For more than twenty years the society we live in has been confronted with both the weakening of national health systems and serious sanitary crises. Henceforth, given what is at stake, teachers must be made aware of the necessity of health education. In France following the break which occurred with the introduction of hygiene instruction in 1945, and under the impetus of successive who charters, health education gradually became the focal point of several ministerial recommendations until priority was eventually given back to prevention. In view of the issues involved however, the application of these measures is still far from satisfactory from both a financial point of view and in terms of human investment. The pursuit of better performance today commits decision makers into making pupils take responsibility for their own health. In a country where allopathic medicine of worldwide renown predominates, yet which does not allocate adequate funding to education, the role of the school as an institution is reinforced by the urgent need to train more responsible young people and to make them aware of the values which underpin this new form of citizenship.