Past Future
Local
Social Cultural Economical Natural Etc.
Global
146 The Health Promoting School: International Advances in Theory, Evaluation and Practice
• When was the best time to live?
• For whom was it best?
• What qualities in life have been lost?
• What have been added?
• What forces have there been behind the changes?
• How was the ecological situation for mankind during different eras?
• How was their health?
• Which lifestyles were/are possible to combine with sustainable development and good health?
A second aim to be addressed by pupils in this project is ‘How would we like to live our lives in the future’? Using simulation-style programs, combined with the learning tool, pupils can explore how their different visions of the future relate to sustainable development and good public health. The use of c-ICT allows the pupils in the project to easily establish contacts with other pupils in other parts of the world to present and discuss their different visions of the future with each other. The purpose of this is that the students shall develop an understanding for other cultures but also an understanding for what impacts it could have on people’s environment and health if their own visions would be realized on a global scale.
A third aim of the project process is that the pupils shall develop some kind of action plan, and then take action, to realize (parts of) their visions. At this stage in the process, the actions taken should be reflected on, well informed and built upon reliable knowledge. With the help of the c-ICT-tool, the pupils can compare the desired outcome of the actions with the real outcome. If needed and possible, the pupils can start the process with visioning, planning, action-taking etc. once again
This project has not yet been fully evaluated but preliminary results show that this way of organising teaching and learning gives the teachers and students considerable freedom to work with issues they find really interesting.
They also use this freedom to develop their own profile of the project.
Preliminary results also show that this way of working seems to strengthen some of the protective factors, e.g. self-confidence and empathy by the pupils.
These are factors that help the students to manage unhealthy situations and stay healthy.
Conclusions
From a historical point of view, there are many similarities in the development of health and environmental problems on a global scale. In both areas an historical development can be discerned, as problems have changed from being more local, well defined and potentially manageable, to being global, diffuse and more intractable. In developed societies many environmental and health problems are caused by the same underlying mechanism i.e. the quest for continuous economic growth. This constant struggle results, among other things, in:
• Increased energy consumption and material transformation causing global environmental problems
• A more hectic life, which produces tensions in the relations between man and man, man and family, man and society and man and the environment
• Increased ‘speed’ of life, reducing the possibilities for reflection, over-view, coherence, meaning and trust
Currently, therefore, many increasingly serious environmental and health problems appear to have the same underlying causes, and this supports the argument for a far-reaching combination and integration between HE and EE.
However, the way EE and HE should or should not be linked depends on how we regard the overall aim of these activities. From an educational point of view health and environmental problems are often treated separately if the aim of the education is to develop knowledge about health and the environment. On the other hand, if the aim is that students develop their own attitudes to life style and living conditions that are crucial for health and environment, a more integrated approach should be used as the fundamental attitudes and values underpinning health and environmentally conscious behaviours are very similar. Furthermore, if the aim of education is to develop students’ competence to act and to facilitate fundamental change, a far-reaching integration between the two subjects is certainly warranted as the root causes behind many environmental and health problems are similar.
In conclusion, a far-reaching integration between HE and EE seems necessary if we consider the overall aim of HH and EE as to develop students’ attitudes and values that are friendly to environment and health and to develop their competence to act, individually and jointly. By doing this we also live up to the
international agreements and declarations, such as the Ottawa Charter and the Tbilisi Declaration.
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Internet References (All accessed 25 February 2005)
Agenda 21 (1992)
http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/index.htm Environmental Education (2005)
http://www.gdrc.org/uem/ee/index.html
From Our Beginnings To Our Futures Project http://safari.hj.se/projekt.asp?id=76&lang=eng http://www.hlk.hj.se/se
Ottawa Charter (1986)
148 The Health Promoting School: International Advances in Theory, Evaluation and Practice
http://www.euro.who.int/AboutWHO/Policy/20010827_2 Tbilisi Declaration (1977)
http://www.gdrc.org/uem/ee/tbilisi.html