What is the content of adolescent health education guidance?

At present, the youth health education guidance implemented in China for primary and secondary schools focuses on the three health dimensions of physiology, psychology, and social adaptation, covering the three core needs of daily maintenance, risk avoidance, and ability development. It has already broken out of the narrow scope of "paying attention to hygiene and preventing myopia" in everyone's inherent impression.

I have been doing grassroots health education for almost 5 years and have visited more than 20 urban and rural primary and secondary schools. The most intuitive feeling is that the current health guidance is really based on specific scenarios. It is not just about putting a poster at the door of the school doctor's office. Take the physiological health-related content that everyone is most familiar with. In the past, the most you could do was check your eyesight and give out insect-proof toothpaste every semester. Now, you will bring small experiments into the classroom. Last time in the suburban central primary school, we took out the egg shells that had been soaked in carbonated drinks for a week. In addition to the prevention and control of caries and myopia, scoliosis screening and care for physiological changes during adolescence are now also included. Last year, we screened in a district junior high school and found that 12% of the first-grade students had mild scoliosis. Most of them were caused by long-term carrying of shoulder bags and leaning on desks to do homework. They can be recovered by adjusting their sitting posture in time and wearing custom-made posture correction belts. If they were discovered two or three years later, they might have to undergo orthopedic surgery. Many parents later told us that they were lucky to have been diagnosed early.

The mental health guidance that has attracted the most attention among parents in the past two years is not the empty preaching of "you should be happy and don't be stressed" in the past. Nowadays, many schools have set up a mood corner at the entrance of the classroom. When children enter the classroom in the morning, they first put a small sticker on the mood board. The sun represents happiness, and the dark clouds represent depression. If the teacher sees a child posting dark clouds for three or four days in a row, he or she will have a private chat with him or her. Whether it is because he has had too much homework and stayed up too late recently, or he has had conflicts with good friends. Even "how to accept failure" has become a part of the guidance. There used to be a high school sophomore in a key middle school who jumped off the building after falling ten places in the mock test rankings because he had never received systematic frustration education since he was a child. Now we will deliberately add some small frustration simulation sessions to the health class, such as organizing group competitions to deliberately let the best-prepared group take second place, and then guide everyone to talk about "what to do if you don't get the results you want", which is much more useful than shouting "come on" in vain.

Oh, yes, there is also the most controversial sexual and reproductive health guidance at present. There is indeed no unified standard in the industry. Parents who hold conservative views think that too detailed guidance will induce early love in their children. Parents who support it believe that early education can prevent sexual assault, unwanted pregnancy and other problems earlier. Our current approach is to adapt according to age and not to apply one-size-fits-all. In the lower grades of elementary school, it is only taught that "the parts covered by vests and shorts should not be touched by others, and if you feel uncomfortable, you should tell your parents and teachers immediately." In the upper grades of elementary school, it is taught that physical changes during puberty, such as changes in boys' voices and girls' breast development, are normal, and there is no need to feel inferior or make fun of others because of this. In junior high school, they talk about contraceptive knowledge, gender equality, and specific methods to prevent sexual assault. We used to teach the sixth grade, and a little girl said that she was menstruating and was laughed at by her male classmates. We specially made up a menstruation science class for all the boys in the grade. The next day, the boy who made the joke took the initiative to apologize to the girl. The effect was much better than the criticism from parents and teachers alone.

The rest of the healthy behavior development and emergency safety protection are all embedded in daily scenes. For example, if you give a child a cup of full-sugar bubble milk tea, the sugar content is equivalent to 14 sugar cubes. One cup will exceed the recommended sugar intake for a day. There is no need to explicitly prohibit it, and the children will take the initiative to drink less.； There are also current contents such as preventing drowning, how to deal with being scratched by cats and dogs, how to avoid earthquakes and fires, and even how to deal with online violence and how to reject netizens' requests for private photos. These are now included in the category of health guidance. Of course, educational resources vary in different regions, and the depth of implemented content is also different, but the core is to help children develop healthy habits that will benefit them throughout their lives, rather than just going through the motions of getting tested.