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ERIC Number: EJ881877
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010-May
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1357-3322
EISSN: N/A
"Kiwi Kids Are Weet-Bix[TM] Kids"--Body Matters in Childhood
Burrows, Lisette
Sport, Education and Society, v15 n2 p235-251 May 2010
A wide array of health policies and initiatives have emerged in New Zealand recently in an attempt to resurrect a presumed "lost", adventure-loving, physically capable and non-obese Kiwi kid. Chief among these is "Mission-On"--a 67 million dollar package of 10 initiatives designed to explicitly target the eating and exercise dispositions of young people. I suggest that "Mission-On", together with the raft of other avowedly health-promoting resources being directed at young people, provides an exemplary case of body pedagogies at play both via its far-ranging formally enunciated objectives "and" due to its annexing of these to popular cultures, familial obligations and educational missives. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to examine how pedagogies, like those regularly deployed under the "Mission-On" rubric, are made sense of by young children. The key habits and dispositions children believe are needed to achieve a healthy "self" are highlighted, together with some of the ways in which young people come to assess the veracity of health knowledge. Analysis of interviews with New Zealand primary school students suggests that children engage with, enact and disrupt health imperatives in multiple ways, often linked to their differing social and spatial locations in home, school and community contexts. While their testimony points to small fissures in the "Mission-On" armoury, it is suggested that in a climate so thoroughly saturated with messages around healthy eating and exercise, it remains challenging for children to imagine themselves as the adventurous, confident, fun-loving "kiwi kids" government desires to "bring back". (Contains 1 note.)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: New Zealand
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A