A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed on May 2008 by the chairperson of Badan Pelestarian Pusaka Indonesia (BPPI, Indonesian Heritage Trust) Setyanto P. Santosa and the director of Erfgoed Nederland (The Netherlands Institute for Heritage) Richard Hermans at the Netherlands Embassy in Jakarta. One of the focal points in the MoU is a project named Heritage Education in Primary Schools in Indonesia. The project aims at by making children in Indonesia aware of the rich variety of heritage that surrounds them, so that they can have better appreciation. As a result, it is expected that the next generations will have better awareness that passing on heritage to future generations as a shared responsibility. Public awareness is a key factor in the future heritage conservation. But more importantly, the project wants to establish that heritage is fun to learn about and can be used in many different ways in education in general and elementary schools in particular.
Connection between school subject and the school curriculum is one of the experiences that was gathered through heritage education that the Netherlands has been implementing since the last decade. The Netherlands Institute for Heritage is one of the organisations that has these experiences because it involves in several heritage education projects.
The project on heritage education takes place form January 2008 till December 2009. Yogyakarta has been chosen as the location for the project. The reason is because Yogyakarta has been an active centre for heritage conservation. And that there are a lot of heritage in Yogyakarta and its direct vicinity. For example there are the kraton Yogyakarta, the famous temple of Prambanan, several heritage districts such as Kotagede, Jetis, Kotabaru, Jeron Beteng, Pakualaman, etc. Also Yogyakarta is considered as a cultural centre, famous for its batik hand made, gamelan music, wayang puppets and various types of traditional as well as contemporary crafts. Furthermore, Yogyakarta that is known as student city is surrounded by many small villages. By getting schools from the city and from the villages involved, methods which can work in different circumstances can be identified. The experiences and materials that are developed within the project in Yogyakarta will be shared to other parts of Indonesia.
The Center of Curriculum Department of National Education, the Department of Culture and Tourism demonstrated the same enthusiasm as that BPPI, the Netherlands Institute for Heritage, as well as schools in Yogyakarta and its surroundings. Besides national governments, local government that is responsible for education, like the Education Agency Yogyakarta Special Territory also fully supports the project. They assist BPPI in selecting schools that will participate in the project.
Within 2 years, a comprehensive program has been organized, started from developing a manual concerning heritage education for teachers. This developed manual is one of the goals of the project. As Indonesia is rich of natural, cultural (tangible and intangible) heritage, and saujana (cultural landscape) heritage (Charter on Indonesian Heritage Conservation, 2003), a systematic manual is formulated to support the clear understanding of heritage in all variety for teachers. A practice of heritage education implementation at school has also been organized in this project after the teachers had heritage education training.
To achieve the success of the programs a series of workshops have been organized, such as:
– Workshop on the development of teacher’s module for heritage education manual,
– Training workshops for teachers,
– Monitoring and evaluating the implementation of heritage education at schools,
– Developing and implementing the series of heritage education for children by teachers that involves the creative team in producing these student’s heritage education books.
The objectives in Publishing Heritage Education Books Series for Children and Teacher’s
Module for Primary Schools in Yogyakarta Special Territory are :
– To spread the comprehensive knowledge about heritage and its conservation especially for primary education to the community.
– To give the comprehensive and integrated guideline about heritage and its conservation generally for Indonesia and especially for local area : Yogyakarta Special Territory.
– To give the alternative children books about heritage and its conservation to students in primary schools in Indonesia.
