School dances, or any kind of school-organized activity that involves a “dance,” has changed from being the school event that everyone’s looking forward to attending. School dances over the last few years of new students and school years have rapidly declined in popularity. Why is this century-old tradition been largely ignored by the new generation of students?
Although many may argue that specific school “dance” events, such as prom for high school students, are still very popular and receive significant attention and participation towards the event, other annual school dances are often ignored by many students nowadays. As a high school student, events like homecoming and winter dances have never really caught my eye and given me a good reason to go. I’m not the only one; a few years ago at Hillcrest High School a dance was cancelled because only 10 students purchased tickets, Every single time I hear about a school dance that went on at our school, most of my peers say it was “boring” and wasn’t worth the hype.
On the other hand, Hillcrest senior Nathan Hillman mentioned that he does not feel like school dances have fallen off everywhere, but maybe in only specific schools such as Hillcrest. Nathan states that he’s been to multiple school dances previously at a different school but has never found anything especially appealing about attending a school dance at Hillcrest High School. Additionally, he states that whenever hearing about a school dance at Hillcrest high school, it’s never anything “hyped” or “excited to be about”, hinting at low participation levels.
Furthermore, I asked Mrs. Broome, a former Hillcrest High School student and current teacher at Hillcrest, what her opinions are on the school dances in general and at Hillcrest specifically, and she had a similar reply to Nathan. She stated that she did attend prom and homecoming dances during her high school years, and it was full with participation and people actually attending the events – dancing to different kinds of music and having a good time overall. However, she claims that she does notice that Hillcrest’s students are exponentially less active in participation in these events nowadays, but still thinks that school dances are still a big deal at many other schools such as HF.
So, why is it that students at Hillcrest are less likely to participate in these social events? Is the school not doing enough to “hype up” the events? Or may it be the fact that students are becoming more accustomed to socializing with technology especially after the pandemic?
I personally believe high school administrators should recognize the importance of changing trends for new generations of students and come up with new ways to catch the attention of a generation with an already low attention span, which would ultimately attain hype for the event and gain more popularity for the events overall. We must find new ways to get students more involved with their schools and attend events held after school hours, because without these events, what even is high school?
The previous notion of high school being a “1900s” style concept, like what we perceive high school life is from classic movies or shows, is slowly fading away, quickly being buried by the lack of interests of students within our own communities.
