ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a critical examination of some of the key tensions, arguments and problems that arise when primary Physical Education (PE) and contemporary notions of health become bedfellows. It outlines the crucial ideologies and discourses of health that frame primary PE, with a particular focus on the role of 'new public health', 'healthism', and the attempt to make individuals responsible for their own health. The chapter also provides that a closer interrogation of the childhood obesity 'crisis' and the ways in which PE is positioned as both a cause of and solution to obesity. Lisette Burrows and Jan Wright express concern "that the identities constructed for children within contemporary panics around childhood obesity especially, are 'dangerous' ones". The chapter highlights the ways in which the relationship between primary PE and health may actually, albeit unintentionally, be 'unhealthy' for some children and the field of primary PE.
