by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext
What the mainstream media is hiding
The health of children and young people is getting worse and worse. An unparalleled educational policy failure contributes to this. Who is responsible? Who is it for? Schools are doing far too little to fix it — with feeble excuses.
“We have to admit that we failed catastrophically. We as a society,” a headmistress stormed on May 4, 2023, in the TV talk “Markus Lanz.” “I have to say that very clearly. We have a problem in front of our chests that can no longer be downplayed. We have arrived in an absolute educational emergency catastrophe.” That is why she called for “strict measures on the part of politicians.”
The pugnacious educator denounced rising cybercrime, increasing brutalization, and the ever-decreasing moral inhibitions among children addicted to mobile phones. Of course, her accusation would have fitted just as well to another, no less catastrophic emergency: the blatant lack of health literacy. Our youngsters indulge in their mobile phone addiction, preferably as lazy couch potatoes, with a bag of chips, pizza, or burgers with fries and a soft drink. Parents and teachers who stand by and do nothing open up early careers for children as chroniclers, which will sooner or later make them dependent on medication and in need of care – burdened by diseases of civilization such as obesity, fatty liver, arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, and diabetes mellitus, to the secret delight of the health care industry. Where are talk shows about this?
A tragedy called health education
A school subject called “nutrition” was “not necessary,” according to the trained bank clerk Jens Spahn, former Federal Minister of Health, and his cabinet colleague at the time, the former religion teacher Julia Klöckner, in a joint statement in November 2018. (1)
What this embarrassingly incompetent team said is, cautiously assessed: pity. A truly caring state can’t start early enough to help people to help themselves in terms of health. Because the course for behavioral patterns that promote or help prevent chronic diseases is set in early childhood, also, but not only, through improper nutrition. That is why health education should already take place in day-care centers and kindergartens, but at the latest from the first class of school – not on the sidelines, but as a main subject. Best of all, it transforms every educational institution from the ground up across disciplines. A new spirit is needed.
Because staying healthy is the most critical, fundamental requirement for the further life of our children to implement any knowledge they have acquired at school successfully. Cultivating and harvesting, shopping and preparing, assessing and questioning food offers: Is the ability to do this less (above) vital than analyzing poetry and integral arithmetic?
If you need help understanding the urgency, you should take a look around Germany’s schoolyards during long breaks. Every fifth child is overweight; almost every tenth has crossed the line of obesity. Every sixth child and every fourth young person already has an underlying chronic disease that lasts longer than a year. (2)
Among medical professionals, the radiologist Prof. Dietrich Grönemeyer, older brother of the star singer Herbert, is the most well-known advocate of “understanding one’s own body from childhood on.” With a foundation set up in 2007 that bears his name, he campaigns vehemently for school health education – “because it’s usually too late for adults.” (3) Early health education, he firmly believes, could relieve the health system financially and curb widespread diseases.
Such demands are by no means new. As early as February 19, 1876, readers of the Pedagogical Observer, the Zurich weekly newspaper for education and teaching, found a plea for the “inclusion of health studies as an independent subject.” This should not be misunderstood as “undue interference by physicians in the field of pedagogy.” Instead, it serves the “fight against deep-rooted damage and rusty prejudices.” (4)
More than a century later, in 1997, the WHO made health a fundamental human right in its “Jakarta Declaration.” Following on from this, Germany’s Conference of Ministers of Education passed the “Recommendation for Health Promotion and Prevention in Schools” in November 2012: The aim of a good school must be to maintain and strengthen health resources and potential. Health promotion is a “lifelong process and an indispensable element of sustainable school development.”
But political leaders have always prevented plausible ideas and noble intentions from finally being followed by resolute action. They justify their persistent blockade of the “essential” with the same six arguments, one weaker than the other.
