Abstract

Background. Preventive measures implemented in accordance with the ideas of the School Of Healthy Spine seem to be a good and effective method of improving the health of both children and their parents. The main goal of this article was to demonstrate that there is an urgent need to put into practice the assumptions advocated by the School of Healthy Spine from Karlsruhe by including them in the primary school curriculum and in training programs for teachers and educational advisers. The article addresses two crucial issues, namely to what extent schoolchildren’s knowledge and awareness of the ways of maintaining a correct posture influences their perception of their own physique. The second objective was to determine whether parents’ knowledge of the principles of good posture influences the perception of their children’s posture problems and prompts action to improve their children’s posture.Material and methods. The study was carried out in Warsaw’s Mokotów District in 2007. The participants were pupils of the 6th (final) grade of primary school and their parents. The diagnostic medical examination was employed as the main research tool. The results were verified with the help of questionnaires designed by the author.Results. The findings of the study clearly indicate that the awareness of healthy posture of the 64 pupils and their parents definitely influenced their way of perceiving their own posture. Conclusions. 1. The findings regarding the level of knowledge of the principles of healthy posture in the group of children aged 12-13 confirm the need to modify school curricula. This, in turn, requires that both teachers and instructors possess essential knowledge about child development as well as the principles of mechanics and pathomechanics of postural defects. 2. There is an urgent need to educate children and their parents to develop the postural perception skills.

Key words:

posture, postural perception, self-assessment, school of healthy spine