Health and Safety: What Your Parents Never Taught You

• Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among people ages 15 to 24 years old.
• Health and Safety, has been cut out of AHS’ curriculum.
• The freshmen PE classes have incorporated “Fitness for Life” into their curriculum.
• However, like the biology class, the program lacks the teenager-related topics that Health and Safety provides.

Being a teenager is not the easiest phase in the world.
While the rates of STIs, chlamydia and syphilis are at an all-time high; it is imperative that high school students be informed about problems of the adult world.
What exactly is Health and Safety? The class taught what is considered common sense but what most high school students have questions about; it covered topics such as teen suicide prevention, AIDS prevention and the harms of drugs, alcohol and smoking and drivers’ education. These topics relate to most high school students and permits candid discussion on generally taboo matters.
No other class elaborates as much as Health and Safety on all these issues. The biology classes’ curriculum extends to human anatomy but does not give as much detail about the effects of alcohol, smoking or drugs on the human body. While the physiology class does deal with human health matters including eating disorders and substance abuse, it dose not include social aspects of teen life such as drivers’ education.
For the moment, the Health and Safety class’ absence cannot be anything but detrimental to students’ well-beings.
“I wish they would bring [the class] back. [It would] create good people, not just good students,” former Health and Safety teacher David Lawson said.

By Staff Writer Diana Li