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A Matter of Principal?
Headlines are accumulating about the forced resignation of a charter school principal in Tallahassee. (For a taste, here’s WaPo’s article.) Allegedly, Hope Carrasquilla’s indiscretion was to give a lesson to sixth-grade students on Michelangelo’s David, The Creation of Adam, and Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. We’re told some parents complained about the material, one going so far as to say the statue is “pornographic.”
Many articles suggest that the phrase “parental rights” was tossed… and therefore, that was that for Miss Carrasquilla. Naturally, some variation of “Ron DeSantis’s Florida” made its way into most of the texts. Perhaps that goes without saying. But this story seems to have legs beneath the indecorous bits. Which direction they’re running isn’t clear yet, but I think serious citizens ought to keep an eye out.
I had to look up the Tallahassee Classical School (TCS). It did not exist when I was left to the nearby prison that is Raa Middle. TCS opened in 2020 with initial advisement from Hillsdale College. Its mission: “To train the minds and improve the hearts of young people through a content-rich classical education in the liberal arts and sciences, with instruction in the principles of moral character and civic virtue.” The chair of the school board Barney Bishop III insists that it wasn’t the ancient nudies that motivated his ultimatum to Carrasquilla to resign or be fired—though the ultimatum has been confirmed. Instead, it was that, among other unspecified factors, prior notice hadn’t been given to parents.
If I haven’t already, allow me to go on the record as being pro-parental rights in education. No responsible alternative exists in the minimal sense, and there’s no better we can do than to have mothers and fathers deeply involved in the bringing up of their children. Inevitably there would be some ugly chapters in this custody fight over America’s youth given the breaks between its adults. Whether this is an unneccesary one, I can’t say yet—it is possible that this was an ordinary firing that had viral potential.
In any case, it’s a reminder that conservatives are a generally tame bunch. If this is a prime example of the unintended casualties of a war the right started a few years back, we’re a decent people… hopefully an introspective one, too. What I find interesting here (regardless of what ultimately surfaces) is that this shows that the intra-party fights over what we mean by “pro-parents” haven’t quite played out yet. That’s understandable given the all-of-a-sudden need for an explicit dictum that the adults who made the little people (and who love said little people more than any other bigger people possibly could) should be the authority on what ought to be put into the little people’s little heads. But the nature of the consensus remains to be seen. To what extent are we a “we” at all?
I suspect it’s time to assess this impromptu coalition. There are surely political merits to keeping this vague, but I think putting up a rough draft of the paradigm is advisable. Luckily there’s this Ricochet thing! I have a few Q’s below, but, by all means, go with it where you will.
Would you put your money on this being an ordinary firing that’s painted as politically motivated by unfair media apparatchiks? Is the classical ed school wrong to have Renaissance Art (given the era’s artists’ romantic taste for oft-curiously-naked subjects) as a requirement for sixth-grade students? Were the disgruntled parents wrong to expect notice for content of this sort? Are flat-footed administrators unprepared for the array of parental concerns, maybe unclear on the mission of schools like TCS? Should normie classical parents prepare themselves for good-ol’-fashioned civic arguments? (Is there such a thing as a normie classical parent?) Or is it David who was wrong to show up to a death match in his impressive birthday suit?
Published in General
There was a Simpsons episode on this subject. At/near the end, Marge said something like “It’s true that one person can make a difference, but most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
P.S. That episode was from 1990.
As far as I know, there is currently no age restriction to visit the Accademia Gallery of Florence and see Michelangelo’s David.
I saw it personally when I was in fourth or fifth grade.
It is – or was – considered one of the Great Works of Art, as are pretty much all such works that appear in kids’ cartoons. Perhaps it has fallen out of reverence as Christianity becomes less popular (not to mention more unpopular). Perhaps our penchant for apportioning artistic value in accordance with racial demographics devalues the old canon.
And really, who’s to say that Michelangelo’s works are more important that Frida Kahlo’s?
Me, that’s who. And while I’m at it, Mary Cassatt was a second-tier Impressionist.
Because I hate women or something.
OK, glad I got that off of my chest.
To the point.
The parents were warned when the school mentioned classical content. It don’t get much more classical than ol’ Nekkid Dave. If the parents didn’t know that, that’s on them.
Nice 😂
If, during the height of prohibition, with every lawman cracking down on bootleggers or receiving a payoff from them, I went to market with a product labelled
root
BEER
Then perhaps I should expect a public outcry, and a week of diatribes in the newspapers about what a sinful thing I’m doing. And perhaps I’d earn some heartfelt thanks from the syndicate, for distracting the do-gooders for a while.
In the abstract I’m fine with twelve-year-olds learning about sex, but perhaps it shows poor judgement to do so when one of the open political questions of the day is whether it’s acceptable to show gay pornography to elementary school kids. And perhaps the groomers of the world owe this lady thanks for muddying the waters they hide in.
I don’t like seeing people lose their jobs for what they say. But if anyone’s got to be careful what she says it’s a teacher in front of a class. In a country where teachers treat kids as their own personal fiefdom granted by their bachelor’s in education, I’m fine with firing more and more of them until they realize that public education is an extension of trust on the part of parents, and that trust needs to be maintained.
