School Health Education
School health education is vital to a child’s learning experience. The bottom line is, not all parents have the time, drive, and expertise to provide their children with an adequate health education. There have been ongoing debates about whether health education has a place in a school’s curriculum, and both sides have their points, but something like school health education is far too important to get rid of. For people to have a serious dialogue about these issues, we need to fully understand both positions of the health education debate. When we gain a certain familiarity with both sides of an argument, we will be better prepared to put together cohesive arguments and strong points. Below you will find some of the reasons why school health education is so important.
Childhood – From Kindergarten until 6th grade, kids will be receiving their first taste of health education. This is where kids will learn about how important it is to brush their teeth at least twice a day, flossing (which many adults still do not do!), and bathing daily. They will also learn about the brain, heart, and all of the other organ systems in the human body. Not having this type of school health education would be depriving them of the simplest knowledge of our bodies. Health education at this stage is just as important as learning addition and subtraction.
Adolescence – This is the stage where many parents have problems with the school health education curriculum. While students are going to be learning about biology and chemistry as a part of their health education, they will also be learning about some subjects that are more controversial. Middle school and high school curricula will include sex education as a part of the health education classes, and many parents have a problem with that.
Without going into why they have these problems, we will just say that school health education programs will provide teens with information about safe sex and sexually transmitted diseases that can save lives. Teenagers are going to have sex, that is a fact. Even in the most conservative countries and states, there are teens that do have sex, so it is important that we educate them about it. Without a health education class, teens may not know about the life threatening diseases that can be contracted through unsafe sex, and their lives could be put in danger.
The use of condoms has been helping to reduce the spread of disease all over the world. If the youth of our country are unaware about proper condom use, they could be putting themselves at risk for contracting diseases such as HIV/AIDS or they could become pregnant at an age where they are still growing as people themselves. Not teaching the youth about sex in school health education classes would simply be irresponsible. Health education would not be complete without teaching everything about the human body.