At Rednock school we are working on the Facts
4 Life project which aims put children and young adults in control of their health. We are going to do this by getting
more background to the scare stories and advice we get from the media about healthy eating, exercise and sexual health.
We will try to learn about the diseases we are told to avoid by learning more about them, their causes and their
treatment.
To do this we will need some of the same tools
(the times table of health) as those used by health professionals so that we can put this information in context.
These facts are that ‘health is wealth’
(most illness is concentrated in the developing world), that we in the west are suffering from the diseases of excess, that
many things can be avoided (but not all – death for instance!) and that most things get better (we heal ourselves).
These messages need to be brought together into a curriculum based around the body. They could even form the basis for a way
of introducing kids to science since we are all walking chemistry labs and we are governed by the laws of physics. As groups
our health can be studied by maths, our illnesses over the centuries can inform history and we can study where most people
become ill in human geography. The beauty of the Facts 4 Life Project is that all the information is out there – in
the hands of doctors – it just needs re-packaging.
