Tallahassee principal ousted after complaints about Michelangelo's 'David' in art lesson

[Nevilledog]

https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/education/2023/03/23/tallahassee-classical-principal-out-after-complaints-about-david-statue-lesson/70039104007/

No paywall
https://archive.is/YME23

*snip*

Tallahassee Classical, a Hillsdale College curriculum school, is required to teach about Renaissance art in sixth grade.

But three parents complained that the lesson’s content, which included learning about Michelangelo’s sculpture, “David,” upset their children.

Michelangelo, considered one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, created "David" between the years of 1501 and 1504 during the height of the cultural movement. The sculpture is a symbol of the strength and independence of the Florentines, according to the Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze, the museum which displays the work of art.

Out of the three parents, two said they wished they had been notified of the lesson beforehand, and the other parent complained the lesson was pornographic, Carrasquilla said.

*snip*


Fascist snowflakes

[Chainfire]

1. Well, bless their hearts...

[malaise]

2. THINGS ARe really fucked up when humans are

afraid of their own nakedness.

Jebus fucking Krist. I give up.

[James48]

4. There you go!

“Tallahassee Classical, a Hillsdale College curriculum school…”


Once again those right-wing groomers are showing naked men in class!!!

[underpants]

14. Oh brother. Hillsdale is into charter schools?

I didn’t know that.

[mopinko]

16. probably just publish curricula.

lotsa money in homeschool curricula.

[James48]

19. Yes.

Horribly. Hillsdale is now creating “Classical Academy’s” around the country , using ultra-right wing texts and education plans. They provide a turn-key solution of right-wing educatiobb my Al materials and sell them as Charter schools in a box, ready to go.

[aggiesal]

29. Quick Question ...

If all the Public Schools turn into Charter Schools, doesn't that just make all the Charter Schools, Public Schools with a profit motive?
Also Charter Schools tend to implement Meritocracies, because they don't have to accept low performing students and can decline handicap students. I know they are not suppose to decline these types of students, but they do all the time.

Time to get rid of Charter Schools.

[Walleye]

5. I wish they would take an actual interest in their children's learning.

Maybe by reading to them before they start school, teaching them numbers and colors, vocabulary and grammar. It’s not just the teacher’s job to educate their children. If the parents did their job, education wouldn’t be in such bad shape

[albacore]

17. What happens if the parents aren't smart enough to do their job??

Or they don't care?

Schools are expected to not only teach the kids, but also to make up for the deficits at home.

An impossible task to begin with, and then add shootings and nutballs trying to control the curriculum, effects of poverty, drugs, constant change in administration, political interference...
The list is long.

I taught high school for 30 years. Wonderful years. I couldn't/wouldn't teach today. At all.

[flashman13]

34. My Ex was an elementary school teacher. She told me about children arriving in her classes

that didn't know how to tie their shoelaces and did not know how to use silverware. That is some serious parental neglect.

She also got into serious trouble when she polled her students about what sort of magazines and books were in their homes. A surprising number said none. Others said only the bible. A number of parents were offended by her poll. Apparently they saw the question reflected poorly on their parenting. As an aside: if kids don't get truthful sex education at school they are going to get warped education from the internet and their peers. She was forbidden by school administration from conducting such polls. That's the way to support your staff. NOT!

[albacore]

49. All the talk like this reminds me of the opening scene from the movie "Idiocracy".

Full disclosure: I taught yuppie larvae in a rich suburban district. Taught Honors and AP classes for the last 10 years. I do NOT set myself up as any kind of expert on being in the trenches of education. My biggest problem was grade-grubbers and kids who came in early to talk about yesterday's class before I even had my coffee.

[Aristus]

6. Didn't they fashion a snap-on fig leaf to place on David if any museum visitors

were worried about his 'indelicate' state of undress?

[Ocelot II]

7. I can imagine sixth graders giggling about David being *naked*, but

since when did nakedness become pornography?

[SharonClark]

11. Agree.

Next they’ll require privacy stalls in all restrooms, locker rooms, and gyms so men aren’t exposed to all that nakedness.

