Direction in Health Education of smoking Prevention for Elementary School Children

In order to provide a desirable direction for the health education on preventing smoking of elementary school students, by understanding the views held by elementary school teachers on smoking prevention education, 529 teachers at elementary schools located in Seoul were responded by constructed questionnaires during the period of Nov. 15 to Dec. 18 1999. The results of the survey analysis were as follows: 1. 91.9% of the respondents said that schools should offer education programs on preventing smoking, and this view was more strongly shared by teachers with religions than non-religious ones. 2. 37.6% of teachers responded that the education should start with 4th-5th graders, while 36.0% opted for 6th grades. With regard to the appropriate class in providing such education, 41.1% selected physical education (PE), followed by extracurricular activity class with 28.8%, 45.1% of the respondents said discussion would be the most effective education method, while 39.9% recommended using experiments. fall in diseases and growth and developmental defect were pointed out as the most interesting topic for students by 33.2% and 28.1% of the surveyed, respectively. As for the most effective media for education, 57.2% recommended video, followed by computer games(19.2%) and cartoons (20.0%). 64.1% of the teachers picked school nurses as the most appropriate person in carrying out the education. The results of the finding show that it would be most desirable to provide health education on preventing smoking to senior elementary schoolers during the PE or extracurricular activity class by school nurses. The program would be structured to first show video clips on growth and developmental defect or fall in diseases resulting from smoking and to have discussions or experiments on related mattersope