Many people believe that health is wealth. As such, educational professionals have required that educational policy makers and curriculum developers should come up with better laws to integrating health education in the curriculum. Many have supported this opinion while other have not. The main question that should be addressed to answer the questions that surrounds the need for health education in elementary schools is; what is the importance of health education at such lower levels of education? This paper aims to provide the relevant answers to this question.
Health education is important in elementary schools because it equips the learners with the knowledge of personal hygiene and general health. The students will be able to gain the knowledge and skills to help them maintain high standards of personal hygiene (Anonymous, nd). They will understand the importance of skin, aural, and general healthcare. They will also be taught how neglecting their general health will negatively affect their health and lead to illnesses and diseases that can cause danger in their lives.
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Similarly, it is common knowledge that the number of obese children in the country have continued to increase in the recent past. Therefore, including health education will equip the learners with effective knowledge on nutrition. During nutrition lessons, the learners will learn that they should eat healthy meals and avoid junk foods and fizzy drinks as much as possible. Nutritional education will equip the student with knowledge about nutrition and let them know how poor diet can affect their health (Anonymous, nd). This allows them to make effective choices that concerns the food they eat, influence their personal, physical and mental health thus promoting effective and healthy life.
Including health education in the national curriculum is also important because it equips students with the knowledge of physical health and wellbeing. Thus, the students will learn the importance of physical health and know how this affect their lives. For example, they will know that daily physical exercise makes the heart function well hence avoiding heart conditions. They will also learn that physical routines such as jogging also enables them to burn unnecessary fat, improves heart function, and prevent the possibility of being obese (CDC, 2017) . Therefore, curriculum developers should include health education in elementary schools to introduce students to the benefits of physical education at an early stage.
The other reason why the education system should have physical health in their curriculum is because it teaches the student how to care about the environment at an early age. Environmental health is one debate that has become of great importance in the recent past (CDC, 2017). As such, having environmental health taught to the students at an early stage makes it possible for them to know how to care for their environment at an early stage. They will be able to preserve the ecosystem with the aim of preserving animal species.
The learners will also be able to be able to come up with effective ways of preventing different types of pollution with the aim of preserving the environment (Anonymous, nd). The students will also know that having a healthy and safe environment also affects their lives in a positive way. Thus, it is important to include health education in the national curriculum to help the elementary students know the effects of health in their lives, the lives of those around them as well as on the environments. They students will also understand how to make effective nutritional choices so that they can live an optimal life. They will also be introduced to some of the current diseases that debilitate people and learn how to prevent or even manage them for proper health.
References
Anonymous. (nd). Learning Standards for Health, Physical Education, and Family and Consumer Sciences at Three Levels.
CDC. (2017). Health Education Curriculum Analysis Tool (HECAT).
