Summer school for some Canadian girls means Pole 101.

The class is being offered by B.C.'s Tantra Fitness, one of a small but growing number of pole-dancing studios quietly extending their services to underage girls. The Canadian company, which operates in Vancouver and Langley, has taught students age nine and up in regular classes, and has gone as young as five years old in private lessons.

There's even talk of introducing a mommy-and-me pole class.

"I just had a baby six months ago and I'm hoping she'll start to learn pole-dancing as soon as she can," says Tammy Morris, owner of Tantra Fitness. "Kids love the pole. If anything, it's hard to get them off it because they're such naturals."

Morris, a former exotic dance champion, says she's worked hard to separate the art of stripping from the art of pole-dancing, with the focus of the latter being fitness and technique. She acknowledges that the activity is steeped in sexual history, but nonetheless, thinks any moral panic around its instruction to young people is misplaced.

"Children have no (erotic) association with the pole whatsoever," says Morris, arguing that kids would see the same apparatus at a firehall, playground or circus. "Unless you teach someone how to grind and make reference to taking off your clothing, there's nothing wrong with it."

Notably, the only Tantra classes on which there are firm age restrictions are Exotic Dance and Lap Dance, leaving open those with names such as Bellylicious, Sexy Flexy, Pussycat Dawls and Promiscuous Girls. But for anyone underage to participate, Morris says a waiver must be signed by the youth's parents.

In the case of seven-year-old Kennedy Benko, who's been taking lessons for two years — and had Morris at her last birthday party, to teach her friends some pole tricks of their own — this isn't a problem. Her mother is a fellow student at Tantra.

"It's just another form of exercise, and an awesome core workout . . . You should see (Kennedy's) little abs — they're rockin'," says Randi Moscovitch-Benko, a fitness instructor.

"I challenge anybody who has anything to say about it being a bad thing or a sexual thing or 'how can you let your child do this?' to get up on the pole and try to pull their legs over their head."

Recent history, of course, has proven people have plenty to say on the subject, which has been rolled into public debate over pornified young women.

Disney star Miley Cyrus sparked international uproar at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards after sidling up to a pole during a musical performance. The Australian Family Association has spoken out against tween dance classes that incorporate a pole, derided by a spokeswoman as a "classic phallic symbol."

And studios in both the U.K. and Scotland have come under fire this year for their youth pole lessons, which the owner of the latter company defends as "gymnastics classes" in which "it just so happens, there's a pole."

Feminist writer Jessica Wakeman calls out the exercise explanation as disingenuous.

"I clearly understand that we're not talking about a pole-dancing class for kids; it's an exercise class on a pole," says Wakeman, who writes for pop-culture site The Frisky. "But there are cultural messages here that people need to be honest about."

Wakeman, having tried pole-dancing herself, acknowledges the tremendous aerobic and strength-training benefits of the activity. Such mainstream acceptance has been gleaned, in fact, to support a recent bid for pole-dancing's recognition as an Olympic event, hearkening back to its athletic roots in the 12th-century Indian sport mallakhamb.

But even if classes are framed in an asexual way, Wakeman believes there's no escaping the pole's loaded meaning.

"You can try to accuse someone like me of making a big fuss about nothing — the argument that it's only sexual if you say it's sexual, like a three-year-old wearing lipstick or a five-year-old in high heels," says Wakeman. "But the reason people get upset is because it is inherently sexual, and you can't assume a kid won't be affected by other people's reactions to it."