First of all, many students find rallies boring and phony, and the Song Team focuses the attention of at least one gender on the basketball court rather than on causing disturbances.
However, this performance went overboard.
Moves like we saw at the Aloha Rally are not allowed at normal school dances or even in most socially acceptable settings.
This is a high school rally, not the latest music video, and when the Song Team spends most of the routine bent over, while it may illicit (sic--and perhaps a Freudian slip) catcalls from the audience, it is simply not appropriate.
I should just keep on quoting, but then you wouldn't go read the original column. The three closing paragraphs reach a thunderous crescendo.
6 comments:
I seldom go to pep rallies. When I do I find myself alternately appalled and fascinated by how cheer squads and drill teams manage to move like strippers without pole all the while having beaming parents and administrators along the sidelines. I have discussed this with my daughter, who is a dancer and dance instructor. Some of the moves are directly from hiphop videos which in itself is somewhat ironic given the social status of the students involved. Much of the choreography is produced by big business cheer and drill clinics that market their hoochy-koochy dance lines at summer camps for these groups. While I understand the need to do some moves in a percussive manner, many of the sponsors are so clueless that they allow moves that are just plain nasty. Some of the blame also goes for the selection of uniforms. Not all tops must be midriffs, not all dance pants must be low rise. Yet when you allow the students and parents to pick the uniforms, more often than not, this is what you will end up with. As long as parents are content to have their daughters be virtual harems for the student body, nothing will change.
Well said, Ellen K!
I've seen the littlest cheerleaders doing some of those moves where they grab their bum and shake it around - and people think it's adorable. When I ventured to watch one of those "morning shows" one time, they had the group Big & Rich as guests. They sung songs with people off the street gathered around in droves. Everyone - from grandma's to daddies to what looked like 6 and 7 y/o kids were singing the words to "Save a horse, ride a cowboy".
No, I don't think the kids knew what they were singing...but someday they will. They are being conditioned to think that's the way you can talk and act in society. (Where's Miss Manners when you need her?)
A lot of parents these days are...idiots. They dress their girls in shorts with "Juicy" across the rear and let them go to all these "cheer camps" like Ellen mentioned, and then wonder what went wrong when something bad happens to their daughter.
The young man that wrote that article is the *exception* to the rule.
We have three girls. I don't envy us over the next few years!
This is a big problem! I would imagine that just about every high school in America is has this issue, I know my high school does.
All of my male teacher friends feel the same way I do: completely uncomfortable watching.
Morality seems to have gone the way of chalk and erasers.
I think we have the same issue at our school. The drill team, which always does the semi-traditional Kilgore Rangerettes-type routines for the football halftime show (where more of the public sees them), really raunches it up for the student body during pep rallies.
It even carries over to the cheerleaders, who now have their own routine that includes many of the same types of moves with jumps and lifts added on at the end.
What it comes down to, is that drill teams have become competitive dance teams, whose models are what they see on music videos.
I agreed to help a friend in distress by taking over as sponsor of a cheerleading squad a few years ago at my suburban high school. The girls nearly mutinied (with several parents' assistance)because I refused to allow them to choreograph a very suggestive dance to some song urging that they "shake their money-maker." When I objected that the line - and the bump-and-grind these ninth graders wanted to do - was tantamount to glorifying prostitution one parent said my refusal was evidence that I suffered from "serious messed-up issues about sex."
When did our society decide adults are not responsible for protecting young people from inexperience and poor judgment?
you might want to consider reposting this; now that it's made Fox News: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Drl5wHHLEY
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