Transferring Our Cultural Heritage to the Next Generations via Visual Arts Education

Abstract

It is well known that the customs and traditions shared and maintained in a society reflect the culture of that society and also that it is a society’s responsibility to convey its culture to the next generations. From this point of view, it can be further claimed that children’s games, as indicators of cultural richness, are important sources for not only sustaining and maintaining the culture, but also for delivering cultural values and assets to future generations. The present study was planned and carried out to promote, improve, and protect the traditional children games and to have them used in education, so as to transfer these important cultural assets to future generations. Seventy students currently attending 4th, 7th, and 8th grades in Kurtuluş Primary School in Ankara Province were included in the study. These students were informed about the traditional children’s games and then asked to conduct research. Later, the children were asked to convey these games to their paintings and drawings, thus, completing the teaching of the games by means of visual arts education. Findings gathered from the paintings and drawings of the children were evaluated to determine the achievements and effectiveness of the study