School in France is acknowledged, among other things, as a privileged place for the education and promotion of Health, owing to specific interaction between health, academic achievement and education in general. School is also the ideal place to reach a given age group on a massive scale. Health education is not strictly speaking a school subject in the French education system. There is no such subject on its own right. To sum up, health education is only being dealt with by a limited number of teachers, prepared to integrate it into their classes and to involve themselves in common projects. However, Coppé and Schoonbroodt (1992) make it clear that health education cannot be something sporadic, isolated or taken out of the general context of the student’s curriculum. They assert that integrating health education into the curriculum implies having motivated and well-trained teachers, and everybody’s commitment and cooperation. Manidi and Dafflon-Arvanitou (2000) also explain that, in that respect, initiatives should be taken at school in a spirit of partnership, with the nurse, the teachers and the outside contributors (Health Insurance and other specialists), and with the parents’ backing. So each one may call on his own sphere of action to implement a complete interdisciplinary educational project. PE has always been concerned with health education. According to Perrin (2000), PE ‘helps to develop the correct usage of oneself to enjoy full use of one’s body’ and for Tribalat (2005) ‘to create a habitus of positive health’. The idea of PE and Health goes beyond the usual biomedical sphere. Health education is not the prerogative of a specific subject at school. Each teacher is concerned. The objective of this work was to become acquainted with the PE teachers’ position on this particular topic, and especially with the methods used, and also with the collaboration between teachers to achieve interdisciplinary projects.

Methodology As far as methodology is concerned, we favoured semi-directive interviews in order to collect their ideas, their initiatives and their intentions. We wanted them to express their own views with their own words. 21 persons were interviewed for about 45 or 55 minutes. The interviews were conducted in the secondary schools where the PE teachers worked.

The interviewees answered that the PE teacher was assuredly in the best position to take on Health Education. However, a great deal of teachers attest that it is rather difficult to set up interdisciplinary projects. A lot of factors should be taken into account: lack of time, unadapted curriculums, limited material and financial resources, the fear that health education might encroach on the basic school subjects… and unfortunately narrow-mindedness. This survey reveals how difficult it can be for some teachers to collaborate. Others acknowledged that most teachers did not want to get involved because they were not interested in it or because they did not want to change their work habits or to devote all their time on health education. Those who really wanted to educate young people about health feel rather lonely now in the face of such a social challenge.