Even though I am focusing on the positive aspects of college students for the next couple of days…I can’t help but post this article from Slate, called Take Back the Prom. Last week we were talking about the issues and temptations on college campuses, but here we can move backward and look into high school, and what some parents promote. Next week I will be expecting to find an article about Jr. Highers.
The most telling section of the article:
These days, the prom signals, if anything, a regression to an immature mean. It is an orgy of consumption that entails abandoning the pretense to policing sex/booze/drugs, sustained over four previous years by parents, kids, and school administrators. High school-at least in middle-class places-occasions no end of hand-wringing by boomer parents and educators about that trifecta of perils (which boomers themselves of course sought out as teens and survived). Given their own wild pasts, parents find themselves trapped in the pose of earnest worriers, shying away from the hypocritical role of scourges. And so they lay down the law by citing the medical (not the moral) dangers of drink, etc., and their kids roll their eyes and break the rules. Come prom time, however, the compact is out the window. Thenâto cite Eichner and Hoagland-“fathers [sign] the contract for Captain Jim’s booze-cruise out of Huntington for an after-prom adventure,” while mothers make motel reservations. And kids eagerly buy into the whole business.
