School dances are a mainstay on the social calendar for public and most private schools alike. Theoretically, they afford an opportunity for young men and young women to get to know each other, as well as to develop needed social skills that will help prepare them for life.

A new style of dancing has become increasingly popular in the past few years that is about as far from the ideal as possible! And any "skill" that it teaches is one that decent people hope young people will forget.

The style is called "freaking" or "freak dancing." It's difficult to find suitable, but tasteful, words to describe the dance in this high-standard publication, so we'll lead into the description by listing some alternative names for the dance: "dirty dancing," "the grind," "booty dancing," "the nasty" and "the wax." The last name communicates the style better than the others; it's meant to convey the bending over position a person might assume to wax the floor by hand.

If you're familiar with freaking, you're saying, "OK, what's your point?" If you're not, we need to tell you more-with apologies for the distastefulness of it. Let Meredith May of The San Francisco Chronicle tell you what she saw at Richmond High School in California earlier this year: "The disc jockey spins a record, 'Get Ur Freak On,' luring freshman Fenesha Hill to the dance floor. Mario Hernandez grabs her waist from behind, she bends forward and they thrust their hips in unison to the beat" ("Newest Teen Dance Is Freaking Out School Administrators Nationwide," June 3, 2001, on-line edition).

Freak dancing is as bad as it sounds

USA Today reports: "Boys thrust their pelvises into girls' behinds to the throbbing bass of the hip-hop anthem 'Big Pimpin.' One halter-topped girl stoops so far over the floor that she looks like a center primed to snap a football-except she's also gyrating wildly across a boy's groin" (Kathleen Parker, "Freaking: Dance Craze Is Out of Step With Decency," June 7, 2001, Tribune Media Services).

Catherine Gewertz wrote in Education Week: "A girl might be on all fours, with one boy's pelvis pressed into her face and another's pressed into her bottom. They see boys on their backs with girls spread-eagled over them; girls bent forward with boys' hips thrust in their backsides.... Articles of clothing sometimes come off" ("'Freak Dancing' Craze Generates Friction, Fears," on-line edition, February 28, 2001).

One more depiction, written by a high school newspaper reporter: "Freaking could entail a girl in front and a guy behind, a guy and girl face-to-face, two girls in the aforementioned positions, girl-guy-girl, girl-girl-guy or a whole train of happy grinders" ("You Wanna Get Freaky With Me?" by Julia Kay, March 15, 2001, edition of Silver Chips, student newspaper for Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland).

The last configuration is what the kids call "freak trains."

Why write about this? (1) We want to bring this to the attention of parents who might not be aware of the latest type of dancing that peer pressure is imposing on their children. (2) Our readers want to be kept abreast of social trends that indicate the direction our society is taking.

It's instructive to hear how teens, school administrators and parents are reacting to it. It's wildly popular among teens, while most school officials and parents seem against it. But not all teens are for it, and not all adults are opposed to it.

Dirty dancing dismissed as simply different

The adult advocates, including some teachers, school administrators and parents, argue: "It's just the latest version of dancing, a new craze. Because it's different, most adults are simply not used to or comfortable with it." They recite the fact that the waltz, the Charleston, swing, the twist and rock 'n' roll each in its time was considered risqué.

"Leave the kids alone; let them have their fun like adults had their fun when they were young," is their mantra. "The kids don't see anything wrong with it, so don't project your dirty imagination onto something that's innocent to them," they contend. Parents and school officials who criticize or forbid freak dancing are characterized as inflexible, old-fashioned or unable to admit their own adolescent frolics.

One certainly can find teens who assert that this is all true, that they are having innocent fun. A 14-year-old girl says, "It's just a way to express ourselves and have fun." Someone needs to ask her what it is that freaking expresses.

An 18-year-old female who is a high school senior agrees with that girl's sentiment: "Dancing is just a form of expression, like the way you dress. It doesn't have anything to do with sex." We hope that she doesn't express herself in dress style the way she does by freak dancing, or she is liable to be arrested.