[ripcord]

8. Talk about life imitating art

From The Simpsons episode David

Helen: Get dressed, Marge. You've got to lead our protest against this abomination! (Shows Marge a newspaper with the Statue of David on the cover)

Marge: Hmm, but that's Michelangelo's David. It's a masterpiece.

Helen: (Gasps) It's filth! It graphically portrays parts of the human body which, practical as they may be, are evil.

Marge: But I like that statue.

Maude: (Gasps) I told you she was soft on full frontal nudity.


Kent Brockman: Is it a masterpiece? Or just some guy with his pants down?

[Behind the Aegis]

45. and thus...

[Botany]

9. Putin was very successful in getting America to dumb itself down by installing Trump

Michelangelo’s sculpture, “David,” is now woke?



Christo Fascist mother fuckers.

[SharonClark]

10. Not surprising. Dictator DeSantis has made

Florida a true shit-hole state.

[TeamProg]

12. Floriduh grads are gong to have a difficult life in the real world. n/t

[underpants]

13. Good grief.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

15. Such a beautiful work of art.

If parents, especially in Floriduh, are upset about the displaying of the human body in art, then go back to the caves they have been living in.

[Earth-shine]

18. If it were porn, David's dick would be bigger.

It's the perfection of the proportions that make it art.

[cynical_idealist]

44. Ha Ha :}

[haele]

46. Most pictures you see are full on. He looks rather small, however...

I've been told by a short friend who actually saw the statue from both a side angle and slightly below, that David can be considered pretty normal sized down there.

Haele

[Biophilic]

20. Good grief, what have we come to? It just gets weirder and weirder.

Each time I think, this has to be the bottom, they step another rung down. Michelangelo's David is pornographic?

[MayReasonRule]

21. "King David" - Genocidal Murdering Abrahamic Nationalist - "A Man After God's Own Heart" - Indeed...

Michelangelo's "David" is an exquisite rendition of a delusional genocidal murderer.

I give great honor to the work itself. It is invaluable, it's craft is sheer genius reflective of Michelangelo himself.

I give no honor to "David", any more than I give honor to the murderous fascists of the traitorous confederate seditionists.
However finely crafted the confederate general's statutes may be, it does not negate the tragically malicious depravity of the subjects they were created to "honor"

The work itself is not pornographic.
It's the subject of the work that is depraved and undeserving of honor.
It is good to study so as to reveal that which was not yet understood, so that it may be better understood.

Mythology reveals and informs. The study of Renaissance art examines mythology in the context of it's time. This is as it should be.

May reason rule.

[Marcuse]

23. Sending his loyal soldier on a suicide mission just so he could bang his wife was very trumpy indeed

[MayReasonRule]

36. Yep. Those Shoes Fit!

[ananda]

22. An object lesson for not giving parents so much power.

Sheesh

[lindysalsagal]

24. Statues of naked people on practically every corner of the streets of major european cities

You literally can't go anywhere outside your hotel room if you need to keep the naked body out of your sights.

[txwhitedove]

39. Yes indeed, and don't dare take kids to the Louvre.

[ffr]

40. +1

And their streets are almost always clean of trash and litter.

Whereas in Tallahassee, I'd bet you can find trash and litter everywhere, but you won't find outdoor naked statues. They choose to live in filth, rather than appreciate art.

Oh dear, Riply's Believe it or Not in St. Augustine, FL.
19 San Marco Ave, St. Augustine, FL 32084

[DFW]

42. If it means less Florida Republicans coming over here, I look at that as a consolation prize.

Most Americans that come here are actually well-behaved, if a little arrogant. For example, they come up to juat anyone and start speaking English to them without asking if the person they are addressing even knows enough English to have a conversation. If it's in a hotel or an airport, I can understand, but just anywhere on the street is just not cool. Germany are pretty bad about that, too, actually. I always answer in the language of the country I'm in if someone is arrogant enough to start speaking a foreign (for the location) language without even asking if I understand them. After all, if someone walks into a store in Tallahassee and immediately starts addressing the staff in German, chances are it won't get anyone involved very far.

