Health, (body) image, and primary schooling: ‘Why do they have to be a certain weight?’

This paper examines the findings from part of a larger project concerned with well-being and outdoor pedagogies. It considers data collected from interviews with primary teachers of 8- to 9-year-old pupils, who had recently attended a three-day residential at an outdoor education centre and these children's parents. It draws upon aspects of the data, which refer to ‘health related education’, body image and teachers’ and parents’ perceptions. The data suggests that not only are notions of healthy life-style and healthy eating embedded in the primary school's curriculum and in teachers’ professional consciousness, but also parents are imbued with body discourses conveyed through the popular media. For the most part, whilst the teachers express and respond to policy and popular discourses on health and body image largely uncritically, some parents are seen to question dominant understandings of health and body size for their children.