A 16-year-old male sophomore adds this protest: "I think that what is mostly a simple little thing is being blown out of proportion. Just because we're young doesn't mean everything we do is obscene." Another 16-year-old male declares: "It's gone too far when one of the parties involved feels violated. But if no one feels violated, then there's no problem."

That's a telling point: Kids reason that what's decent depends on how they feel about it. Is that true? If so, then we might as well throw aside all standards of behavior and encourage young people to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong.

An 18-year-old girl defends her participation in freaking: "I personally don't have a problem with grinding because I don't see grinding as suggestive to anything, and it's a good way to get to know people. I don't think just because you grind with someone it means something."

It's a good way to get to know people? That young lady has a creative, albeit misshapen imagination!

Where did kids learn about freak dancing? Where did they get the idea that it's within the bounds of acceptable behavior? The consistent and repeated answer is from MTV and music videos. MTV has contributed greatly to a revolutionary change in social behavior in its 20 years of broadcasting. What are your children watching?

Some adults think like kids

School administrators are divided on whether freaking is unacceptable or just different. The assistant principal at Richmond High School says "the freaky" doesn't bother her, because her parents used to object to a pelvis-to-pelvis type of dance that she used to do, called, "the Four Corners." Excuse me? Because parents objected to an activity, does it automatically mean that their objections were wrong? If an adult objects to teen dancing styles today, does it automatically mean that adult is just not flexible enough to allow for generational differences?

They seem to find it inconceivable that kids' opinions and feelings are wrong on this issue.

This same school official said that she walks over and says, "Sorry," to a freak dancing couple "if it gets out of control." One can only guess what constitutes being out of control in her estimation.

Another school official at the same dance told the reporter that he didn't like to see teens "freak," but he wouldn't stop them either. Why not? In his opinion, they've already been taught "to be personally responsible for their sexuality" (op. cit., Meredith May).

Attempting to follow his reasoning, we assume that he means his responsibility for educating them doesn't extend beyond the classroom. That kind of approach is not a credit to the teaching profession.

Leslie Butz is the principal at George Marshall High School in Falls Church, Virginia. In her opinion, schools need to provide a safe and controlled environment "in which to experiment." She doesn't believe there should be rules against freak dancing, arguing that with each new decade comes some type of dancing that offends adults. She implies that we should allow kids' feelings to override parental judgment.

Wide gamut of responses to freak dancing

The approaches of U.S. school officials range from allowing any freak dancing that students want to do on the one hand, to an absolute ban on the other, with an assortment of varying approaches in between.

In Guam, National Honor Society members can be suspended for inappropriate behavior on the dance floor. In Wisconsin, a high school has thrown students out of dances, sent letters to their parents and threatened students with suspension.

Some school officials deal with freaking teens as if they were 5-year-olds who had pulled the cat's tail-they send them to a "time out room." A Tacoma, Washington, school attempted to define decency vs. indecency with mathematics: dancers are banned from "bending over past a 45-degree angle." Presumably, any lesser degree bend, along with the accompanying freak dancing motions, is decent.

If students want to attend a dance at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, they and their parents must sign a pledge that the students will not dress provocatively or engage in lewd dancing. The pledge reads: "Grinding, bumping, fondling, humping, licking, kicking, mashing, shoving, wallowing, disrobing, sexual kissing, freaking, jacking, and whatever a chaperone deems improper and/or indecent will not be permitted" ("How Schools Are Cracking Down," The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 28, 2001). The officials put teeth into enforcement: violators are not only removed from the dance, they are also given detention one day a week for the remainder of the school year.

How sad that these activities need to be spelled out. Bear in mind, this isn't so-called "adult entertainment" at a dance club that we're talking about-it's a high school dance.

More chaperones not the answer

Should schools simply staff dances with more chaperones? Having chaperones watch for and stop freak dancing isn't easy from several perspectives. It puts the chaperone in the position of a sort of club bouncer, enforcing a policy that's unpopular with the teens, rather then merely lending a mature presence to the activity.

Parents don't want to be "the bad guys" at their child's dance. Although they don't agree with freak dancing, many parents are unwilling to take on yet another battle with their kids.

