Chair: Michael Gard
ABSTRACT
That societal and economic value systems underpin priorities in educational curriculum, policy and practices is well documented. But few curriculum areas reflect these values, and their shifts and idiosyncrasies quite to the extent that health education does. Because the 'learning area of health and physical education'(HPE)in the New Zealand curriculum has 'Attitudes and Values' as an underlying concept informing the delivery of the two subjects, the exploration, examination and interpretation of values is an implied and important aspect of the learning that occurs in health education.
By examining and comparing societal values deemed desirable in a 1999 H&PE curriculum document with those presented in a 2007 New Zealand Curriculum (NZC), changes in political and economic priorities become visible. In just eight years values identified as leading to a better society shifted from those reflecting human rights and social justice, to ones that clearly signal economic rationalism and neo-liberal imperatives. In this paper I examine values deemed desirable in the 1999 curriculum, and identify those that remained, disappeared or surfaced in the 2007 NZC. Implications associated with these changes in values for education policies and practices, particularly those in health education are discussed.
Not only does the health education curriculum provide a looking glass into societal and political values, and their predisposition to change, this subject is also particularly susceptible to manifesting those values. Emphases on mental health education and sexuality education for example, demonstrate societal and political reaction to international reports that exposed concerning statistics of depression, suicide and poor sexual health amongst New Zealand youth. In this paper I discuss current and past 'health' emphases as reflected in the NZC (2007) and the HPE curriculum (1999), and link these to economic priorities and health panics of the moment. The challenge to establish health education as a solid and viable academic subject in the school curriculum, when the tendency has always been to use it as a vehicle for moulding learners into 'good' health behaviours is debated.