At the end of eighth grade and just before starting high school, the occasion is marked by a dance at our school where the children dress up in more formal wear.  Thus, my daughter and I began a ritual that I’ve participated in many times (since I have six daughters)—the relentless hunt to find something modest to wear. 

Our journey was blessedly short this time because a friend in our stake had a small business in her basement selling modest dresses.  Her daughter, Sidney, has just been to her eighth grade dance in another school.

“How was it?” we asked and she answered, “I hated it, and you know why.” Sidney is beautiful and giggly.  A dance for her in an earlier time would have been sweet, remembered in better terms.

Yet, we did know why.  She went on to tell us that the dancing was dirty, and though, of course, she didn’t participate, it was awful to be there.  It was grinding and seductive and highly sexual, made worse because the girls were dressed so scantily—this for children who are 13 and 14.

Our older daughter, Mariah, had been to homecoming dances at our own high school and come back reporting the same thing.  In fact, once on a cruise we had been to one of the evening shows where the very talented dancers began a dance that was so raw and seductive that we got up and left.  As we hurried out, Mariah leaned over and said, “Welcome to my high school.”

With the eighth grade dance coming, Scot and I decided to call the principal to plead for standards and supervision. 

Now, our principal is a very good man, who we know shares our standards.  We have been in to talk to him before, and he has always been supportive.  So we began our conversation saying, “We know you share our view on what we are about to say.  We know you care about this,” and then we launched into descriptions of what takes place at our school dances.

He already knew it and said five years ago he had brought his wife to the homecoming dance and she said she would never come again it was so disturbing.  In fact, she said, she had felt like a peeping Tom.

He assured us, however, that it didn’t happen in the eighth grade—at least not when he had dropped in on the dances.  Not so we protested.  Our daughter, Michaela, had been to one of the after-school dances for the eighth grade and wouldn’t go to any others.

Can’t something be done about this, we asked?  He indicated that he didn’t think so.  Both of our daughters who had attended this school said that even if chaperones turn a flashlight on the offending couples and ask them to stop, they laugh at the adults and continue a couple of minutes later.

Besides, he said, he asks teachers if they will volunteer to chaperone the dances, and very few respond.  He said that these days a high school teacher has so many additional responsibilities beyond teaching, that he feels he cannot ask more of them.  They are laden down and if they enforce any kind of punishment such as suspension, they have lawsuits that come upon the school.

We pointed out that it seemed important to require teachers to take turns chaperoning these affairs, but he didn’t seem to think he could require that.  How about parents we asked, though we pointed out that in this circumstance teachers would have way more authority than parents. 

He admitted that few parents volunteered to chaperone and at the homecoming dance 2,000 kids came, and it was hard in the dark to see into the center of the room any way.

Then turn up the lights, we said.

We suggested that he require a certain percentage of the teachers to chaperone at the dances and that students be told in advance that those who participate in dirty dancing would have to leave.

“Maybe not as many kids would come to the dance if they got strict with the standards,” he said. “Would it be worth it if 700 kids came instead of 2,000?”

He said that another principal in our district had started a program against the dirty dancing and if any teen participated in it, they would be escorted from the dance.  Our principal had asked him, “Did it work?”  “No,” said the other principal. “This is a youth culture that we cannot control,” he said with real regret.

“Who’s in charge here?” I finally asked in exasperation.  “Is it the adults or the kids?”

“Are we as adults just throwing up our hands to a culture that corrodes our children, that allows school to be a sexualizing experience even for the very young?”

“Our job is to educate your children,” he answered.

“Indeed, you are in many good ways,” we acknowledged.  “You do an excellent job.  But you are educating them at these dances, as well, and that education is terrible.” 

He knew it and agreed and felt his hands were tied with overworked teachers, a youth culture that subverted their best efforts, and sheer exhaustion.  One other set of parents came in to talk to me about this, he told us, after the Dad had been a chaperone at the homecoming dance.

Just one.  With 2,000 students at that homecoming dance in the fall, just one set of parents  had mentioned their dismay—and only then after they had witnessed it first hand. 

So what to do?  We can bring it up with the PTA and see if we can stir some interest in cleaning up these dances, but there are a surprising number of parents who are not concerned about their teen’s sexuality, having been brainwashed by a culture that considers standards psychologically oppressive.  Still, I think most, if they attended a dance, would want to make a change.

We can urge our personal friends who have students at the school to call the principal and voice their complaints.  I think he would be energized if he felt he had the support of the parents and if they demanded better. 

We had been in to see him once before to complain about a scene in the school play that portrayed incest.  “Have you seen the play?” we asked.  “Yes,” he said, “and when I was out jogging the next morning, I was wondering what to do about it.  Now that you’ve come in to see me, I know what to do.”

Those in the schools need to know that we care about what is happening there and that, if they stick up for standards, they won’t find themselves out on a limb alone.  We need to let them know what we expect of them and they will have the support of our time, effort and voices if they make the quest to make school a better place.

It is extremely difficult to be an educator these days.  They are like Gulliver who is tied down with a thousand threads in the land of the Lilliputians.  Legal concerns, a youth culture gone terribly awry, a job made more demanding every year with increasing federal requirements and pressure to let everything go in the name of free expression—it goes on and on.

Most parents don’t know what is happening at school.  There will be a fair percentage of those reading this article who think that the dirty dancing I have described is only at our school, or only at a school in the East, or any place but in their local school.  Maybe that’s true, but most of our children are facing more than they tell us at school. We don’t see R-rated movies at our home, but our children tell us that at school, “Life is an R-rated movie.”

Our principal is a very good man and an excellent administrator who has thrown up his hands on the bleak morality at the school dance in part because he believes it is unsolvable.  I believe the voice and support of just a few parents would change his mind and fortify him against the very real battle he has to deal with every day. 

Is it worth it?  I could just throw up my own arms and say, “The culture is going, going, gone—and what can I do anyway?” I could just keep our daughter home from all the dances and pretend that would be enough to protect her.  But that isn’t true. School is the water she swims in and the pollution in the pond that is expressed at the dances seeps into everything at school.  The dances are, in fact, only a product of what is already happening every day.

We do everything we can to fortify her with faith and strength at home, but is that enough?  What about all of her friends whose souls are precious and who influence her as well?

I have long believed that we cannot watch our world deteriorate without speaking up and doing something.  Our speaking up gives the courage to somebody else to do the same.  Imagine a dark world where one person lights a candle and then turns to light the candle of those around him who in turn pass the light along.  A world where gradually a thousand and then ten thousand candles are lit against the dark.

Unfortunately, timidity is also contagious.  We learn that it is so politically incorrect, or embarrassing to speak up.  We may sit in place quietly rueing what is happening and staying quiet.

These days are an invitation to speak up.  May we all accept the invitation.

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