Spiritual_Wellness_Holistic_Health_and_the_Practic

236 Philosophical Foundations of Health Education
for grades 1 – 12, which was the first curriculum in the United States based upon
ecological models of health, disease, and longevity and upon an ecological approach
to health education (Hoyman, 1965); and the recently completed New York State
Health Curriculum for grades K – 12, based upon the New York Health Education
Law, which has been designed, in part, from an ecologic - epidemiologic viewpoint
in all five major strands of the curriculum: physical health, sociological health
problems, mental health, environmental and community health, and education for
survival (New York State Curriculum Materials, 1970 & 1971). These curricula are
all steps in the right direction because they enable us to keep the student, the subject,
and society all in focus. But it would be fatal for us to treat them as sacred
cows, because if we do, they are apt to become frozen instead of fresh. They all
need critical evaluation and continuing revision if we are to move ahead in health
curriculum development.
The concept approach to curriculum design is one sound way to structure health
education as a functional field of knowledge, in relation to health and modern life.
Man makes his concepts, and then his concepts make man. Some examples of unifying
ecological health education concepts are the following:
1. Health is a dynamic ecologic process, involving the whole person in his total
environment — physical, biotic, and sociocultural — as he lives and moves through
the stages of his lifecycle from conception to death, guided by his personality and
lifestyle and expressed in his motives, goals, ideals, and values.
2. Health is a multidimensional unity, with dimensions such as physical fitness,
social well - being, mental health, and ethical and spiritual outlook — all entwined
in man ’ s struggle for survival and fulfillment.
3. Human health, disease, aging, and longevity are all interlinked dynamic emergents
from the ecological causal web of genetic, environmental, and individual
factors — and are not usually caused by single X or XYZ factors operative alone.
Some of the ongoing changes are reversible, others irreversible.
4. Human life involves an ecological elevator effect: favorable ecological factors
tend to push man up into the zones of wellness and health; unfavorable ecological
factors tend to push him down into the zones of disease, disability, and
death.
5. Human disease and death control, without effective birth and population control,
has led to the world population explosion with its potential threat to man ’ s survival
as a species and to his life at a more fully human level.
6. Man is the dominant, but endangered, species on Spaceship Earth; and his
personal - social fulfillment, if not his survival, are threatened by the interrelated
ecological effects of the population explosion, environmental pollution, and the
plundering of natural resources — some of them nonrenewable.