It’s wrong to present nudes, yes. Instead of David, why not go with the Zuccone? It also has the distinction of being a sculpture crafted by a Ninja Turtle, but this one has clothes on. It’s gotta be the Nunchuck guy? Why not Michelangelo’s Moses? Look, I know almost nothing about art, but not every bit of the Renaissance went about nekkid. If you can’t piece together a coherent description of Renaissance art, excepting the nudes, then that’s on you. But then the kids won’t get a complete picture of the subject. They’re sixth graders; you can tell them the parts you let out in high school.
Great art isn’t the same as pornography, but thinking back to myself as a sixth grader, a kid that age is going to treat it like it is. You’re not going to be able to convey the sublimity of the human form to him because his glands are going to screaming in his ears that THERE ARE BOOBIES! RIGHT THERE! Besides, he doesn’t need any instruction in the sublimity of the human form, he’s got Rebecca in the second row. And even though he’s been staring at her every Science and Reading class for the past three months he still hasn’t noticed any flaws.
But a knowledge of anatomy is essential for creating fine art, and you can only get that by studying nudes! Yeah, well, saltpetre is essential to crafting gunpowder, and conceivably I’d dole some out to a promising sixth grader, but I’d be plenty specific as to which one merited that much trust.
Hmm. What’s your opinion on children seeing a courtroom or whatever, with Lady Justice?
That that wasn’t the right kid to share saltpetre with in the first place.
That hussy! Why can’t she wear modest clothing like that Columbia Pictures lady?
The Columbia Pictures lady is a bad-ass!
I particularly liked his puns (are they even puns?) on “But this story seems to have legs beneath the indecorous bits.” and “Which direction they’re running isn’t clear yet, but I think serious citizens ought to keep an eye out.”
A good learning opportunity for these sixth graders.
“Hey kids, that thing that you are giggling about, does that mean David is a boy, a girl, or is it too hard to tell?”
Hard as in granite, or…
Probably should use “difficult.”
So, it was ‘The Right’ that started this war; and not left-wing activists using public schools to indoctrinate kids in communist dogma and queer ideology.
Haha.
Does seem strange that, unless “Renaissance Art” was hidden from the syllabus, parents interested in the school wouldn’t have known.
I suppose the trick is that David is the most famous statue of all. But I could see a case for leaving that for another time. The Pietà and Primavera would be safe. Da Vinci, Raphael and Jan Van Dyke kept their subjects decent.
There weren’t any humanities classes when I was that age, but I did probably see worse things at my middle school. Sticky situation. Interesting story too, no?
I see your point. My take is very debatable. The way I see it is that they had a lot of leverage which they’ve pushed as far as they could. The options left to the right were to lay down or fight, and our team started firing—which we were right to do.
They should have stuck to paintings. If you think of the most famous paintings, and those that have brought the highest prices at auction, you have to go way down the list before you get to anything nekkid.
It is a perfect story, as it is heads-they-win/tails-we-lose.
a) lolz, repubs r hippocritz bc they don’t want kids to learn about sex but liek teh old stachews
b) lolz, repubs r skerd of teh peen on old stachews.
I keep wanting to post photos of Psiax’s works. Greeks were often naked you know! But the art is phenomenally good.
Hey, wait… Jon! I had “Principal” in the title on purpose!
Yeah, I got that.
You’ve always been reliable, Judge.
Me in the park thinking about this article:
Because they wanted to claim that David was a Drag Queen? A lot of them did kinda wear dresses, y’know.
Well, I sure don’t want to be told “Dave’s not here” regarding sculpture…
I think the right way to teach Michelangelo is the fold: 1) read The Agony and the Ecstasy. The (fictional – or is it?) passages about creating David, including the naughty bits, is all about the quest for perfection in art. 2) see the movie version with Chuck Heston and Rex Harrison, it’s great. 3) seek it out.
I found in my years of teaching and the few I spent in the brokerage industry that when working with the public you can please a lot of your customers, but not all. There will always be someone who wants to make an issue out of something.
I grew up in New York City. I remember a very large statue near the Queens Borough administration building of a naked Greek warrior. I also remember many trips the Metropolitan Museum of Art my mother took us on. Statues and paintings of naked men and women were something I was exposed to from a very early age. I was never exposed to pornography as a child. I suppose that is why it is pretty easy for me to differentiate between art and porn. Showing children photographs for artworks which are part of the western canon shouldn’t require parental permission in a public school setting. We are not Puritan New England of the 17th Century. Allowing that extremism to rule what we teach is absurd. I well understand and completely agree with the banning of Woke nonsense, but any swing of the pendulum can easily get out of hand. Firing a teacher for not notifying parents that their children will be “exposed” to works of art which are considered the height of Western Culture does not seem to me to be reasonable.
My daughter’s high school English teacher is an older woman (past retirement age but stays because she likes it). Once a week they will let a kid pick a topic and the teacher will show a short video about whatever the kid suggests. One week it was Greek art. At one point the teacher did jump up and say, “Oh no! Wieners!” I guess she didn’t want to end up like that principal, although, this is high school, not sixth grade.
That’s funny. But it’s also troubling.