The Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports Hon. Silveria Jacobs on Tuesday issued on the eve of World Heritage Day her message entitled, "The Heritage of Education".
World Heritage Day also commonly known as International Day for Monuments and Sites is celebrated every year on April 18 celebrating the world’s built cultural heritage.
UNESCO established April 18 as the International Day for Monuments and Sites in 1983. It aims to raise public awareness about the diversity and vulnerability of the world’s built monuments and heritage sites and the efforts required to protect and conserve them. Each year has a different theme which is selected and this year’s theme is "The Heritage of Education".
The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) in one of its communiqués recognizes that although it is possible to find several definitions of education, all of them refer to a form of learning knowledge, skills and habits in which of a group of people are transferred from one generation to the next through teaching, training or research. Education also means the transmission of beliefs and values and can therefore be considered as one of the main means for constructing the future.
In ancient civilizations, adults trained the young of their society in the knowledge and skills they would need to master. The evolution of culture and human beings as a species depended on this practice of transmitting knowledge. In pre-literate societies this was achieved orally and through imitation; story-telling continued from one generation to the next. Oral language developed into written symbols and letters. The depth and breadth of knowledge that could be preserved and passed on soon increased exponentially. When cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond the basic skills of communicating, trading, gathering food, religious practices, etc., formal education, and schooling, eventually followed. Schooling in this sense was already in place in Egypt between 3000 and 500 BP.
Throughout history and in different geo-cultural contexts, education was practiced in a wide range of places or buildings. Open spaces, agora or the protective shadow of a tree could be useful for the transmission of knowledge, but also specific institutional buildings such as schools, universities, madrasas, academies, libraries, monasteries, etc. Many of those buildings, groups of buildings or sites are recognized as bearing not only social or institutional values but also historic or artistic ones, and have therefore become a significant part of our cultural heritage. The protection and conservation of the heritage of education not only implies preserving cultural assets but also, at the same time, celebrating education as one of the fundamental human tasks.
Several heritage properties on our beloved "Souahliga" Land of Salt linked to education have reached national recognition and are about to reach international recognition and hopefully soon will be inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List: the sites of the Methodist Church, Brick Building, Methodist Manse, Catholic Convent, Fort Amsterdam and not forgetting the Sand Box Tree all have several things in common: they were institutions of imparting knowledge in St. Maarten’s early development.
The Methodist Church served as the first institution to educate enslaved Africans, Catholic Convent/ St. Joseph school with the Nuns were instrumental in educating a number of prominent persons in our community, PJD2 in its early beginnings housed at Fort Amsterdam was the institution that prepared many local and regional journalists who have become recognized internationally as journalist of outstanding capabilities on the world stage and the Sand Box tree which has re-emerged as a local gathering area for communicating the concerns of national importance that are not discussed in the main stream media for whatever reasons.
All of the aforementioned cultural properties linked to education and bearing historic, artistic or social values enjoy proper protection and recognition with the exception of the Sand Box Tree which has to be elevated into a category of trees worthwhile of being listed to be protected on the monument list.
In closing on this year’s World Heritage Day I am urging every citizen of my beloved St. Maarten to reflect and ask the question: Am I properly interpreting the values of those cultural properties and presenting them accordingly to the younger generation of our society? It boils down to two simple proposition and obligation which are:
Each generation is obligated to teach the future generation of the past and as Jomo Kenyatta stated "Our children may learn about the heroes of the past. Our task is to make ourselves the architects of the future."
Happy World Heritage Day.
PHOTO CUTLINE: Minister of Culture Hon. Silveria Jacobs