Whether mentally, physically or emotionally, being healthy is one of the most important necessities for teenagers today.

Staying healthy is especially vital in light of the high stress levels at the school. Learning how to take care of one’s mind and body is a life skill that will serve students long beyond their high school years. Thus Health Education is rightly a California Board of Education requirement for graduation. But if health class is going to be a useful resource for students, the school needs to update the textbook used in some classes.

The school currently has 80 copies of Holt Lifetime Health, published in 2007. This is not nearly enough for all the students who take health, and as a result, copies of the 1999 edition are given out. The discussions of important subjects such as nutrition, sexual orientation and sexually transmitted diseases in the old textbook are not as current as they should be.

The 1999 edition still carries an old recommended food pyramid, which the Food and Drug Administration updated in 2007. The new pyramid has a completely different format that places emphasis on exercise and fits different types of people. The textbook is also outdated in its coverage of culture and the media’s influence on sexuality, gender roles, and sexual orientation. It includes outdated rates of STDs; for example, it states that STDs infect 2.5 million American teenagers, while Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently estimates the number at closer to 10 million. The textbook should provide the most up to date information in order to meet the state standards for health.

Health teachers are forced to make up for the outdated book by supplementing the text with outside materials. Some health teachers do not use the book at all. Those who do use the book supplement it with a number of sources such as the Berkeley Wellness newsletter, medical newsletters from institutions such as Tufts University, and the Environmental Nutrition Action newsletter.

New health textbooks should be purchased for the school. Although health teachers have worked around the outdated textbook, the best-case scenario would be to have both a current textbook and supplementary materials. Despite the expense, the school should make replacing 1999 books with enough of the 2007 edition a priority. Teachers should receive the necessary support from the school because the subject is so important to the lives of students. The school should institute a policy of regularly updating the book. In order to foster a generation of healthy youth, we must provide the tools to properly educate them.