Perspectives on Teaching Comprehensive School Health

This paper seeks to give some perspective to health education teaching as it has developed over a period of time. First, I review the source of our modern comprehensive sequential curriculum design—just to remind us of its roots. Following that, I describe current developments in teaching, highlighting some examples of widely used curricula and sources of other teaching aids for health. Finally, I review some relevant findings from a recent evaluation of comprehensive health education in U.S. public schools to show us where we are today and to help answer the question: "Is comprehensive school health education worthwhile?"