[flashman13]

25. And the Repugs call liberals snowflakes.

Clearly the Repugs are scared of everything including their own shadow. The irony here is that this charter school features a Hillsdale College curriculum which has already sanitized history and culture. Now the Know Nothings want to sanitize the sanitizers. Go figure.

[flying_wahini]

26. But they have no problem showing women's breasts. Right?

Only men’s penis’s. It’s So crazy they are so afraid of a suggestion of sex in any form.

[Pinback]

27. Here's the "safe" version:

[Fla Dem]

28. Please do not let them around any male dogs, horses, etc. They will be damaged for life.

[txwhitedove]

35. Ha, that reminds me when several men were in grandpa's milk barn helping a cow with

a difficult birth. Little me about 11 yrs was NOT allowed to watch. Or when the angry horney stallion chased me out of the field away from his target mare. That's how kids learn.

[Brenda]

30. Some nuts are more nutty than others

https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=51869789&itype=CMSID

Does nudity belong in religious art?
Bodies and souls • Some cry yes, others shout no, and many say it depends.

The Rev. France Davis doesn't want any nude Adam-and-Eve figures in his Salt Lake City church — even if they were painted by the famed Michelangelo himself.

Davis is unequivocal in his view that there is nothing inspiring or redeeming about naked figures in religious art.

"Since we sinned, as it says in the book of Genesis, the human body has certain parts that are private," says the outspoken pastor at Calvary Baptist Church. "We should keep them for more intimate settings like people's bedrooms."

Davis is hardly alone in that view.

From the prudish impulses of the Counter-Reformation, to the Vatican's use of the fig leaf as a genital cover-up a century later, to modern Christians objecting to a nude Christ sculpted out of chocolate (it was the nakedness, not the tastiness that they opposed), there have always been those who wanted to see everything clothed. In 1997, Brigham Young University excluded four nudes from a traveling exhibit of Rodin sculptures, saying they would distract viewers from appreciating the artist's dignity.

Scores of believers oppose any nakedness in art as blasphemous — even a glimpse of the Virgin Mary's breast as she feeds her baby son — or akin to pornography.

For other Christians, though, when to celebrate or eschew artistic nudity is not that easy nor clear-cut.

It depends, they say, on the whether the artist intends to enlighten a biblical narrative or trigger a sexual response, whether the nudity is theologically important or just there to shock. It's also crucial to ask about a work's intended audience, setting and spirit.

Pope Benedict XVI recently praised the use of nudity in the 16th-century masterpiece, "The Last Judgment."

"The bodies painted by Michelangelo are filled with light, life and splendor," the pope said in a news story from Deutsche Presse-Agentur. "He wanted to show that our bodies contain a mystery: within them the spirit is manifest."

(more at link)

[LymphocyteLover]

31. I have seen a version where they literally put a fig leaf over the groin

and maybe they could have used that for the lesson ...But JFC

[ffr]

32. This snowball can only lead to dressing animals too. NO PICTURES OF ANIMALS!

OMG, they have male and female genitalia too?

Who knew? Fire them all!

[ashredux]

33. David it's one of the most iconic pieces of art we have. If you have not seen in person, please do.

It is inspiring.. an incredible piece of art

[jaxexpat]

37. Yeah, that's pretty pathetic but I'd not be surprised....

if many Americans would feel uncomfortable just walking the streets of European cities. Renaissance sculpture at every crossroad and many are flagrantly nude.

BTW, I've never understood why Michelangelo chose such a cold day to have his model pose.

[TygrBright]

38. So... teach Renaissance Art but not the nekkid ones...? I can't keep up. n/t

[SWBTATTReg]

41. This is pathetic. Was not/is not pornographic, never was. The kids instead, should have been

kicked out, along w/ the parents, they're too dumb or stupid to have kids, and shouldn't be in the local school district, possibly causing damage to other innocent kids. Why aren't the other kids protected from these errant parents?

[milestogo]

43. What would Clarence "Long Dong Silver" say?

What about rapey beer boy?

[eissa]

47. We can't let them yungins see nekkid peeples!

What provincial and cloistered lives these people must live.

[maxrandb]

48. In their defense

David is hard as a rock.

I bet he lasts a long time too.