Additionally, a dance crowd of any size would require that many chaperones be present, and they are hard to find. Further complicating the task is the fact that teens form a wall of bodies in a circle around "freakers" when chaperones approach, making it difficult for the adults to see what's going on inside the circle.

All over the United States, rather than deal with the hassle of hammering out policies that administrators and parents agree on, not to mention the hassle of attempting to enforce the policies, schools have simply canceled dances entirely.

Kids need their parents to give them direction

One Ohio high school principal understands why freaking is popular: "It's something that looks new and looks exciting" (Cindy Krantz, "Adults Freak Over Teens' Dancing," The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 29, 2001). He also understands that kids need direction, adding, "You do it until someone tells you not to."

Who should do that? Teaching and encouraging their children to do what is appropriate is a parental responsibility. Parents expect too much if they want teachers and school administrators to set and enforce standards of decency.

Certainly, parents have to be reasonable, flexible and eager for their children to have fun. Additionally, parents have to be sensitive to the fact that kids will take criticism of their participation in freak dancing personally. They may well react defensively, accusing their parents of not allowing the kids to have "their own" culture. Commonly, many kids protect whatever is in vogue as if they had given birth to it.

But the fact that freaking is debated as even a possibly acceptable activity is a decidedly sad commentary on our present world.

Is freak dancing sexual? Of course it is. Yet teens and some adults argue that it isn't, "because it doesn't lead to sex."

Deborah Roffman is a sex educator in the Baltimore area who has recently written Sex and Sensibility: The Thinking Parent's Guide to Talking Sense about Sex. She tries to convey to kids and parents that freak dancing is sexual behavior stripped of any emotional value, which makes it even more damaging.

"Sex should be private; freak dancing is public. Sex should be meaningful; freak dancing is recreational. Sex should be mutual, without pressure from either side. Freak dancing often involves subtle pressure. Sex should be part of a close, caring relationship; freak dancing is anonymous" ("Just Freakin' the Night Away," by Laura Sessions Stepp, The Washington Post, January 18, 2001, p. C04).

In her education classes, Ms. Roffman teaches students "that human sexuality is not a single act, but a continuum of feelings and experiences, that these experiences are only appropriate at certain ages and under certain conditions" ("There's No Dancing Around This Responsibility," by Susan Reimer, The Baltimore Sun, January 29, 2000, on-line edition).

That's true, but it doesn't go far enough. The only appropriate "condition" for all sexual experiences is the condition of matrimony. The only appropriate "caring relationship" is that between a husband and wife.

Straight talk about sexuality

The essence of the concept of adultery is that it is with someone other than your marriage partner, and of fornication, that it is sexual involvement between unmarried people. Ms. Roffman has said it well that this is more than a single act, that it is a continuum of feelings and experiences. Put her advice with what God reveals, and you have a full understanding of appropriate conduct, as well as an adequate guide for deciding whether freak dancing is indecent.

Advising young men on their behavior, the apostle Paul wrote: "Run from anything that gives you the evil thoughts that young men often have, but stay close to anything that makes you want to do right" (2 Timothy 2:22, The Living Bible Paraphrase). The New Jerusalem Bible adds additional perspective: "Turn away from the passions of youth, concentrate on uprightness, faith, love and peace, in union with all those who call on the Lord with a pure heart."

And to all, girls and boys, women and men alike, God's Word says, "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry" (Colossians 3:5, NIV).

Do we remember what idolatry is? It's allowing or causing anyone or anything to take the place of God. Since God made sexuality and provided clear regulations for human conduct, anyone who argues otherwise or buys a contrary argument is in double violation of the eternal law of human conduct. He commits idolatry, as well as sexual sin.

Too often parents and preachers emphasize the "don'ts" and may be guilty of conveying to youths the idea that God's way might be summarized as the Ten Don'ts. Actually, it's, "don't do this so that you will be able to enjoy the full benefit of that." Or, in terms of freak dancing and the like, God says, "Don't engage in activities that are overtly sexual with someone who's not your marriage partner, so that you will be able to enjoy the full benefit of sexuality the way I designed it for you." WNP