Adolescents Perceptions of Health Education in Secondary Schools: The Need for a Dialectical, Practical and Transcultural Proposal

Abstract

Abstract Health education in Spanish schools is still considered as a controversial subject, which Educational laws and programs have always faced ambiguously. This report presents adolescents’ opinion about health education in their schools. In particular, which curricular and extracurricular aspects are being developed, and which strengths and problems related to health education they identify in their educational centers. Based on the situational analysis, we make a quick diagnosis of the state in which health education stands, in order to find a starting point for the improvement. We conducted 15 depth interviews with Romanian and Spanish students in 3 teaching centers of the South of Spain. The qualitative analysis of data was carried out using Atlas Ti, version 7. The results show that participants do not consider schools as the main source of health learning, while family, peers and technologies are seen as more significant agents. In secondary schools, most of the information related to health is received through outside educational programs, and it is seen as ineffective because they are partial, merely informative and not continuous over time. The main health problems in secondary schools identified were stress and bullying, and we may consider as relevant the existence of discrimination based on origin or precedence. Furthermore, participants provide an essentialized, stereotyped and inferior vision of health in other foreign continents (Africa) and religions (Islam). Adolescents portrays a School far from health, with a traditional health education model and a biomedical conception of health. This scenario suggest a need to bring back the Perugia School approach based on developing dialectical, praxiological and transcultural methodologies and where students could get involved and participate in their own health learning.