they are necessarilycapable of creating a better society.to Teaching optionDuring the period 2014–2018, attention will be paid to the effects of the twoWorld Wars in many places throughout the world. Local authorities often organizespecial projects around historical events which had a major impact. Local historymakes a direct appeal to the students. In these events, great stories and the generaltimeline of the history of the World War are reduced to ‘ordinary’ and familiar stories.Students are generally very interested in their immediate environment becausethey are confronted with it each day. This creates special educational opportunities