PART Recent Trends and Developments in Government Policies in Education, Science and Culture
Chapter 7. Promotion of Physical Education, Sports and Health Education
6 Enrichment of Health Education in Schools
Health education in schools is provided not only through various
services for school health, school safety and school lunch, but also through
classroom teaching in different school subjects including health and physical
education. Home making and science. as well as through moral education and extra-curricular
special activities. In the future, with a view to promoting health education
on an integral and overall basis, it will be necessary to secure close linkage
among various school programs related to health education, and also to carry
out these school programs in cooperation with families and communities. To help
meet this necessity, the Ministry has been carrying out various services, including
the organization of nation-wide meetings of educators on studies of health education,
the designation of pilot schools conducting studies on health education and the
preparation of teachers' guides on health education, as well as the establishment
of special regional programs for promoting health education to be tackled jointly
by communities, schools and families involved.
Further, the Ministry has been endeavoring to effectively carry
out various measures for the positive development of children's mental and physical
health, placing emphasis on such measures as: the enrichment of teaching in schools
about mental health, smoking, drinking and drug abuse, the enrichment of counseling
services in school health rooms, and the inauguration of surveillance programs
to continuously monitor students' health conditions; the enrichment of traffic
safety education in schools concerning two-wheeled vehicles, and training courses
on first-aid treatment for teachers of health education in public upper secondary
schools; and the development of desirable eating habits of children through school
lunch programs in cooperation with the home and the community, as well as the
improvement of the environment affecting children's eating habits.