Six pathetic excuses
1 Where would we be, ask skeptics, if all the new subjects that somehow seemed sensible were introduced into schools? Not even 48-hour days would do. An “everyday knowledge” subject could explain to children how to open a bank account, prepare a tax return, take out insurance and a rental agreement, and take legal action. 75 percent of Germans would like lessons in “behavior” and every second person would like a compulsory subject, “business”. “Many subjects result from the particular interests of associations or institutions,” Die Zeit points out. “The consumer association Bundeszentrale naturally considers consumer education to be quite useful. The Red Cross thinks first aid should be taught. The Low German Association is, of course, committed to Low German, and the association’ Optimists for Germany’ considers teaching happiness to be indispensable.” (5)
The flimsy logic of this argument is shared by non-donors: “I can’t help everyone, so I don’t help anyone.” Even if I can’t alleviate every need, shouldn’t I at least tackle the most momentous? In surveys, health takes the top spot among the most critical values, ahead of family and success. Shouldn’t this weighting be vehemently reflected in the area of culture?
2 Health education is a matter for the parental home, it is said – just like education in personal hygiene, dressing independently, controlling aggression, and basic social skills such as manners and empathy. Having to take on these tasks now overwhelms the school. She “cannot repair what has already been broken,” as a spokesman for the Saxon Ministry of Education explained. (6) This is precisely how teachers’ associations see it: “We are tired of being responsible for all of the family’s deficits – the same applies to youth violence. Healthy nutrition remains the job of the parental home.” (7) The school is “not a repair shop for social undesirable developments.” (8)
The fact is: Health education is taking place less and less at home. Children learn from the model. What role models do parents set who regularly have fast food and soft drinks, frozen and ready-made products on the table, and who have sweets and nibbles ready in front of the television every evening? The emancipation movement made self-realization possible for women at work – and robbed households of the person responsible for carefully planning meals, conscientious shopping, and freshly prepared food. Fewer and fewer families cook. Hardly anyone has time for it or takes it; hardly anyone can do it like Grandma used to. More and more adults have staggering knowledge gaps when it comes to the preparation, origin, and variety of food. The modern household is characterized by microwaves and deep freezes, industrial ready meals, speedy delivery services, and hasty eating on the run.
With their eating and cooking culture, future generations are losing the ability to feed themselves in a self-determined and balanced manner. Anyone who seriously believes that the home is still the right place for health education has apparently never noticed what mothers and fathers in a hurry fill their shopping carts in the supermarket – and what is mainly on the table at Germany’s meals.
3 Health education has been taking place for a long time, to a sufficient extent, we are also told. This happens in subjects such as biology and chemistry, home economics, local history, and general knowledge. According to Jens Spahn and Julia Klöckner, the fact that information on nutrition is “generally integrated into everyday school life” is entirely sufficient. (9)
Accordingly, 64 percent of the students remain in permanent sleep: According to their own statements, so many have rarely or never learned anything about how to eat sensibly in class. (10) The “integrated information” they hear is usually theoretical material that neither touches nor stimulates them and certainly does not change their ingrained habits.
4 Blockers explain that there is no longer any room for a separate subject, health, in the already overloaded timetables of our schools. “There is currently not enough teaching time to teach the children German, English, or mathematics anyway,” clarifies the German Teachers’ Association President. (11) Our children are already overwhelmed by the abundance of learning material.
Where there is no space, one must be created – if necessary, at the expense of other subjects. Clearing out curricula, saying goodbye to a centuries-old, outdated canon of subjects, slaughtering sacred cult cows: all of this is overdue. The life for which school is intended to prepare must, first and foremost, be a healthy one. Knowledge of how to do this is less critical than the meter-precise height of Mount Everest, the exact dates of imperial coronations, the covalent two-electron bond, the serial formula of the hydrogen spectrum, arccosine functions, and partial integration? What subject could be more vital during the 12,000+ hours children spend in school?
5 Health education is too expensive, they say. The state of Lower Saxony alone would receive 200 million euros per year for two hours of health per week, as ministry officials there want to have determined. (12) But, on the other hand, are several billion readily available for the “digital classroom”?
Health education is claimed to be useless: it goes in one ear and out the other. This certainly applies to abstract knowledge transfer. But there is another way: clear, practical, entertaining, exciting, and interactive. Successful models for this have long existed in private schools and in other countries. You just have to want to acknowledge them.
