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Abstract
Saturating the Canadian landscape are media and health industry discourses representing childhood physical ‘(in)activity’ and ‘obesity’ as being at ‘epidemic’ proportion. Increasingly identified as a focus of concern within such representations is the school setting, simultaneously positioned both as a cause of and a key institutional site for redressing these ‘pathologies’. Drawing on qualitative research carried out at a Canadian elementary school, this discussion offers a Foucaultian governmental analysis of one school's navigation of this gauntlet of accountability to improve children's health. Specifically, the school-wide fitness-based initiative known as ‘Thrash yourself Thursdays’, whose objective is the production of ‘healthy’ students, is examined to understand the power relations enacted through it, and how the target of this practice (i.e. the children) negotiated such efforts to shape their bodily conduct. This in turn, offers a unique contribution to the governmental literature, which is more characterised by attending to discourses and strategies of government rather than how the subjects of such strategies respond to such efforts.
Notes
1. Education in Canada falls under the jurisdiction of the ten provincial and three territorial governments; no national curriculum exists. The DPA initiatives in British Columbia (introduced in 2008) and Alberta (instituted in 2005) targets children in grades 1–9, while the Ontario program (initiated in 2005) focuses on grades K-8.
2. Rich and Evans (Citation2005) use the term ‘health industry’ as shorthand to refer to health education experts, government agencies and academics.
3. A second strategy recommended schools move away from selling junk food to healthier choices. The Conservative Alberta government would be loathe to stipulate an outright ban of such food sales which would undermine its ideological commitments to choice, marketplace logic and less government.
4. This acceptance reflects Monaghan's (2005) assertion that little actual debate has occurred around the representation of ‘obesity’ as an ‘epidemic;’ rather ‘obesity’ discourse has operated to erase this debate inherent in expert bio-medical discourse (Gard & Wright, Citation2001).
5. Just over half the solicited school boards responded. In discussing the relations amongst the media, public survey polls and public policy, Grandy (Citation2003) notes not only the media's increasing role in publicising opinion polls mobilised in policy debates, but also their escalating tendency to assume a more active role in the polling process as either its source or sponsor.
6. Childhood ‘inactivity’ and ‘obesity’ were the focus of all but two of the seven articles in the series. The other two articles’ foci were the provision of wellness programs and school air quality.
7. Picard's (the journalist) decision to use this particular quotation further illustrates the media's tendency to use narrative devices of victimhood; suggestively, ‘obesity’ experts have also learned the merit of such devices.
8. Active Healthy Kids Canada (n.d.), a non-profit organisation, imparts expertise and provides direction to decision makers with the objective of increasing attention to, investment in, and implementation of children and youth's physical activity opportunities.
9. Between 1999 and 2009, 691 newspaper articles were written on the topics of ‘obesity’ and inactivity according to a Canadian newspaper database search. Tremblay is the expert cited in 264 of the 691 articles.
10. That BMI is urged to be used in individual assessments of children further undermines the already contested value of such a measure (Halse, Citation2008).
11. This quotation comes from an article in The Globe and Mail's investigative series on school health. Its focus was assessing the state and status of PE programs in Canada. It should also be noted that while standardised bodily and fitness measurements have become commonplace in the UK. (Evans et al., Citation2008), this is not yet the case in Canada.
12. From 2000 to 2007, 318 articles were published in Canadian newspapers on the topic of DPE, in contrast to only 127 during the 1990s, and 35 during the 1980s.
13. Shilling (Citation2008) offers that in the contemporary context the ‘health role’ has become dominant, with its emphasis on capitalising on individuals’ productive capacities. This demands a constant surveillance and vigilance against frailty and ill-health in order to ensure bodies can work at their most productive level within competitive societies. Arguably, this productive concern is extended to the bodies of society's future constitution, children, which is one of the primary factors underpinning contemporary anxieties about health. Indeed, Evans et al. (Citation2008) suggest that it is neo-liberalism's productive ideologies and practices’ appropriation and re-contextualisation of genetic and epidemiological approaches that has resulted in children becoming a primary concern of health and educational policies.
14. In European and Western Pacific countries this approach is known as ‘health promoting schools;’ in the US it is referred to as ‘coordinated school health’ (CitationSafe Healthy Schools, n.d.). Regardless of its name, such attempts to integrate health concerns into the curriculum represent a quintessential example of Wright's (2008) biopedagogies operating in the service of health and life.
15. A risk vocabulary is far from benign. See McDermott (Citation2007), Leahy & Harrison (Citation2004) and Tinning & Glasby (Citation2002) for discussions of the discursive effects of deploying risk within ‘inactivity’ and ‘obesity’ discourses.
