Teaching Dance in Schools

[Duvet]

Having been sternly instructed by two five year olds last week that "Boys don't dance!!", is dance taught in the schools where you live, what sort and how much? Should it be on the school curriculum?

I have no school age children, so am a bit unsure in the UK, but I think if there is any dancing, its a one off event as part of a wider "world week" or "special day". My own school years are too far back to really count in this discussion, but my experience in India was that children certainly are taught their national dances and music, which I think some Eastern European countries do too (I'm very shaky here - forgive me if this is all rubbish).

So do children learn dancing in school where you live? Should they? Is it something they can pick up in their social setting, and so don't need to? Should they learn their 'national' dance over any other sort? What does it benefit them?

 

[Pleasant dancer]

I don't have school-age children, but I was taught (a very long time ago!) English country dancing in primary school. Anything else and you had to pay for it in a dance school.

However, I did a belly dance workshop for primary children recently and the teachers were enthralled by the kids dancing and told me that they had little dancing in school at the moment and how wonderful it was. Kids loved it and there were lots of spin-offs, e.g. they took photos of themselves dancing and then make paper mache figurines (we also used veils) and made drawings of themselves.

I wish there was more dancing, but probably little time in a strict curriculum these days.

 

[Shanazel]

I taught belly dance workshops for grade school children from 1995 until last spring when ONE PARENT complained at ONE SCHOOL without ever seeing the class. Based on this one random complaint, the school district banned BD even though I offered to do the program for the school board, the parents, the PTA, the Casper Star, and anyone else who wanted to see it. When I taught, I was covered from throat to ankle and with this ONE exception, teachers, kids, and participating parents and aides had a marvelous time. Yoga and dinosaur workshops were also questioned but they managed to slip by.

So I gave it a rest this year, but next fall "interpretive dance to world music" goes on my repertoire of elementary school offerings.

By the way: one of the high echool PE teachers makes a special request for me to teach several BD classes for her kids, boys and girls, each spring. They come to the rec center and we have a blast.

 

[Lara]

Are you kidding? We won't even pay arts teachers and are cutting back on Phys Ed classes, why on earth would we want to pay for *dance classes?* They might take away resources from getting kids to pass one of the standardized tests!
Grrr.
Teachers & administrators have been very interested in figuring out how to get me into classrooms, and there is an artists in residence program grant we are looking into. Generally a one off or event specific, tho. I think the music teacher still teaches a unit on square dancing for the 5th & 6th graders, but that's going to depend on what that teacher is interested in teaching, it's not in the district curriculum.