No Past…No Future

Nour Hamadeh (9A)

Outline:

Title: No Past... No Future

       I.            After all, cultural heritage, the maintenance of an advanced community, has an effective significance on the social, educational and financial domains.

    II.             

A.    To start with, cultural heritage can afford people a connection to certain social values, beliefs, religions, and customs.

1.     Showing how media and public culture assures that culture provides a sense of unity

2.     Stating that future generations benefit from cultural heritage

B.     Moreover, cultural heritage plays a substantial role in education.

1.     Explaining how students take advantage of the culture

2.     Revealing parent’s role in teaching their children a civilized legacy

C.     In addition, cultural heritage tourism plays a critical role in building the country’s economy because it boosts the tourism sector.

1.     Highlighting that over 50% of people consider culture the main factor in choosing the place they want to spend their holiday in

2.     Revealing the high income of tourism in Asian countries

 III.             In a nutshell, cultural heritage ensures a great importance in different domains.

No Past…No Future

“When we reject our origins, we become the product of whatever soil that we find ourselves planted; the colors of our leaves change as we consume borrowed nutrients with borrowed roots, and, like a tree we grow.” This quote asserts and proclaims the importance of our own roots that are embodied in our history, culture, values, traditions, and the wisdom of our ancestors from whom we can learn many lessons that help us appreciate and benefit from all our human, material, and cultural resources that should be preserved and passed on from generation to another. They are the foundations on which we build, develop and protect our societies. It is true that “He, who has no history has no future”. In fact, without our heritage-our authentic guide-we would be lost among other cultures and identities. After all, cultural heritage, the maintenance of an advanced community, has an effective significance on the social, educational and financial domains.

 To start with, culture heritage can afford people a connection to certain social values, beliefs, religions, and customs. It allows them to react with others of analogous mindsets and backgrounds. Cultural heritage can provide a spontaneous sense of unity and pertinence within a group and allow us to comprehend about previous generations and the history of where we come from. For instance, the media and public culture state that “Culture provides a sense of unity in the community. It helps our children to understand better about the character of their parents and grandparents. It helps to introduce us to people with the same mind-set or values.” Furthermore, if the future generations come to know about our unique culture and traditions, they will feel proud of having such heritage compared to various countries; and they will automatically feel the sense of responsibility towards preserving their culture.

    Moreover, cultural heritage plays a substantial role in education. If we teach cultural heritage to high school students, they will immediately begin to gain an appreciation for their culture and the culture of the world around them. Students may have found themselves pondering in the past where we all come from, what those people before us were like, what did they eat, what did they do for fun? These types of questions guide students to look backward and also look forward. As human beings we don’t want to be forgotten once we are gone; students will be inspired to create and learn as those in the past did before us. Our future generations will benefit from learning this information because they will be able to carry forward with them the cultural heritage that they love and cherish, they can carry forward concepts, ideas, literature, and beliefs that they have learned from those before them. These traditions can carry on as long as we remember to teach them, learn from them and create something of our own to connect with them. All history has sad times, things we feel ashamed of and bad about, but by learning and understanding the past we can be sure to protect the future from making the same mistakes over again, and by doing this we can protect people from being hurt when they shouldn’t be, we can rethink our past decisions, try to understand what went wrong, and then move forward into the future and do things a new way.

In addition, cultural heritage tourism plays a critical role in building the country’s economy because it boosts the tourism sector especially that tourists are usually attracted to experience authentic activities, stories of the people living centuries ago, artifacts, food, clothing, old ruins, and music. For example, a recent survey showed that over 50% of respondents polled agreed that history and culture are major influences on their choice of holiday destination. Added to that, statistics also indicate that culture and heritage tourism continues to grow rapidly worldwide. We estimate the direct global value of culture and heritage tourism to be well over $1billion dollars, with that of the Asia Pacific region is approximately $327 million. It is already directly responsible for more than 50 million jobs in APEC countries. And what’s more, the indirect benefits of culture and heritage tourism are thought to be of the order of $1 billion and account for a further 75 million jobs across the region.

     In a nutshell, cultural heritage ensures great importance in different domains. As such, cultural heritage should be the golden skeleton key, gleaming with power, able to open all the locked doors in front of all generations to react proudly and effectively with all other cultures which ensure a beneficial connection and cultural exchange among different civilizations.