Rethinking and redesigning schools
According to surveys, nine out of ten Germans would like to have a school subject called “healthy nutrition finally.” (13)
Of course, that alone would not be enough. One thing is clear: it must not just be about installing another compartment. Such an innovation would be “just misused as an alibi by inactive politicians, a sluggish administration, or disinterested teachers,” says freelance education officer Siegfried Seeger. “Anyone who wants to ease their conscience in this way harms our children.” (14)
Seeger receives support from the “primakids” study, which the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and the Techniker Krankenkasse conducted in 2004 on over 500 first to fourth graders at 14 elementary schools: overweight children did not lose weight through a school subject called health; the pounds only tumbled when the entire school was prepared for health – and the private environment cooperated. (15)
The goal must be nothing less than a total work of art, namely a healthy school: a healing place where everything our children experience and do serves their physical and psychological well-being, both now and in the future. Beyond imparting knowledge, this includes plenty of physical activity that is fun; pollution-free architecture, ergonomic furniture, clean toilets; good room air, lots of natural light, happy colors; protection against electrosmog; a learning atmosphere that is good for the soul, arouses curiosity, gives creativity a lot of space, promotes independence, conscious consumption, and critical thinking; harmonious coexistence that provides for careful mediation of conflicts, protects minorities and nips bullying in the bud. Only in such an environment do attitudes and habits develop that can also have a lasting impact on health behavior outside of the school premises and long after graduation.
Such a school does not limit the topic of nutrition to a few extra textbook pages, worksheets, and lectures by the teachers. More knowledge is by far not enough – it’s about ability and action. The most well-founded nutritional science fizzles out without exemplary practice, and it has to prove itself first and foremost by what’s on the plate.
More and more all-day schools are setting up canteens. Over three million children in Germany have a legal right to be cared for there. How this happens significantly impacts their physical condition, well-being, concentration, and performance, as well as their eating and drinking habits outside of school. So, first of all, priorities need to be clarified. Should children be fed as cheaply as possible? Then you continue to rely on the standardized fare of canteen kitchens, which offer unimaginatively monotonous menus, long transport routes, food that is kept warm for hours, inferior food that is too fatty and taste-enhanced mush, from all kinds of dead-boiled vegetables to soggy noodles and half-crumbled boiled potatoes to leathery pork schnitzel with burnt breading Ready Sauce. Pupils who have enough pocket money prefer to flee to the chip shop around the corner unless the school canteen offers a junk food highlight such as currywurst with fries and ketchup. Vegetables, salad, and fruit are missing. Quality and variety fall by the wayside.
To achieve an effective, sustainable change in nutrition, schools have to renegotiate or terminate existing catering contracts and conclude supply contracts with local organic farmers. They have to set up or reactivate their own kitchens so that fresh and varied cooking can be done on-site. And they should create their own garden in which healthy things are grown, tended, and harvested. Most importantly, the students need to be involved, with the guidance of teachers, volunteers, and the active support of parents who are free. Children should share responsibility – be it for planting and fertilizing, peeling and cutting, stirring, or seasoning. Dietetics can appeal to all the senses, arouse curiosity, and fascinate. Shopping together, getting to the bottom of the production of food, its ingredients, and its utilization in the body, preparing food yourself, handling kitchen appliances, seeing, smelling, and tasting delicious things: something like this shapes the eating habits of children far more than a thousand words.
There are no limits to the pedagogical imagination. It just needs space for unbureaucratic development. “Children will eat anything if you let them cook with you,” assures Austrian television chef Sarah Wiener, who set up her own foundation for “Practical Nutritional Education for Children” in 2007. “You can bring the kids to the stove with you so that they can achieve the first cultural achievement in human history: being able to judge what they put in their mouths. Children who gain cooking experience, try out tastes, learn to eat with pleasure, and see how food is produced on farms eat healthier and behave more sustainably towards their environment.” (16) Arousing their curiosity and joy to train their taste, of course, requires time and patience. Otherwise, the gently steamed cod has no chance against Captain Iglo’s fish sticks.
Merely healthy is not enough: A meal must also taste and look delicious. The atmosphere also has to be right.
