‘Doing it for themselves’: a qualitative study of children’s engagement with public health agendas in New Zealand

Abstract

In this paper, we examine how New Zealand children engage with public health agendas that seek to shape their understandings of health. We shed light on the ways children make sense of what they see, hear and come to know through public health 'work', and consider what effects this has for how they come to think of their 'selves' and relations with others. We pay attention to the way public health messages assemble, bolstered by dispositions, behaviours and ruminations expressed in schools, families and communities. Children's talk exemplifies the sheer volume of public health missives saturating their worlds and the range of media used to reach into children's lives. In many cases, children are 'doing it for themselves' in the sense that they are attempting to enact health imperatives about healthy eating, regular exercise and weight management. However, alongside the willingness of many to simply believe and enact health information, we draw attention to the capacity of some children to think through public health messages, negotiate and make sense of them in relation to their own lives. Despite the ubiquity and mantralike quality of public health messages currently directed at children we contend they are variously interpreted and embedded in children's lives. We regard the messiness and complexity of children's engagement as affirmation that a critically informed variety of public health could provide opportunities for children to come to know health as more than simply eating the right foods and running a lot.

Numbers are Just Not Enough: A Critical Analysis of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Elementary and Middle School Health Textbooks

“…We begin by focusing on the seemingly positive, or at least benign, apparent inclusion of individuals from marginalized backgrounds in the texts. We then augment and complicate the apparent embracing of diversity by discussing specific patterns in the way representations of sexuality, gender, and racial diversity in the texts may subtly communicate normative and controlling health messages (see Burrows & McCormack, 2014).…”

“…We further encourage educators and teacher educators to engage their students in assessing their chosen or assigned textbooks for racial, gender, sexual, and ability diversity (see Foster, 2012). Teachers may also further discuss with young people the messages they are deriving from health textbooks, as Burrows and McCormack (2014) have suggested, "a critically informed variety of public health could provide opportunities for children to come to know health as more than simply eating the right foods and running a lot" (p. 159).…”

“…Additionally, health texts have been found to communicate values that validate or marginalize students and encourage healthy or harmful activity (Lamb, 2010). Further, research in this field has demonstrated that while some young people resist or reinterpret the seemingly ubiquitous "health messages" they encounter in schools, others internalize these messages nearly wholesale (Burrows & McCormack, 2014).…”

Feeling refreshed

“…Burrows and her colleagues found that eight-and nine-year-olds (Year 4) and 12-and 13-year-olds (Year 8) seem to have accepted discourses associating physical activity, fitness and health with guilt and selfmonitoring of the body (Burrows et al, 2002). These children had knowledge of the messages widely publicized through popular and professional mediums 'citing eating, exercise and hygiene practices as the most important health promoting behaviours' (Burrows et al, 2009: 157), but not necessarily the capacity to think through them, and determine how to relate them to their own lives (Burrows and McCormack, 2014). Kirk and Macdonald (1998: 376) argue that 'learning is an active process in which the individual seeks out information in relation to the task at hand and the environmental conditions prevailing at any given time, and tests out her or his own capabilities with the context formed by the task and the environment'.…”

“…Burrows and her colleagues found that eight- and nine-year-olds (Year 4) and 12- and 13-year-olds (Year 8) seem to have accepted discourses associating physical activity, fitness and health with guilt and self-monitoring of the body (Burrows et al, 2002). These children had knowledge of the messages widely publicized through popular and professional mediums ‘citing eating, exercise and hygiene practices as the most important health promoting behaviours’ (Burrows et al, 2009: 157), but not necessarily the capacity to think through them, and determine how to relate them to their own lives (Burrows and McCormack, 2014).…”