农村的烟瘾
Kiel Harell | 把 2008年03月11号 粘贴在 乡村教育促进会, 乡村教育探索平台, 教学, 科学, 素质教育, 课程发展 上面里 
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中国有三亿以上的烟民。根据《英国医学期刊》的研究报告，中国男性的抽烟比例高达75%，如果他们继续维持目前的抽烟频度，将有近50%的人死于和抽烟有关的疾病。这一问题在农村尤为突出。加州大学伯克利分校的Teh-wei Hu教授指出：农业人口抽烟的概率最高。事实的确如此，山西农村关爱小学学生的周围几乎找不到不抽烟的人。这些成年男子不仅把自己置于罹患肺癌和慢性肺疾病（中国烟民的头号杀手）的危险处境，他们的配偶和子女也被迫忍受二手烟的危害。
除了危害健康以外，抽烟也给农村家庭造成相当的经济压力。耶鲁医学院的一项研究表明：用于烟草制品的支出挤压了其他必需品的消费空间。Hong Wang博士/助理教授发现，为了提供更多的资金解决烟草成瘾的问题，教育经费往往首当其冲成为削减的项目。研究表明，抽烟预防和戒烟项目对于农村家庭尤为重要——因为许多家庭的预算本来就异常紧张。
正在考虑发动六年级学生参与一个服务项目，由他们负责调查抽烟的后果和有效的戒烟方法。完成资料的收集之后，学生们可以对公众进行有关抽烟的教育。我们正在为此计划集思广益、网罗资源，如果你知道任何有关抽烟后果和戒烟有效方法的资料（最好是中文），请和我们共享。
修正
Stephanie Hakes 说：
在 %I:%M%p 添加 2008年45月11号That sounds like a great idea for a sixth grade service project! If the teachers want, maybe my sixth graders in Beijing can collaborate with Guan Ai’s and we can share our ideas.
Wei Ji Ma 说：
在 %I:%M%p 添加 2008年50月12号The Health Interest Group has also looked into this issue but so far there were no opportunities for them to get concretely involved in a project. Maybe this is one.
Kiel Harell (作者博客) 说:
在 %I:%M%p 添加 2008年27月12号Stephanie, I will let the 6th grade teachers know that you’re interested in collaborating with them.
Wei Ji, I’ll make sure the Health Interest Group is notified before we begin work on this project.
Thanks!
Ting Zhou (作者博客) 说:
在 %I:%M%p 添加 2008年05月27号hey kiel,
my name is ting, and i was a volunteer for the 2006 vp. i taught science and health in the dongbaoquan village in hebei. REALLY glad to read your post on the anti-smoking campaign in guan ai. this is something that has been brewing in the minds of several rcef volunteers for a looooong time. you may also be interested in talking to xuejing chen and nancy king, both of whom taught health for vp at some point in time.
to be honest, hig isn’t very active lately for various reasons. largely because i just couldn’t get my act together
. nancy, jing and i must have had at least 10 conversations in the past on the feasibility of smoking cessation in rural china. if you’re interested to read about what we did for smoking prevention during the 2006 vp, check out nancy king’s awesome health curriculum report (which can be found on the rcef website somewhere). from teaching the health curriculum, we’ve come across quite a few number of of obstacles, most of which probably were due to the length of the vp program. but now, you’ll have the advantage of working long-term at a rural school with rural teachers, which will definitely have a stronger impact on health education.
a lot of questions came up when we were looking over the smoking education module and talking about future projects on smoking prevention. for example, how do we approach the issue of smoking cessation in china in general, where people still offer cigarettes to their guests as a sign of hospitality? how would the “anti-smoking” message be taken in villages that still generate large portions of their income from tobacco farming? would there be any repercussions from local governments, some of whom own shares of tobacco factories. would farmers even respond to educations on the chronic effects of smoking, such as copd/lung cancer/stroke/heart disease, when most of them still don’t have insurance (or have crappy insurance that doesn’t cover day-to-day medical expenditure). and sure, we can teach children the effects of smoking. but given the void of public health education on smoking, they will still go home to a smoke-filled household. just how useful would a class on smoking be when we can’t change the environment in which they live?
we also debated a lot on the teaching method. rather than focusing on behavior alterations, many of us thought that the most appropriate way of teaching health education is to provide the kids with the necessary knowledge, so that they would develop an interest for their own health and ultimately make the right decisions for themselves. one year, we developed a smoking module that focused on basic science and medical knowledge. even though the module did really well in some sites, we had trouble with its transferability. a couple of sites decided to scrap health education altogether because the volunteers felt uncomfortable for not having the appropriate background education.
there was another obstacle with having short-term/overseas/college students teaching health education. our understanding of the rural chinese people are limited, and so the impact of our message would be weak. taking all these lessons together, i thought that a novel of way teaching health education to the kids would be to combine it with community research and “student teaching”. the kids can lead research projects on the effect of smoking in their own villages / communities. they can do lit search on the harmful effect of smoking, collect data on smoking-related illnesses in their villages, calculate the amount of money spent per household on smoking, etc. finally, the kids would organize all information into a presentation, which they can give to their parents / fellow villagers. this way, not only would the kids learn about smoking, they would also play a proactive part in advocating for the health care of their community.
anyway, this is way too long and detailed of a spiel for a blog post. maybe we can schedule a skype session to do some more brainstorming. i’m sure that nancy and jing would love to get this project started again.
ting