And it has to go deep. Unhealthy dietary routines are largely the result of mass manipulation from an early age that has become a cultural norm. Our little ones have become addicted to oversweetened, overly salty, overly greasy, artificially flavored foods because their sense of taste has been denatured: what tastes less sweet or salty, spicy or savory, like pizza and hamburgers, pasta and fries, hardly has a chance with them. Giving up such preferences requires understanding that they are industrially programmed. “Anyone who thinks natural fruit is bland compared to artificial fruit flavors and doesn’t like the taste of vegetables or vegetarian food at all is basically a patient who needs help,” says amateur cook Jürgen Dollase, author of culinary books and the SZ- According to the magazine “the best German gastronomy critic.” Dollase finds failing to open and expand culinary awareness “simply irresponsible. A disjointed preoccupation with school lunches that don’t take into account and address what happens outside of school is nonsense. It will never accomplish more than to put a few organic side dishes next to the hamburgers or sausages.” (17)
Some things still require improved training and further education for teachers and educators, new teaching materials, revised curricula, and suitable premises. But a lot could be implemented immediately – two half hours of exercise every school day, for example. Fresh fruit and vegetables and plenty of still water could be available for the children during all breaks. The next school trip could be to an organic farm instead of a modern art museum.
A school meal in Germany costs an average of 5.36 euros, of which parents pay 3.50 euros. (18) That’s enough at most for standardized canteen food. With four cents more, as ex-Federal Minister of Food Julia Klöckner (19) made us believe, it is hardly done. Anyone who wants to serve school children lunchtime food made from fresh, regional, seasonal ingredients, without chemical waste and in organic quality, willy-nilly has to spend more money, at least one or two additional euros. The federal, state, and local governments should help financially overwhelmed families. The around 1.2 billion euros with which Germany’s municipalities have subsidized school meals so far are insufficient.
It is impossible for a healthy school to function without the parents, and certainly not against them. What happens at home can thwart the best school-based health education, undoing the rewards. England’s celebrity chef Jamie Olivier experienced this when he launched a widely acclaimed campaign in 2015 to replace junk food with wholesome meals in British schools: mothers then handed the beloved fast food over the school fence to their ecotrophologically tormented little ones. (20)
Therefore, mothers and fathers need to be persuaded and involved; they have to be open, take their time, and get involved within the school. For this, many require a lot of tutoring. The statistically most significant risk factor for obesity in children is obese parents.
The country also needs additional qualified teachers – tens of thousands are already lacking. “Many of them feel overwhelmed when they have to teach health-related topics in an interdisciplinary way, which had little space in their training. Your workload is already incredibly high,” points out Gudrun Zander, Head of Department at the State Institute for Schools and Training in Schwerin in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. (21)
Make the couch potatoes’ legs.
It’s not just about nutrition. Health also requires physical activity. How much incentive do parents give their offspring to be more physically active when they are among the 57 percent of couch potatoes who do less than 150 minutes of moderate physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week, as recommended by the WHO as a minimum? (22)
To “encourage the desire for exercise and prevention,” Grönemeyer advertises a daily hour of school sports. To do this, he developed a program with 40 exercises for 20 minutes, according to the motto: “Gymnastics up to the ballot box.” In 2015, Grönemeyer initiated “The moving school break.”
But why rigid “exercises” with professor blessing? Every school day should simply offer plenty of freedom and incentive for extensive exercise that is fun and keeps you fit: running, running, playing, jumping, catching, simply everything that encourages children’s natural urge to move, for pure enjoyment, without pressure to perform and without grading. If boys want to play football every day, let them.
Traditional physical education classes, on the other hand, should be outsourced to the club. Entirely out of place in school are physical trainers who feel obliged to support future Olympic champions early on or act out sadistic tendencies by forcing visibly overwhelmed, frightened children to breakneck floor gymnastics and horizontal bar exercises.
Endless lip service, tentative approaches
Why aren’t the federal and state governments taking the apparent consequences in school policy for a long time? At least cloudy declarations of intent have meanwhile been released into the world. “It’s important to me that children learn something about how to live healthily in school,” said the former Federal Health Minister Ulla Schmidt (SPD) back in autumn 2007; this included diet and exercise in particular. This was preceded by a suggestion from a state secretary in the consumer protection ministry to introduce a separate school subject called “nutrition and consumer education.”
