What do you think?

Send your opinions to: Children's Express News Bureau, The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, P.O. Box 3000, Indianapolis, Ind. 46206. You also may call us at (317) 921-4125 and leave a message.

A lot of music seems geared for kids because they're the ones who listen to it. According to a 1988 article in Adolescence magazine, the average child listens to 10,500 hours of rock music from seventh through 12th grades.

The New York Bureau of Children's Express recently talked with a group of kids in that city about the music they hear and whether it influences the way kids think about sex and violence:

ALEX BERKE, 9: Music doesn't really promote sex. I don't think most kids would be like, "Oh, I just heard this 10-year-old talking about having sex, so I'm gonna go out and do it." Most kids have more common sense than that. If they don't, it's sort of sad.

JESSICA LEVINSON, 13: Music promotes things like violence and drugs more than sex. Like some rap artists make it seem cool to smoke weed. I know a lot of kids in my school look up to these rap artists as role models.

DAVID BOYD, 11: Rap music gives an unpositive message overall because the rappers talk bad about women - say their whores and everything. Some of it offends me because they talk about white people not having any power.

TERENCE MINERBROOK, 11: Singers like Ice Cube and Snoop Doggy Dogg say that white men's privates are usually smaller than black men's, which is stupid and kind of discriminatory. It sends out the message that white people aren't as good as black people.

CHRISTINA TALIAFERROW, 12: Some rap does have positive messages. Salt-N- Pepa, they talk about AIDS and stuff like that.

ELIZABETH DALEY, 10: At the end of the tape, Salt-N-Pepa have a skit about AIDS, and I think that's good. That's one of the good things that comes out of people being so open about sex.

ALEX: Music now is much more explicit. If you look at the Beatles, even when they sang about sex, it wasn't explicit.

JESSICA: Yeah. They were talking about Lucy in the sky with diamonds and yellow submarines, but today people are talking about sticking a needle up your arm.

CHRISTINA: Music changes over the years and it changes because the people who make it want kids to listen to it. Kids today like music with curses and all the radio beeps over the words.

JESSICA: There was this kid in my school listening to this song with one section where every word was a curse, and all day he kept rewinding to that part and listening to it, like, "Oh cool."

TERENCE: I don't think they should ban records with all the curses, but they should take them and put them in certain kinds of stores, so if you like the music you can find it.

CHRISTINA: If you had a rating or made the music illegal, kids would just want to listen to it more. Some kids are stubborn and they want to be bad, or do something to be defiant of their parents and the laws.

JESSICA: Well, I don't know if that's true because a lot of songs aren't played on the radio and they still sell a lot of tapes. If you hate the gonna start listening to it just because it's banned.

DAVID: Rappers should maybe find another way to say what they want to say to make it less offensive.

TERENCE: If a rap singer or some singer who makes $5 million like Snoop Doggy Dogg says, "I think that we should stop making this music and try to be the next president," or something, people would probably do it because they look up to him and they would do anything he says.

CHRISTINA: You should have common sense enough to realize that it's just words, and they're singing the words because they want to make money. It's not that they're telling you to do this or that, they're just singing.

ELIZABETH: Exactly. You can't tell anyone to do anything. If they go out and do something, it's not 'cause they're listening to the music, but because it was something they wanted to do and they can use the music as a cover-up if they get into trouble.

JESSICA: A lot of the times on the radio you hear guys singing and putting down women, but the women, they put down the men and call them names, too.

DAVID: Singers put down women more today, and when I hear it I feel like killing them because they're talking about all women, your moms, your grandmas. Maybe, if they were talking about Lorena Bobbitt or Amy Fisher, I wouldn't care, but when rappers put down all women it makes me mad.

TERENCE: I think they call women "tricks" or "hos" probably because they have whores on the streets in their neighborhood and that's what they see, so they think that's the only thing a lady's good for.

CHRISTINA: They have all these names of women, and the only things they ever call men are dogs. Most songs are sexist, they refer to girls as bitches and as their property. No girl is anyone's property, except her own and maybe her mother's.