Abstract:
The article touches upon certain problems in the field of cultural heritage education, older or more recent, the author arguing that the patrimony has a real social and economic significance and its proper scientific and public use can contribute to the sustainable development of the contemporary society, can offer a new quality of the cultural life for one or another community. We sought to advance ideas, not imposing them, to tackle the theme of heritage education without making verdicts or conclusions from the standpoint of dictate. Our judgments come directly from practice and documentation, being based on the author‟s thoughts, horizons and experience. They are not complete and probably have a certain degree of subjectivity. But they all have the goal of presenting for public discussion the issues
of cultural heritage education, the role of heritage in the formation of the individual, awareness of the need to use and promote local and national heritage.
Cultural heritage education is necessary in our society because it is not only a source of information and awareness of the social importance of the cultural heritage, but also of ensuring civic involvement of the population in a long-lasting cultural process. Thus, heritage can become an essential and effective component of the cultural mental outfit of the individual. Cultural heritage education leads to the increase of the positive parameters of the personality, the establishment of a correct attitude of the individual towards the cultural goods, to the culture and the national history. It is necessary to say that there are certain deficiencies in heritage education. The shortcomings of education or even its absence requires urgent and long-term measures. It is true that in the last few years several laws and normative acts regarding the protection of the mobile and immobile, material and immaterial heritage have been elaborated and adopted, but they have not been elaborated and analyzed with the wide participation of the specialists in the field and of the interested bodies. Neither one of the laws on education or cultural heritage contains a chapter devoted to heritage education. The coordinating institutions of the field did not show a favorable attitude towards cultural heritage. In most cases, they do not control their own regulations or the implementation of laws. However, in the educational process institutions have to offer quality services. Cultural heritage education promoted by mobile and immobile cultural goods is missing from school textbooks, courses, school and university practice, visual propaganda. Despite this fact in daily practice there are some positive achievements in formal and non-formal education, obtained by
universities and museums, by public associations. The results of heritage education should be better presented to the public, including through the media. Unfortunately we do not have a specialized press in the Republic of Moldova. In Moldavian media, heritage issues are only found in terms of political agreement or disagreement, scandal or shocking news, and not found in terms of systematic information and public education. It is clear that today the approach to heritage education requires revision, modernization and adaptation to the demands of transformation, change, removing all the deficiencies in the field. It is not enough to find the need for a change, it is necessary to provide it with all the conditions for realization. And this change in heritage education can only be achieved with the
interest and support of the state, civil society, and local communities.