It followed? Hearty little. Only two federal states, Bremen and Hamburg, were open to it – the rest waved it off. The then chairman of the Conference of Ministers of Education, Berlin’s education senator Jürgen Zöllner (SPD), also found the initiative “little sensible.” (23)
Five years later, in 2012, the Conference of Ministers of Education found that promoting health in schools was “indispensable.” (24). However, “nutrition education is the responsibility of the federal states and the self-government of the schools.” (25)
In July 2015, a “Law to Strengthen Health Promotion and Prevention” came into force, which prefers non-binding, vague objectives. It renounces obligations. As far as daycare centers and schools are included, it focuses on early detection examinations, the “promotion of vaccination prevention,” AIDS, and drug education. The law does not change the least bit about the embarrassing fact that the Federal Republic uses only three percent of its health expenditure for preventive care – of which only a fraction in the school sector. Not even the authors dare to claim that such papers have only made Germany’s students three percent healthier.
Learn from Japan and Finland
German culture politicians could get valuable suggestions from educational trips abroad. Health education is compulsory in Japanese schools – from elementary to high school. In addition to formal health education, there are also ‘health clubs’: student-run establishments that promote health and well-being through activities such as exercise and wholesome nutrition.
In Portugal, health is a school subject from the seventh grade. But nowhere in Europe do students know more about health than in Finland, as WHO found in 2019. As a broad, graded school subject, “health education” has been firmly anchored in the teaching system there since 2005 – from elementary school onwards. In some places, it does not take place separately but is integrated into other subjects such as natural sciences and social studies. This approach to cross-curricular project teaching, known as phenomenon-based learning, aims to help children understand how health and well-being relate to other subjects, such as biology and chemistry, but also to history, social studies, and economics. “It’s not just about imparting knowledge,” sums up a 20-year-old German, who went to school in Helsinki from the sixth grade to high school, “but also about becoming more sensitive to health issues, raising awareness.” Health education has been a separate subject at Finnish universities since the 1990s. (26)
Finnish schools place a high value on physical activity. They offer their students a variety of opportunities to exercise throughout the day, for example, by incorporating exercise breaks and outdoor games into the daily routine. Mental health is also a priority: many schools offer counseling services and promote mindfulness and relaxation techniques. Great importance is attached to healthy and nutritious food. High-quality school meals are provided at low cost, in many places, even free of charge.
Sabotaged by business lobbyists
Which political camps have been the most obstinate for years? Above all, representatives of business-related parties present themselves as discouragers, brakemen, and shredders. The main motive is apparent: which schoolchild would still reach for the pesticide- and hormone-loaded products of industrial agriculture as soon as they had sufficient “health competence”? What other so-called “food” would you like to serve to the ZuckerSalzFett-Connection? Swallow a mix of synthetic colors and preservatives, emulsifiers, and flavor enhancers? Would you rather have imported goods, frozen food, and ready meals from the microwave on your plate than regionally produced, freshly prepared organic quality? Letting drinks companies quench your thirst instead of simply turning on the tap?
Any scientifically well-founded health education is eye-opening. It inevitably leads to an embarrassing criticism of the system that endangers sales. It provides for new generations from which there is significantly less to earn for drug manufacturers, healthcare professionals, clinics, and nursing homes. Where would we be if something like this caught on?
(Harald Wiesendanger)
This article contains excerpts from the 2019 book by Harald Wiesendanger: The health care system – how we see through it, survive and transform it, there pp. 573-588.
Remarks
(1) Zit. nach Jürgen Dollase: „Wenn Minister nicht das Ganze im Auge haben“, Eat-Drink-Think.de, 12.11.2018, www.eat-drink-think.de/wenn-minister-nicht-das-ganze-im-auge-haben-julia-kloeckner-vom-bundesministerium-fuer-ernaehrung-und-landwirtschaft-und-gesundheitsminister-jens-spahn-wollen-kein-schulfach-ernaehrung, abgerufen am 8.6.2019.
(2) See H. Wiesendanger: Das Gesundheitunwesen (2019) 39 ff.: “Minors – on the way to chroniclers.”
(3) mdr.de, February 28, 2018: “Medicine for children – Grönemeyer calls for ‘health’ as a school subject”, www.mdr.de/wissen/bildung/groenemeyer-fordt-gesundheitskurse-an-schulen-100.html, retrieved on 7.6.2019.
