This Work Was Prepared As Part of the Activities Described in the Approved
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This work was prepared as part of the activities described in the approved European program Erasmus+ School Key Action 2—Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices- Strategic Partnerships for school education Name of the project: UNESCO Heritage, 2014-2016 Code: 2014-1-RO01- KA201-002437_6. The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. This project is funded by the European Union Summary I. LEARNING AND TEACHING FOR FUTURE BY PAST AND PRESENT I.1. A new curriculum, the birth of the area related to History and Local Heritage-Portuguese experience..1 I.2. European Identity and the emergence of Europe and the European civilization ……………………….5 I.3. The Need of World Heritage Education………………………………………………………………..10 I.4. Integration of Word Heritage Education into curricular aproch………………………………………..11 I.5. Reasons for a curriculum proposal………………………………………………………………….….16 I.6. General Competencies……………………………………………….…………………………………18 I.7. Values and attitudes…………………………………………………………………………………….18. I.8. Specific competences and content……………………………………………………………………...20 I.9.Standard performances………………………………………………….………………………………30. II. METHOLOGICAL SUGESTIONS ......................................................................................................32 ANNEXES: Annex 1: Bread in various cultures, an essential constituent of European everyday life…………….……38 Annex 2: Widely used given European common names………………………………………………..….49 Annex 3: The principles of democracy…………………………………………………………….……….58 Annex 4: The €20…………………………………………………………………………………….……..60 Annex 5: European countries-database…………………………………………….…………………….....62 ‘We are not bringing together states, we are uniting people’ Jean Monnet, 1952 EUROPEAN IDENTITY-A PART OF WORLD HERITAGE I. LEARNING AND TEACHING FOR FUTURE BY PAST AND PRESENT I.1. A new curriculum, the birth of the area related to History and Local Heritage. -The Portuguese experience The idea of the creation of an innovative area in the study of history and culture capable to, launching from local reality, become a decisive vehicle to the comprehension of national reality and lead to a solid understanding of European identity, with its strong historic-cultural roots, started from the approved curriculums in Portugal. In fact, until recently, curricular orientations would suffer, and in part still do, from an overwhelming problem of centrality that urges to be solved as soon as possible. The Ministry of Education would seek to rectify the limited space, amid dense subject areas, allocated to local themes and would therefore impose respective curriculum contents, thus highlighting authorization and centralization in the shaping of curricula at the expense of a much needed decentralization. This feeling would become even more obvious with the low level of autonomy of schools, and a growing bureaucracy, transforming both teachers and students, into mere forwarding agents commanded upon, rather than the committed actors that we all wished to be. As a result of the growing awareness of this nefarious reality and the pressures that were increasing, Decree Law number 139/2012 of 5th of July was issued which attributed a credit of hours to the schools, allowing its management by the administrative bodies of each school. This possibility was regarded in different ways by the educational institutions, which applied it in different areas: as an educational support to those with higher learning difficulties, as a reinforcement of the subjects of Portuguese Language and Mathematic which were facing national exams, in a component called 1 “external evaluation”, while others decided for a third path; creating a subject area called “Complementary offer”, for the duration of 45 minutes weekly. At least we could see some light at the end of the tunnel , answering not only the students’ and teachers’ wish but those of the whole educational community. Although only present in the so called “intermediary management”, which they execrised in a discontinued way, this was an opportunity to involve the educational community entirely. As regards the subject of history, the experienced teachers had already recognized, that the students felt difficulties in locating the various outstanding moments of the National, European and Universal History in time and space. Added to this, naturally, an incapacity to properly relate facts and relevant historical events was noted, for the reasons mentioned before and most of all because they were lacking local reference, what we normally call “local heroes”, which would serve as a bridge to the homeland history, interlinking it with the many outstanding events of the European and World History. This inability to relate events, sequencing them, would result in evident difficulties in terms of comprehension, acquisition and application of knowledge, and even worse, incapacity to experience the subject, which inevitably resulted in memorized and not internalized knowledge. Another visible aspect, linked with the referred above, was the total ignorance about the local heritage, its historic value, the necessity of its preservation and the comprehension that it is unrepeatable, for the simple reason that the ones who brought it to life could never repeat it, since it resulted from singular happenings, included in unrepeatable contexts, products of other realities and times. Therefore, to preserve is to save a unique testimony, to give voice to those who by their actions released themselves from the constrains of their mortal life, to create identity and bonds of affection, ultimately, to establish a bridge between the past and the present, understand it so we can, all, project the future as fully participating citizens. Yes, it is indeed an act of citizenship, learned, lived and interiorized, juxtaposed to the sad examples from the authorities, either in national or local levels, that allows this unique richness to get lost, generally because of material interests (the real estate industry), but also by ignorance and neglect. We thought it was time to assert the primacy of education for culture over entrepreneurship education, which shapes individuals who merely act on the purposes, beliefs, judgements and feelings of others without any substrate other than material values that define ignorant and uncritical citizens 2 capable to accommodate a "culture" of inequality and unbridled competition where the law of the strongest prevails. In our opinion, it is the cardinal role of school to oppose to this state of affairs, to give voice to internalized knowledge in opposition to imported knowledge, to dignify culture in opposition to ignorance, to cultivate citizenship in opposition to mindlessness, to instigate knowledge in opposition to obscurantism, to give more opportunities to those who weren’t blessed with “social lottery” in opposition to the pure and bold replica of the society we live in. Using, inside what was possible by the many restraints that needed to be overcome, an experiential teaching methodology “in loco”, with frequent visits to the relevant historic sites, we clearly perceived a changing attitude of the students towards the traditional teaching in the classroom context. A new dynamic learning was born and growing, based on a real interaction between students and teachers in which knowledge flowed naturally, bringing sensations and perceptions that this new educational context boosted. This way, the foundations for a new second phase were made, now in classroom context, moving towards an evident interdisciplinary methodology, with the creation of replicas of the observed “in situ” learning outcome, with the precious help of other teachers of different subject areas, including construction techniques, drawing, geographic and geostrategic location, representation to scale, among others. Regardless of time limitations and the difficulties of being able to engage more than one teacher in the same time, it was possible to obtain fine examples and good practises which were lately disseminated to the educational community, awaking many consciences, even the authorities themselves, to the importance of history and the consequent necessity of heritage preservation. A visible result of this new reality was the awakening of consciences of the authorities, through the provision of spaces and realizations of some conferences related to the theme, complemented by site visits and streamlined by teachers and local historians. Dissemination was significant, reaching a large number of people that were partially aware or completely unaware of the richness of the heritage examined, being, from now on, better informed about its significance and its need for preservation. The knowledge provided in this way was extremely valuable and “won” new fans to the area. 3 Like this, starting from the school it was possible to reach the community, establish proximity, knowledge and consequently citizenship bonds. The impact was significant since we are talking about a poor socio economic group, in which the population is related to the work of field or industry, thus not very aware of this new reality in the pursuit of cognitive enrichement. It seems to us, after six years of well lived experience, we are able to state the added value achieved and the advantages of creating a European