Spiritual_Wellness_Holistic_Health_and_the_Practic

132 Philosophical Foundations of Health Education
into self - sufficient, intelligent behavior seeking medical and dental assistance on the
voluntary basis?
We have been at this business of teaching about health for a long time now. We
have discussed medical care in our classrooms, given free patch tests to millions,
discovered dental hazards, given free lunches, screened for vision handicaps, given
countless physical examinations, and dispersed volumes of advice. By so doing are we
teaching our people to expect something for nothing, to live on the taxes of the other
fellow, or are we teaching people to stand on their own feet?
This is a problem we have to meet head on and with full intelligence and insight.
We have invested millions of dollars in school health work, and anyone has a right to
ask us about the relationship between what we are doing and the popular or unpopular
political doctrines of the day.
Whatever we do in the name of school health education must meet the needs of
the people. But in meeting those needs for medical care or for health advice, or for
anything else, we must not destroy the capacity for self - direction and the will of the
individual to look after himself and his family. The great moral virtue of our free life
is to be found in our independence, in our freedom from indigency, in the greater
sacredness of the individual over the state. To preserve our choices, to pay our own
way, to buy and sell as we choose, to retain the honor of paying our own bills — these
are some of the values to be preserved within a free society.
We simply cannot afford to develop school health education without giving
thought to the moral values within it. If we run a low cost dental clinic for indigent
people and a well - to - do person patronizes it because there he can have his teeth fixed
more cheaply, then we have failed to develop an essential morality in that person ’s
background! If we teach youngsters to run to their school physician for every diagnosis
and treatment because it will be free, then we are destroying something important in
our culture. We simply cannot put on vision demonstrations, test thousands for hearing,
do mass tuberculosis screening, immunize people by the millions at public expense
unless these are justifiable measures in the interest of protecting the public health and
without dealing at the same time with the orientation of what we are doing with the
private free - enterprise type of medical practice.
We do these things in school not for clinical or reparative reasons, but primarily to
demonstrate and to educate. In some instances we can justify our activities on the
grounds of public protection and in others because education cannot go on economically
unless they are done. But the practices we undertake in school health education
should never undermine our evolving conception of medical and dental care. On the
contrary they should be undertaken in such form and with such discipline as to support
it. But the great effort, regardless of this relationship, must be made to meet the needs
of the people.
These then are three suggested principles or basic considerations which must
underlie our thinking and planning in school health education. The development of
practice stemming from these principles will be varied, but such variations will not
matter if the basic direction is maintained.