A little over a year ago, I wrote about the "grinding" controversy at our local public high school. By now, you'd think Iowa's school administrators would have moved on from policing how kids dance to other things, like how to raise their academic standards or maybe how to keep kids from skipping class.
This has not happened. In fact, this week administrators from the largest high school in the state, West Des Moines Valley, announced a strict new 'no-grinding' policy for their school dances. The principal is quoted as saying, "Students should face their dancing partners, and any dancing that involves groping, grinding, or public displays of affection will result in those students geing asked to leave the dance." (Groping?) Here again, dance attendees must sign a pledge that they will adhere to the policy.
One year later, and this dirty dancing debate is funnier/dumber than ever! Like I said the last time this came up, it's really just one level removed from the movie Footloose, which ironically was made into a sequel just last year. The only difference is, this is about the kind of dancing, rather than dancing altogether.
Strip this thing down and what do you got? You've got school administrators wasting valuable taxpayer time and money trying to be surrogate parents for a bunch of hormonal teenagers, most of whom already spend hours away from school watching TV or playing video games that are far more sexually suggestive or violent than 'grinding' ever will be.
I get that schools expect appropriate behavior at school functions. What I don't get, and never will, is how school officials think they are qualified to act as a moral compass, as if they were the students' parents.
My solution? Screen the famous 'Evolution of Dance' web video for the student body and splice in some 'grinding' footage. If it looks silly on the internet, maybe kids won't want to do it anymore!
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