Producing Little Decision Makers and Goal Setters in the Age of the Obesity Crisis

Abstract

It is obviously possible to argue that education is always an arm of social policy. However, there are just as surely degrees of directness between the agendas of noneducational authorities and what happens in school and university classrooms. This article considers what appears to be a direct example of a particular public policy agenda, the so-called “war on obesity,” translated into curriculum. My intention is to rouse the field from its slumber and to ask whether we are content for others to decide what and how we will teach health and physical education in schools and universities. I do this by examining a specific example of health and physical education curriculum. However, this is not a call for resistance to the intrusion of outsiders; we always need to listen to others. My question is whether the voice of physical educators matters at all when it comes to the practice of physical education.