© Eric Gevaert - Fotolia.com
October 22, 2009
The Issue: Some high schools have been cracking down on "freak dancing", where dancers grind against each other on the dance floor. As we work on this story, we welcome your stories and opinions: Where's the line between freedom of expression and inappropriate behavior? Is this an issue at your local high school? Does your school have a policy, and how is it working? Email sheila@tcdailyplanet.net, or click below and leave a comment.
What's at stake? Parents and teacher groups say that freak dancing is inappropriate behavior for a school, and measures need to be taken to ensure decorum at school functions. Others say efforts that "come from the top" (i.e.- dictated by parent teacher groups) will never work, because they aren't taken seriously. Some teens say they are just expressing themselves, and the fretting of parents over the dance styles of their children is a story that gets repeated almost every generation.
What do we know so far? Some schools, such as Prior Lake, have taken measuressuch as posting dancing rules on an announcement screen, forbidding this kind of behavior, and are looking into other ways to prevent students from "having sex with their clothes on" at proms, homecomings, and other social dances.
Al Tompkins from Poynter Online outlines the national issue here. Tompkins sharesthis informative video about what freak dancing looks like.
