I had same problem and worked around it by styling the anchor text
.current_page_item a {
font-weight: bold;
}
.current_page_item ul a {
font-weight: normal;
}
Maybe this approach might help you.
I’m a php newbie too, but your bit of code saved me a lot of time trying to work out how to do different headers. Thanks!
When I read http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages it all made sense. Thanks FruitFly.
I was having the same problem with the FastTrack theme and traced it to the way its sidebar.php outputs the heading and list for pages:
1. Open sidebar.php
2. Find:
<?php wp_list_pages('title_li=<h2>' . __('Pages') . '</h2>' ); ?>
3. Replace with
<h2>Pages</h2>
<ul><?php wp_list_pages('title_li=' ); ?></ul>
A couple of months overdue, but hope this helps you out.