New Jersey Comprehensive Health and Physical Education Core Content Standards are as follows:

All students will learn and apply health promotion concepts and skills to support a healthy and active lifestyle.

All students will use health-enhancing personal, interpersonal, and life skills to support a healthy and active lifestyle.

All students will learn and apply information about alcohol, tobacco, other drugs and medicines to make decisions that support a health and active lifestyle.

All students will learn the physical, emotional, and social aspects of human relationships and sexuality and apply those concepts to support a healthy and active lifestyle.

All students will utilize safe, efficient and effective movement to develop and maintain a healthy and active lifestyle

DEPARTMENT PHILOSOPHY

The Ramsey Public Schools believe that the content of the school curriculum should reflect the educational aspirations the parents of a school community have for their children. The health curriculum, kindergarten through twelfth grade, which includes family life education, was developed to promote healthy attitudes toward these subjects. Not only is health considered the absence of disease but also a sense of well-being and satisfaction derived from the feeling that what one is doing has meaning and purpose. The physical, social, emotional, and mental aspects of health cannot be separated one from another. More than any of these four, Physical health represents the absence of disease but it also signifies the ability to use one’s body efficiently. Mental health may be defined as a combination of emotional and social health, but also consists in a large measure in the ability to use one’s intellectual powers to their limit. Emotional health involves controlling one’s impulses by using these strong drives for expression in constructive ways. Social health deals with the development of a strong, healthy personality and character to enable the students to contribute to responsible relationships in our society.

The responsibility of family life education should be shared by the home, religious community, and school. Individual sex roles must be related to the total adjustment of the individual in his family and society. Sexuality, being an important dimension of personality which involves maleness or femaleness, has expression in behavior from infancy and persists throughout the complete life cycle. Sexuality is the quality of living as a sexually motivated human being that environment and heredity have nurtured. Family life education is a continuing process throughout life and must be planned for during the entire school experience of the child. We believe that family life education begins at birth.

Children coming to kindergarten have already had five years of family life education in the family circle regardless of whether a single word about it had been spoken or whether a single question had been asked. Since an individual is a member of a family, has religious affiliations and is a member of a school community, his development will continue to be influenced by these socializing agencies. The school strives to assist parents in developing guidelines for behavior throughout life. This program is based on a philosophy that sex is something one is, not something one does.

An approach which encourages open discussion and solicits concerns of the individual is needed to help young people develop appropriate attitudes and understandings regarding sex roles. This developmental program, because of its broad connotation, cannot be limited to a series of units of instruction assigned to a specific area. Each area of curriculum can make a contribution that is unique to its subject content and should take advantage of the “teachable moment” when it arises. Curricular areas are presented with regard to providing of information and decision making. The decisions of abstinence, refusal of peer pressures, and reinforcement of these decisions based upon family and religious beliefs are key aspects of this program.

Finally, we recognize the growing complexity of the world in which the school and students must function. Consequently, the curriculum is in a continuous process of evaluation in anticipation of inevitable changes which must be made. In order to insure the adaptability of the students to their changing environment, revisions in procedure and curriculum are made as experiences and circumstances dictate.