It's Homecoming week here in Scottsbluff, so that means several things. Parade... Theme Days at school... The big football game... and the Homecoming Dance...
In light of that timing, I found an interesting article from Jonathan McKee, a youth ministry leader/speaker who was invited to chaperon a recent high school dance. If you're a parent of a high school student, you need to go read the article. This is not coming from someone who wants to make kids miserable or vilify them in their pubescent impropriety, but from a dad who has given his life to helping the next generation. He's worked with teens for years and was caught a little off guard by what he saw.
He asks, "How stupid are we?"
'We' being the adults who have been charged with raising the next generation. 'We' being the ones that tell DJ's to cut out the "bad words", but totally disregard the message of the music. (Like we don't realize how nasty we can be with nice, pretty words.) 'We' who send the kids out to dance to songs telling them to drink it up, "get low", and "back it up" while we tell them don't drink, or "get low", and only dance face to face with 4 inches between you.
I'm not suggesting that every school dance is as much of a 'sex with nice clothes on' party as the one McKee writes about, but check out the article and please consider what your sons and daughters will be doing before you send them out the door Saturday night. Help them make good choices.
My students will hate that I suggest this, but... parents - volunteer to chaperon. It's not about spying on your kid or catching them doing something you don't want them to do. It's about helping a generation understand that despite what pop culture thinks of them, they're not sex objects and they can learn to relate with each other without acting like them.
:::some further reading suggestions:::
In the Dark: A Sobering Look into a Public High School Dance (one more link to the article)
McKee's blog
The Source4Parents
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