16. The contemporary tenor and rhetoric surrounding public discussions of childhood ‘inactivity’ and ‘obesity’ have increased as compared to the past, but the latter are not unprecedented as is often assumed to be the case. For example, within the Canadian context, Dr. Harry Medovy, head of the University of Manitoba's paediatrics department, gave a speech in 1963 to the Canadian Medical Association addressing some of the problems adolescents of that day encountered. One such ‘problem’ was ‘obesity’, found to occur in 10–15% of all adolescents (a figure, interestingly, close to contemporary levels). He identified inactivity as one of the most significant factors underlying ‘obesity's’ onset. As Medovy explained ‘lack of enthusiasm in Canadian schools and households for physical fitness programs, the tendency to use elevators when stairways would do, taxis and buses when a brisk walk would be more physiologically normal, and the replacement of so many household chores by mechanical equipment has led us all into slothful habits. We set poor examples for our children and we do not encourage them to carry out even an average amount of physical activity. In an affluent society with abundant food, one car for each adult over 16 and a television in every room, and a gradual diminution of physical effort and activity, obesity is likely to become a greater rather than lesser problem’ (The Globe and Mail, 1963, p. 1; see also The Globe and Mail, 1967). See McDermott (Citation2008) for a further discussion of the relative historical amnesia surrounding childhood ‘inactivity’ and ‘obesity’.
17. Bailey was a PE professor at the University of Saskatchewan from 1959 to 1994. He also served as Director of the Saskatchewan Child Growth and Development Study during the 1960s and 1970s, which was a longitudinal examination of growth and fitness in school-age children (School of Human Movement Studies, Citation2008). He also served on CAHPER's Board of Directors as Chair of the Research Committee (CAHPERD, 2008).
18. This is most conspicuously evidenced by exercise psychology's morphing into behavioural medicine.
19. CAHPERD is a national, charitable, voluntary-sector organisation whose primary concern is to influence children and youth's healthy development by advocating for school-based physical and health education. It has a lengthy history, dating back to 1933 as a professional association for PE (CAHPERD, n.d. C.).
20. Quality Daily Physical Education (QDPE) is a term CAHPERD created in 1988 to signify a school-wide PE program designed and taught by trained professionals that at a minimum is 30 minutes of DPA. QDPE's focus is ensuring all children ‘have the opportunity to develop the knowledge, skills, and habits … to lead physically active lives now and… into the future’ (CAHPERD, n.d. A.). RAP's purpose is to identify, recognise and ‘encourage excellence’ in school PE programmes and is awarded based on commitment to QDPE philosophy, standards and criteria (CAHPERD, n.d. B.).
21. While the DPA policy was not implemented until 2005, government concern with children and youth's inactivity predated the initiative's announcement in 2003. For example, in 1995 a joint federal-provincial conference of ministers responsible for fitness showed their concern about Canadians’ level of physical inactivity through their signed commitment to reduce it by 10% by 2003 (Olekshy, Citation2001). Moreover, a Canadian newspaper database search of the terms ‘DPE’, ‘inactivity’ and ‘obesity’ found that from 2003 to 2007, 92 articles had been written concerning all three of these issues. From 1990 to 2002, 153 articles were written on these issues. As early as 1994 ‘fears of a tubby tot epidemic [had] prompted a coalition of health and recreation professionals to issue an urgent call for more physical education to be taught in Canadian schools’ (Mickleburgh, Citation1994, p. A1).
22. The activity-based clubs offered were running and skipping which is open to all students in grades 1–6. In addition, three sport camps were offered that ran for approximately 3 months: volleyball and basketball for grades 5–6, and rugby for grades 3–6.
23. The PE Consultant for the Edmonton Public School Board used ‘fitness days’, such as ‘TYT’, as an example of best practice (CitationZabloski, n.d.).
24. Pseudonyms are used throughout the discussion.
25. From my observations this included: ball skills (e.g. throwing, catching, bouncing, kicking, foot dribbling), fitness skills (e.g. running, skipping, push-ups, sit-ups), floor hockey skills (e.g. stick holding, shooting, moving the puck with the stick, etc.), balance, and the movement of body in space.
26. In the school district where data collection occurred, the competitive and comparative logic of performativity is evident through its ‘school of choice’ philosophy. According to this policy, a student is not ‘limited’ to her/his neighbourhood school, but rather can potentially go to any one in the district. While active school ‘recruitment’ (marketing campaigns that include Open Houses, official presentations to prospective students presently attending ‘choice’ schools, brochures, and even billboards) is limited to Junior High (grades 7–9) and High School (grades 10–12), publicly posted provincially-based school performance indicators (in the form of Performance Achievement Tests [PATs] administered in grades 3, 6, 9 and 12, and Highest Level of Achievement Tests [HLATs], yearly administered reading comprehension and writing tests) have become metrics readily drawn upon (particularly by middle and upper income parents) when ‘shopping’ for schools. The observed school had greater class diversity and a higher rate of first-generation immigrant children compared to other schools; its PAT and HLAT scores were not as strong as other schools, but its QDPE status was widely promoted (through its website, in newsletters, as well as CAHPERD QDPE banners hanging from the ceiling at the school's front entrance).
27. The number inside the brackets indicates how many repetitions were required for grade one and two children.
28. For example, Nathalie tried to improve the success of TYT by changing the format: a ‘leader’ at each station who would ‘give out’ a gold/silver/bronze designation to the individuals who did the station first, second and third best. Whoever received the gold designation would become the leader at the next station (FN, 23 May 2002).