It's A Winter Formal, Not A Winter Foreplay!

1) This article is Betsy Hart's opinion and response to the dance moves performed at high school dances. Her opinion is obviously that she is opposed to the bumping and grinding that goes on at these dances. Her response is to call out parents and ask why they will "protect their children every second early on and then abandon them to real dangers later on." She discusses what different parents saw chaperoning dances.



2) Hart's main point in this article is that a parent's response to his/her child's school dance should be the same as their response when they first started raising them. She says parents should protect their children, whether their children like it or not. She uses examples such as parents recollections of dances to support the point that what goes on in these dances is actually sexually dangerous. Since what happens is sexually dangerous, parents should be protecting their children not leaving them to "play" unattended.



3) I agree with her point. What goes on at these dances can only harm the individual. Name one way that bumping and grinding will help someone? I do not think that teens getting pregnant because they got aroused at a dance is helpful in the least. Now, I know that sounds extreme, but is it really out of the realm of possibilities? After all, once people start down the slippery slope, which grinding is a part of, it becomes tougher and tougher to stop. I say do not let them grind. By doing this, school's can rest assured that they are not responsible for little Suzy getting pregnant.



4) Hart uses many rhetorical questions. The one that I found to be the most powerful was, "If the $400 dress girl had been sexually assaulted in the parking lot after the festivities because the dance wasn't a dud, would mom be happy, or suing the school?" I think this one is the most powerful because it shows the consequences of bad parenting. By letting kids do whatever they want at these dances negative consequences such as rape and assault may happen. Would any mom be happy if her little girl was raped at a dance? No, she would be suing that school and pulling her girl out of it. This is why that question is so great. It exposes bad parenting. It shows that we put our children into this position and then when the unthinkable happens, we get mad at the school when it is really our fault. One of two things needs to happen. Either parents need to shut up and stop yelling at the school for their children getting raped at a dance they allowed them to attend, or they need to speak up and take action to stop this "foreplay" on the dance floor.