If ‘David’ makes us blush, then shame on us
It was news everywhere, from CNN to “Saturday Night Live.”
The principal of a Tallahassee charter school was fired after a photograph of an iconic masterpiece, Michelangelo’s heroic nude sculpture David, symbol of one of the Bible’s best-known parables, was shown to sixth-graders.
It wasn’t the nude sculpture that proved so embarrassing. It was the behavior of grownups.
The official explanation was that parents were supposed to be told ahead of time that the picture would be shown — as they were last year — but weren’t.
“Parents are entitled to know anytime their child is being taught a controversial topic and picture,” said Barney Bishop III, chair of the board at Tallahassee Classical School, in an interview with the online magazine Slate.
That, presumably, is so they can keep their children home on those days.
Bishop said there were other job performance issues, which he would not discuss, to dismiss principal Hope Carrasquilla.
No matter. The policy should concern the public. It’s a charter school, not a private one, which means taxpayers are paying for this.
For their money, they’re entitled to schools that teach critical thinking, which has been called our greatest national deficit.
Critical thinking is essential
Critical thinking is essential to informed citizenship. But it is incompatible with a policy that allows students to avoid controversial subjects. In fact, it’s impossible under such circumstances.
The David sculpture itself is an example of the difference between visceral and critical thinking.
Some people, like those overly squeamish Tallahassee parents, see only genitals. People around the world see much more.
The Florentines are so enormously proud of native son Michelangelo’s marble sculpture David that they have three of him. After the original was moved to a museum to protect it from the elements, they commissioned two copies to stand in public squares where everyone can see them — even children.
David’s nudity expresses the religious spirit Michelangelo was appointed to convey. Facing the giant foe Goliath armed with sword and shield, David is clad only in the invisible armor of his faith in God. He carries only a slingshot. His body is tensed for combat.
The Galleria dell’Accademia, in Florence, Italy, where the original statue stands, offers this additional explanation on its website: “Thanks to its imposing perfection, the biblical figure of David became the symbol of the liberty and freedom of the Republican ideals, showing Florence’s readiness to defend itself.”
Yet in our own backyard, people refuse to see it.
On her blog, Florida Jolt, Delray Beach political activist and former mayoral candidate Tracy Caruso made the statue sound pornographic by describing one of the most important works of art in history as “a picture of a penis.”
Liberty and freedom are the products of centuries of controversy, which continues to this day. A school that suppresses controversy is no friend of freedom. Neither is Gov. Ron DeSantis, nor his legislative allies, bent on suppressing academic freedom in schools and colleges, so that only their sanitized version of American history can be taught.
In this distorted view, racism was irrelevant to our history and has no influence in America today.
Tallahassee Classical School, as it happens, is — or was — an exponent of the conservative curriculum of Hillsdale College, the Michigan institution that DeSantis fancies as the model of what he intends New College of Florida to become in Sarasota.
‘A distraction ... a parody’
But even Hillsdale appeared disgusted by the David fiasco, and said March 30 it is “no longer affiliated” with the Tallahassee school.
In a press release, Hillsdale defended showing David to students: “This drama around teaching Michelangelo’s ‘David’ sculpture, one of the most important works of art in existence, has become a distraction from, and a parody of, the actual aims of classical education. Of course, Hillsdale’s K-12 art curriculum includes Michelangelo’s ‘David’ and other works of art that depict the human form.”
Tallahassee Classical School said it was disappointed by Hillsdale’s decision, and said: “At no time has Tallahassee Classical School characterized Michelangelo’s statue of David as pornography. Any suggestion otherwise is false and defamatory.”
Hillsdale is essential to the growing Christian nationalist movement, even if it is not an avowed part of it. The Baptist Joint Committee, a nonprofit devoted to religious freedom, has been warning against Christian nationalism.
On the website Good Faith Media, the BJC’s assistant general counsel, the Rev. Jennifer Hawks, wrote this:
“A robust history curriculum in the public schools is perhaps the most practical way to oppose Christian nationalism ... We should start with advocating for strong public schools whose curriculum includes all of us and reflects American history as it was, not as a small group imagines it to have been.”