Health education standards - Essay Example

Health Framework for California Public Schools: Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve Changes Since 1993 As a preliminary matter, it is important to note that educators in California have since 1994 adopted changes that are designed to reflect the significance of what they term “positive approaches to health education” (Health Framework for California Public Schools, 2003: v). The first major change was a more precise set of guidelines regarding what teachers are expected to teach to students in each grade.

Teachers, for instance, were given specific topics to teach rather than being expected to fill in the gaps within the confines of broadly presented subject areas. These topics were addressed at aiding the students in assisting students to obtain better personal relationships with their families, to introduce the notion of community health, to emphasize individual responsibility in regards to attaining a healthy lifestyle with particular attention paid to the need for physical activity and the dangers associated with tobacco use.

The changes, in sum, mandated a more structural and comprehensive approach to health education. Teachers were expected to present health education in terms of the individual, the family, and the community. This more comprehensive approach to health education was to be illustrated using such fluid contexts as the school, mental health, and the prevention of violence. The apparent goals were to create an awareness of health issues in real life situations.Today’s Health Care Vision The vision espoused by the proponents of these changes is fundamentally empowering.

Rather than delving into basic health values the changes seek to truly and inspire the youth of California to identify health issues at a number of levels, to understand how health issues are best taken care of, and to promote a sense of individual responsibility. Again, the most novel aspect of today’s health care vision is its integrated and structural nature. There is a stress placed upon interdependence; more particularly, the vision stresses the interrelationships among health ideas, healthy people, healthy families, healthy schools, and healthy communities.

Individual responsibility is important, but it serves mostly as a foundation upon which to construct larger types of healthy communities and groups. In short, the individual student is encouraged to accept a personal responsibility to contribute to each group he or she encounters and to function as an essential building block of a larger community. In order to pursue these noble objectives students are encouraged to view health issues, be they physical or mental, as part of their role as life-long members of groups and communities.

Meaning of Health Literacy Literacy meaning competency and understanding, the modern meaning of health literacy refers to a student’s ability to both comprehend the complexity of health and to be competent in terms of securing their own health in order to become a valuable member of the larger communities in which they exist. Literacy has, according to this framework, been expressed in term of a series of desirable strategies that students can employ to accomplish certain goals; in this way, the health literacy desired by California educators is very much hands-on and practical rather than theoretical.

There is, therefore, an implicit expectation that students will learn that their own healthy states will contribute to the health of others and that communities function, in many ways, as a sort of larger organism. This interdependence is a crucial feature of the new health literacy. Health Education and the Special Needs Student The special needs student presents an important situation for health educators; indeed, the American Congress has passed a law stating that:Disability is a natural part of the human experience and in no way diminishes the right of individuals to participate in or contribute to society.

Improving educational results for children with disabilities is an essential element of our national policy of ensuring equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with disabilities” (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 1997, Part A, Section 601[c][1], quoted in Health Framework for California Public Schools, 2003: 49). The initial points are that these students have a fundamental right to an equal education and that they are part of the community health in which we all live and participate.

They are, therefore, just as integral to the notion of community health as students without special needs and they are capable of developing a sense of individual health responsibility that strengthens the larger community. To this end, whatever the special need, the health framework strives to incorporate counseling and other services in order to make the educational efforts practical as well as informative. A group or a community, pursuant to this reasoning, cannot maintain its larger sense of self without granting everyone access to the information and the services necessary to help themselves.

The beauty of this philosophy is that self-help is aided by a larger sense of community health. Works Cited“Health Framework for California Public Schools: Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve.” California Department of Education. (2003) Retrieved May 30, 2008 and available at http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/documents/healthfw.pdf