School health education needs to build a broad base of awareness, tolerance, and sensitivity to different expressions of healthy behavior while maintaining scientific accuracy. This can only be accomplished through exposing children to the various types of health knowledge found in different cultures. Health education involves helping students: understand and love their own cultures, exploring what is taught about healthy behavior; examine how different cultures explain suffering, treatment of illness, and promotion of health; learn about and value differences in a systematic manner in order to search for common ground and establish shared values (by telling personal stories, presenting case studies, noting different health-related themes, discussing the shared value of food, examining body image, and looking at cultural beliefs about causes of illnesses); and understand the message that every American culture has unique strengths, knowledge, and wisdom concerning health. (Contains 10 references.)(SM) (ERIC No. 449121)
