Friday 30th May - the 3R's of Health Education

I was talking with a colleague about the challenges faced by schools as they have to focus on educating children on the 3R's (reading / writing / arithmatic) and how this could be adding to the childhood obesity issues facing the world.

This has markedly impacted on teachers all over the world as they are being held accountable for cirriculums loaded with expectation but limited in resources and time. This leads to the school work turning into home work and even more limiting of children's "play time" so no wonder they seek release and down time with movies and games.

With this additional school work burden and focus on the 3R's, it seems more and more often the "optional lessons" like creative arts and physical education are being reduced or eliminated from the "school menu". This is contrary to the Government's instructions to increase the activity of children during the school week, teachers are still nevertheless the "coalface" of this issue. The easy solution for Government's is to mandate this policy but maybe they should spend a little time actually in the classroom's in their respective countries to see how ineffective this strategy is.

When I speak with these disgruntled teacher's they consistently are being judged on the performace reflected in children's knowledge scores and in some parts of the world there has even been suggestions of this reflecting in their pay scales. This is unfair.

Once you spend time in a classroom with the massive numbers of children leading to over-crowding and limited teacher / child time you see how much the additional expectation of time away from the classroom is challenging. It is never an easy task to get a large classroom of children changed into workout clothes, undertake a physical activity session, then shower and get changed and back into the mental activities of learning all in one hour or less.

I do feel for these hard working child mentors. They get paid way too little and get very little credit for this and there are no holiday breaks that could address their efforts as a reward. We wonder why there are less and less university students actually choosing to become trained as teachers but once you spend time with them you get a sense of what they are up against.

I often try to think up ways to enhance learning for children with things that they are already familiar with and this worked well with the Body Mechanics as most children enjoy all facets of entertainment stories. With the Human ECO System it again takes common issues being explored in schools for the Planet ECO Systems and assimulates them to human conditions and illnesses.

For example my overview for the 3R's of Health Education are :

- "R"efuel the Systems
- "R"ehydrate the Body
- "R"elax the Mind

Possibly if more consultation were given to teachers in this area and plans built with them instead of well meaning but ill informed experts who overload the "backpack" of learning already being worn by teachers they might actually be interested.

I will blog about how the 3R's of Health Education actually work in the coming days.