We shall find in Chapter 4 that this problem is not unique to health education, but no matter. The job of health education is clearly to get them in harmony, either by getting the individual to make their behavioural choices more consonant with their beliefs or to resist whatever influences are stopping then from behaving healthily. In the case of adolescents these influences are likely to include peer group pressure. This is the dominant approach in schools and I shall pay it most attention. Diseases are specific entities constituting specific problems and requiring specific solutions.
Biological knowledge is neutral and value free.
The autonomy of the individual must be preserved. Strictly speaking, I think school health education is indeed concerned with individuals and not society. Health service activity in society without a notion of content to be learned is not called health education. Recently a lot of what look like adverts for health, more in the style of the medical model than anything else, have been appearing in the national press. Moreover, LEAs which have Health Education Coordinators employ them to work on similar matters.