ABSTRACT
Health Education: Critical perspectives provides a socio-cultural and critical approach to health education. The book draws together international experts in the fields of health and education who deconstruct contemporary discourses and practices, and re-imagine a health education that both connects with young people and offers a way forward in addressing issues of health and wellbeing.
Chapters within specifically link academic work on neoliberalism, healthism, risk and the body to wider discourses of health and health education. They challenge current practices and call for a re-thinking of current health programs in education settings. A unique feature of this book is the analyses of health education from both political and applied levels across a range of international contexts.
The book is divided into three sections:
- the social and political contexts informing health education
- how individual health issues (sexuality, alcohol, mental health, the body and obesity, nutrition) articulate in education in complex ways
- alternative ways to think about health and health education pedagogy.
The overall theme of the book offers a perspective that the current approach to health education – promoting a fear of ill health, self-surveillance and individual responsibility – can become a form of health fascism, and we need to be cognisant of this potential and its consequences for young people. The book will be of key interest to academics and researchers exploring the political context of health education.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|72 pages
The politics of health and education
chapter Chapter 3|17 pages
If you are not healthy, then what are you?
chapter Chapter 5|14 pages
Schools, the state and public health
part II|84 pages
Inventing youth health issues
chapter Chapter 8|13 pages
Young people, alcohol and a social science of risk
chapter Chapter 9|11 pages
Social media
chapter Chapter 11|15 pages
The corporatization of health education curricula
chapter Chapter 12|14 pages
Mental health in corporeal times
part III|78 pages
Against healthism