Home > Policy > White Paper, Notice, Announcement > White Paper > JAPANESE GOVERNMENT POLICIES IN EDUCATION,SCIENCE AND CULTURE1991 > Part Chapter7 6

PART Recent Trends and Developments in Government Policies in Education, Science and Culture

Health education in schools is provided not only through various services for school health, school safety and school lunch, but also through classroom teaching in different school subjects including health and physical education. Home making and science. as well as through moral education and extra-curricular special activities. In the future, with a view to promoting health education on an integral and overall basis, it will be necessary to secure close linkage among various school programs related to health education, and also to carry out these school programs in cooperation with families and communities. To help meet this necessity, the Ministry has been carrying out various services, including the organization of nation-wide meetings of educators on studies of health education, the designation of pilot schools conducting studies on health education and the preparation of teachers' guides on health education, as well as the establishment of special regional programs for promoting health education to be tackled jointly by communities, schools and families involved.

Further, the Ministry has been endeavoring to effectively carry out various measures for the positive development of children's mental and physical health, placing emphasis on such measures as: the enrichment of teaching in schools about mental health, smoking, drinking and drug abuse, the enrichment of counseling services in school health rooms, and the inauguration of surveillance programs to continuously monitor students' health conditions; the enrichment of traffic safety education in schools concerning two-wheeled vehicles, and training courses on first-aid treatment for teachers of health education in public upper secondary schools; and the development of desirable eating habits of children through school lunch programs in cooperation with the home and the community, as well as the improvement of the environment affecting children's eating habits.