A transversalidade do tema Saúde no espaço escolar

Abstract

National Curriculum Parameters (NCPs) are a quality benchmark for primary and secondary education across the country. The cross-cutting themes as proposed in the NCPs emerge from the moment when the contents of the regular subjects cannot answer all the questions and a change in school education is necessary. According to the World Health Organization “health is the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not just the absence of disease”. Health studies need to match not only the population patterns of health and disease or the population behaviors of the health-disease process, but we also need to know the interactive processes and characteristics to which the individual belongs. Health appears in NCPs as a cross-cutting theme and our questions are: how is this put into practice? Is there field, project, schedules and professional preparation for the theme to be effectively inserted into the school dynamics? The proposed objectives for Health Education suggest that in the end students are able to raise awareness, sensitivity and ability to use practical measures to promote, protect and restore health at their fingertips. Therefore, when analyzing the NCP, it is noted that although this document presents a proposal for change, when inserted as a cross-cutting theme there is no pedagogical effectiveness that allows the theme to be fully developed in the school. We believe that just a curricular change is not enough and thus, the research aimed to apply Aedes aegypti mosquito prevention workshops, focusing on building knowledge about endemic diseases such as Dengue, Zika and Yellow Fever. The workshops were held in two schools: one from the municipal school system of the city of Rio de Janeiro and the other from the private school system of the city of São João de Meriti. Thus, it is expected to develop in the individual a critical awareness about prevention, since this type of disease depends not only on the public power, but on the performance of each individual before the environment in which they live. This dissertation also evaluated the performance of the faculty facing the Cross-cutting Health Theme, since for an interdisciplinary work it is necessary the involvement of the school community. We believe that it is not enough just a curricular change, but to find means for an effective change of practices and a new meaning of Health, since we still make the parallel of Health equal to hygiene and sanitation.