Can Public Schools Reduce the Number of Fat Kids in America?

Public schools have been drafted again and again to fight national problems (e.,g., racial segregation, teenage pregnancy, cigarette smoking, drinking alcohol, and drug use). Americans believe that schools must be part of any solution to social problems. This idea is deeply embedded in the American psyche and schooling practices. It has led to educators adopting actual courses and curriculum materials to remedy national social problems. For example, three-fourths of U.S. schools have programs that discourage cigarette smoking and drinking alcohol. Now, consider obesity. Imagine civic, business, and foundation leaders so worried about the social and individual costs of health problems that overweight children would face as adults that they wanted schools to fight a war on fat. Imagine, further, that these policy elites, create a popular crusade against overweight children, and wanted to solve the problem now. Would they copy Singapore? Beginning in the early 1990s, Singapore began an…