(4) Pedagogical Observer 7/1876, pp. 1-2: “Health education in and out of school”, PDF, http://doi.org/10.5169/seals-237875.
(5) Zeit online, February 7, 2018: “A timetable for tomorrow”, www.zeit.de/2018/07/schulfaecher-stunden-bedingungen-bildungspolitik/komplettsicht, retrieved on June 7, 2019.
(6) Quoted from Frankfurter Rundschau, September 24, 2007: “Broad majority against the school subject ‘nutrition'”, www.rundschau-online.de/breite-majorheit-gegen-schulfach–ernaehrung–10970094.
(7) Quoted from Welt.de, January 24, 2008: “Cooking could also become a compulsory subject in Germany’s schools”, www.welt.de/welt_print/article1588415/Kochen-koennte-auch-an-Deutschlands-Schulen-Pflichtfach- werden .html, retrieved on 06/08/2019.
(8) Quoted from Herolé Blog, March 12, 2019: “Do we need the school subject “Healthy Lifestyle”?”, www.herole.de/blog/ Brauchen-wir-das-schulfach-gesunde-lebenweiß, retrieved on June 7, 2019 .
(9) Quoted from Dollase, loc. cit.
(10) Based on the LBS Children’s Barometer 2007, p. 100 ff.
(11) Quoted from Welt.de, January 24, 2008, loc.
(12) According to Focus.de, January 31, 2008: “Slim through education – do we need a health school subject?” -bildung_id_2192524.html.
(13) Zeit online, February 7, 2018, loc.
(14) 122 Quoted from www.focus.de/familie/schule/studium/ Brauchen-wir-ein-schulfach-gesundheit-Dünn-durch-bildung_id_2192576.html, retrieved on June 7, 2019.
(15) Angela Schröder et al.: Primary prevention and health promotion in elementary school: overview of program content and results of the four-year controlled intervention study “primakids” in fourteen Hamburg elementary schools, Hamburg 2009, series of studies on childhood and youth research, vol. 54.
(16) Quoted from https://sw-stiftung.de/startseite, retrieved on June 14, 2019, and from Süddeutsche Zeitung No. 256, November 7, 2018, p. 2.
(17) Eat-Drink-Think.de, loc.cit.
(18) www.bmel.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/Ernaehrung/Kita-Schule/Studie-Kosten-Schulverpflegung.pdf;jsessionid=8FEE1022E4ADA25580C25E39634EA004.1_cid367?__blob=publicationFile; www.deutschlandfunk.de/ernaehrung-5-40-euro-reichen-fuer-ein-gesundes-schulessen.680.de.html?dram:article_id=432511, retrieved on June 14, 2019.
(19) www.bmel.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/2018/169-Schulessen.html, retrieved on June 14, 2019.
(20) www.n-tv.de/panorama/Jamie-Oliver-attackiert-Theresa-May-article19849473.html; https://eatsmarter.de/gesund-leben/news/anti-food-campaign-warum-jamie-oliver-wut-kocht; retrieved on 06/08/2019.
(21) Cited by Focus.de, loc.cit.
(22) According to the DKV Report 2018: “How healthy is Germany living?”, www.ergo.com/de/DKV-Report, retrieved on June 6, 2019.
(23) Kölnische Rundschau, September 24, 2007: “Broad majority against the school subject ‘nutrition'”, www.rundschau-online.de/breite-majorheit-gegen-schulfach–ernaehrung–10970094.
(24) www.kmk.org/themen/allgemeinbildende-schulen/weitere-lehrungsbedingungen/gesundheitserziehung.html; the “recommendation” as a PDF: www.kmk.org/fileadmin/Daten/veroeffentlichungen_beschluesse/2012/2012_11_15-Gesundheits Recommendation.pdf; retrieved on 06/06/2019.
(25) www.dnsv.eu/kmk-ausgestaltung-liegen-in-der-laender responsibility-und-in-der-self-responsibility-der-schulen, retrieved on June 6, 2019.
(26) Kaarina Määttä/Satu Uusiautti, “The Value and Implementation of Health Education in Finland”, International Journal of Sciences, Vol. 2, December 2013, p. 3, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers .cfm?abstract_id=2573605
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