Pulled into the culture wars

A parent’s complaint about sexually explicit rap lyrics played at a middle school dance has prompted a review of the type of music played at such events, Augusta County’s top school administrator said Monday.

Superintendent Gary McQuain said the difficulty will come when judging “what is offensive to people. It’s much more difficult to say, ‘We are not going to do rap music.’ ”

McQuain said he will review the issue with staff and ultimately the school board as a result of the complaint stemming from an afterschool dance Friday at Stuarts Draft Middle School.

Robin Horton, of Waynesboro, the parent who e-mailed the complaint to McQuain, said she will not be satisfied until action is taken.

“I want to see something done. I want it in writing and to keep it from happening again,” she said.

Policing music played at school functions can be difficult, McQuain said. Every type of music can offend people, he said.

The flap highlights the need for parents to counsel their children about sexually explicit lyrics, and also about the social pressures that may result from hearing such music, said Ronald Ferguson, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Horton, the mother of a 12-year-old Stuarts Draft Middle student, heard the music when picking up her daughter at a dance Friday. Among the songs were two by popular rap singer Flo Rida: “Low” and “Right Round.” The albums containing those songs carry parental advisory warning labels.

McQuain said Stuarts Draft Middle School Principal Scott Musick planned to meet with Horton and the student’s father. Horton said she “didn’t want niceties and excuses. I expect action.”

Musick said the songs played at the event were radio-edited, meaning that profanity in them was removed. He said the music played at the afterschool programs every six weeks is mainstream music that kids listen to. He said adults chaperone the events, and the dance moves are both patterned and spontaneous.

But there’s more to problems with the lyrics than profanities, critics say.

“Right Round,” a No. 1 hit, was highlighted on a recent edition of ABC’s “Good Morning America” as an example of popular music containing “hidden” vulgarities, a reference to the slang that sometimes conceals the lyrics’ literal meaning.

It’s “pretty clearly an oral sex song,” RollingStone.com Deputy Editor Caryn Ganz told “Good Morning America.” RollingStone.com is the Web site for the popular magazine.

School administrators strive to be sensitive to concerns about lyrics in songs like “Right Round,” Waynesboro Schools Superintendent Robin Crowder said. When they hear complaints, Crowder said, administrators usually turn off the music.

But Harvard’s Ferguson contended that’s not the key, but rather parents having a conversation with young people about sexuality.

“Only a certain amount of shielding is possible,” Ferguson said. It’s important for parents to realize “your children are exposed, and to counsel them to be smart.”

That includes advising young people not to “assume that everyone is doing it because it’s in the music. And that you are not square because you refuse to perform oral sex.” He said it is important for kids to learn peer resistance skills.

Still, the messages in popular music pose real hazards, said Colleen Raezler of the Culture and Media Institute, a conservative media watchdog group based in Alexandria.

Administrators and parents, she said, “have to be wary of the musical preferences of tweens and teens. Many of today’s most popular songs contain not-so-hidden sexual messages that depict men as studs and women as little more than sex objects while ignoring the risks and responsibilities that go along with sex.”

Raezler cited a 2003 study that found 16 percent of high school students ranked music among the top three sources of moral guidance. A 2006 study published in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, reported “that adolescents who listen to music with degrading sexual lyrics were more likely to initiate sexual intercourse and engage in other sexual behavior.”

“When tweens and teens hear songs like Flo Rida’s ‘Right Round,’ ” Raezler said, “they receive the message that this is normal, acceptable behavior.”