The Historic Cemeteries Conservation Trust of New Zealand is encouraging primary, intermediate and secondary schools to visit cemeteries and learn about the people interred, by launching a website which provides teaching units with useful ideas and activities for pupils.
Trust chairman Stewart Harvey said cemeteries offered a wealth of inspiration for teachers and pupils in learning areas as diverse as English, mathematics, science, health, history, anthropology and geography.
"We've always been keen to use local cemeteries as a teaching resource for history. Behind every headstone is an interesting story and the kids can learn a lot from investigating them.
"Cemeteries aren't a place of death and ghosts. They are an outdoor museum with upright pages of history written in stone."
Mr Harvey said the resources focused on themes including mortality in early New Zealand communities, peopling of New Zealand, science and conservation of stone and understanding cemetery memorials.
"In some cases, headstones can tell stories of five children dying at a young age of illness. The cemeteries are littered with these sorts of stories - death by accident or illness was common in the days before antibiotics."
Work on the website began early last year and it was launched late last month.
Pupils at Andersons Bay School and Bayfield High School were already using the resources, he said.
"This is pretty exciting stuff for us, because it's going nationwide. Any teacher around the country can pick up the idea and use it in classes at their local cemetery."
Bayfield High School social sciences department head Chris Homer said a year 10 class at the school had trialled some of the resources for the trust at the Andersons Bay Cemetery last year to see if they would engage pupils.
"They were very good. I think it got a pretty positive response from the kids. They don't normally get enthusiastic about cemeteries but it opened their eyes to the history and interesting stories contained there."
Mr Homer said the resources had worked so well, he planned to use some of them for year 13 NCEA history achievement standards.
Mr Harvey hoped the education resource would eventually teach pupils to respect cemeteries and curb vandalism of memorials.
