EDUCATION MATTERS:What's the deal with freaking?

In a class discussion, one of my young gentlemen blurted out, "What's the big freaking deal … about freaking?"

He was referring, in his own unique fashion, to the latest dirty-dance craze to sweep through our youth culture. It's freaking, or booty dancing, or grinding, or jacking, or "doin' the nasty."

Kids are doing it whenever and wherever dancing enters the picture, including school dances and proms. I saw a relatively tame version of this three years ago and, based on recent descriptions, see that it has evolved (or degraded further, depending on one's perspective). Modesty (and, I imagine, Glendale News-Press censors) prevent me from describing the moves in freaking detail. Suffice it to say that it involves a lot of bumping and grinding and churning and gyrating and generally simulating a variety of sex acts.

There is "serious freaking" and "light freaking," the kids tell me — the distinction being on how sexually blatant are the moves. Some administrators have described it as "a dance-floor sexual free-for-all," that is "degrading and even sexually abusive."

Official reaction has included: Banning dancers at school functions from bending over past a 45-degree angle, requiring them to face each other (Don't ask), attaching warning labels to prom tickets ("If you freak you'll be tossed out") using flashlights to ensure a proper space between dancers, and in several cases, canceling all high-school dances. I talked to my kids about this and most of them see it as much ado about nothing, which is how teenagers have been reacting to adult finger-wagging since the beginning of time.

You might be interested in some of their candid comments:

"They're not actually having sex, so why is everyone getting so excited?"

"What's the problem? We like to move to music." (I had to ask whether it was an inner rhythm they were obeying or the stylings of MTV, which has made an "art" of merging music and sex and managed to debase both.)

"Telling us how to dance stifles our freedom of expression." (Ah, now here was a student who had caught something of the spirit of the Constitution — but I hastened to remind her that all freedoms and all rights have limits. The question was, had they exceeded theirs?)

"So then the Hokey Pokey should be banned too?" (As in, "You put your right hip in and you shake it all about.")