Title: Heritage:  A Creative Mess

Amena Jabak (9B)

        I.            . After all, maintaining cultural heritage have indispensable importance in one’s cultural, educational, and financial lives.

     II.            A. To start with, maintaining cultural heritage influences one’s life culturally by reflecting the culture and the tradition of a certain reason and shaping one’s personality.

1.     showing how some crafts and traditional heritages made India the first country in this domain

2.     highlighting how Jedda followed her dreams and became an online crafts seller

            B. In addition, maintaining cultural heritage encompasses a myriad of educational advantages such as shaping the way students see the world and preserving the culture.

1.     emphasizing the Asian students participation in heritage activities and the  reason behind it

2.     reflecting the number of teen-employees received by the IHI

           C. Also, maintaining cultural heritage encloses a bunch of positive economic effects on one’s life such as providing higher ample opportunities for employment and becoming a prominent medium for earnings.

1.     demonstrating how the industries in Japan made it at the peak of the economic development

2.     proclaiming how are heritage and handicrafts the main source of earnings in China and India

   III.            To sum up, maintaining cultural heritage has its own cultural, educational, and financial benefits for it shapes one’s personality, exposes students to different cultures, and provides higher working job opportunities.

Heritage: A Creative Mess

     “Our culture, our traditions, our language are the foundations upon which we build our identity.” This quote proclaims and demonstrates that a person without the knowledge of his past, origins, traditions, and culture is like a tree with no roots. As a part of human activity, cultural heritage produces tangible representations of the value systems, beliefs, traditions, and lifestyles. Cultural Heritage has a lot to do with one’s traditions, culture, ethnicity and the ways you perceive your life, it is what differentiates one individual, families and communities to another. Every individual and follow his heritage based on his or her ethnicity, religion and cultural background. In fact, one should not lose the bright side of cultural heritage. After all, maintaining cultural heritage have indispensable importance in one’s cultural, educational, and financial lives.

      To start with, maintaining cultural heritage influences one’s life culturally by reflecting the culture and the tradition of a certain reason and shaping one’s personality. As a start, cultural heritage represents the identity of a craftsman or a craftswoman. They give that sense of pride and glory in the lifestyles of people that made them  The customs and traditions that the people of a community follow, the festivals they celebrate, the kind of clothing they wear, the food they eat, and most importantly, the cultural values they adhere to, bind them together. The cultural values help develop a sense of belonging, and a feeling of unity in the minds of the people of that particular culture. For example, through the ages, handicrafts such as Kashmiri woolen carpets, Zari embroidered fabrics, and ceramic products made India occupy first place in handicrafts in the world. Additionally, the cultural values of a community give it an identity of its own. A community gains a character and a personality of its own, because of the culture of its people. Culture is shared by the members of a community and allows people to get involved in things perhaps they’ve not known them before. Culture is seen as a system of social and cultural control, wherein people shape their standards and behavior. The cultural values form the founding principles of one’s life. They influence one’s principles and philosophy of living. They impact our way of living and thus affect one’s cultural life. For instance, Jedda, a pre-technology consultant, followed her passion and worked in selling products online, and this shaped her an amazing personality and made her a cultural girl following her dreams.

In addition, maintaining cultural heritage encompasses a myriad of educational advantages such as shaping the way students see the world and preserving the culture. 

       As a beginning, culture affects the way students behave and learn. Education helps advance cultural development, expose students to different cultures, and mold personalities. In essence, education shapes the cultural leaders of tomorrow and helps pupils adapt to shifts and changes. A person's culture and upbringing impact how he or she views the world. It also has a large effect on how he or she processes information and learns and its norms can determine how students take part in their education. To illustrate more, according to Miami Herald, in most of the Asian countries, students participate in the cultural activities due to their parents’ insistence on them to know more about their country’s culture and region, and in fact, this thing benefits students a lot in their schools. Moreover, through education, students learn about cultures other than their own. It also shares different customs and traditions with pupils. This exposes them to a variety of cultures. Education is a way of preserving heritage, arts, and traditions to live on. It teaches students the traditions of the culture by exposing them to it, and this knowledge grants students in the future amazing job opportunities. In contrary, The Indian Heritage Industry received more than 67,000 teen-employees who have a wide knowledge of the cultural heritage.

         Also, maintaining cultural heritage encloses a bunch of positive economic effects on one’s life such as providing higher ample opportunities for employment and becoming a prominent medium for earnings. To start with, during recent years, the importance of handicrafts has been surged due to their financial values. The small scale industries including handicrafts can play a major role in the development of the economy of both developed and the developing countries equally the 90-95% of the total industrial products of the world are produced in small workshops run by less than 100 people. For instance, Japan, which is at the peak of economic development, has considered 84% of its industries as small and medium scale industries. Furthermore, in countries such as India and China, handicrafts and heritage are as high as the mechanized products in quality and volume, and are a major source of their foreign earnings. These countries are focusing on the development of the handicraft industry, in order to strengthen the economy.

            To sum up, maintaining cultural heritage has its own cultural, educational, and financial benefits for it shapes one’s personality, exposes students to different cultures, and provides higher working job opportunities. Through these effects, one can realize the importance of cultural heritage. But people aren’t taking the risk of losing cultural heritage into consideration, so governments should take specific measures in order to preserve them. Governments should support and act as guardians to protect their heritage especially in Lebanon, preserve techniques for manufacturing items that used to ease life in the past and many more.