Schools told to draw up plan for reviving Indian heritage

CBSE move is to inculcate respect for diversity and tolerance

The board feels that the move will promote awareness of the country’s cultural heritage among schoolchildren and consequently, inculcate a respect for “diversity, tolerance, mutual understanding and patience” in them. Exposure to different cultural heritages around the country will also inspire and encourage children to build their future through an understanding of the past and the present.

“To create and enact a heritage education programme for your school, you need to draw a Plan of Action comprising activities, programmes and projects planned throughout the year depending on the resource availability,” the board suggested in an advisory to all the heads of schools affiliated to it.

It noted that heritage was a conceptual identity of an area which included not only tangible heritage but has intangible aspects like its language, lifestyles, ceremonies, festivities, work cultures inherent specific of a community.

“Just a small local site visit can bring alive a number of aspects of a history textbook. For this, an activity sheet would need to be designed and an expert found to conduct the walk.” the CBSE suggested.

This will help equipping children to understand and explore their local heritage and gain a “confident sense of self”, it added.

The board suggested the school heads to encourage their teachers to use “local resources” in order to implement the programmes promoting “heritage education”. “We need to fall back on local monuments, museums and experts. If no expert is available, a teacher can lead the walk with a little research,” it said.

A CBSE official told Deccan Herald that the board recently held a meeting with the Sahapedia team here in the national capital to discuss ways to popularise heritage education in schools nation-wide. Sahapedia is an online encyclopedia on Indian culture and heritage whose main goal is to serve an educational resource for school students and researchers.

As part of the Heritage Education Group at CBSE, the Sahapedia team has developed a list of ideas and guidelines that can be of great use in designing a project for the schools.

“All the headmasters have been requested to go through the Sahapedia team’s work in order to understand the state of heritage education in their respective schools and the kinds of help they may need to start a programme. The board will get back to them with desired help or resources,” the official said.