A school principal in Tallahassee, Florida, has been fired following complaints from parents about a lesson on Michelangelo’marble masterpiece David (1501-04), which was deemed “pornographic” by an aggrieved relative.
Former Principal Hope Carrasquilla informed the Huffington Post that due to a “series of misunderstandings”, a usual letter informing parents of Tallahassee Classical School students of this feature of the sixth-grade art history curriculum was not sent, which further contributed to parental outrage. One parent felt ‘completely upset’, says Carrasquilla HuffPostand “felt that her child should not see” the iconic example of 16th-century Renaissance sculpture, which depicts a figure from the Old Testament Book of Samuel.
According to Tallahassee Democrat, Tallahassee Classical School, a charter school in Florida’s state capital, has now lost three principals since it opened in 2020. Carasquilla had been working there for less than a year. The school’s “classical curriculum model” is an increasingly popular educational model in Florida that defenders a return to the fundamental principles of Western civilization. The school is affiliated with Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian institution that has sought to “Fighting leftist academics” expanding fundraising and implementation of charter schools.
“Every once in a while you have a parent who gets upset with Renaissance art,” Carrasquilla said.
The decision to oust Carrasquilla rides on a growing wave of conservative education legislation in Florida and across the United States. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, nicknamed the “Governor of Education“due to his efforts to transform the state’s school system, targeted advanced high school placement studies in African-American history as a form of “woke indoctrination,” a signed bill banning transgender athletes women’s public school teams, banned more than 40% of math textbooks submitted by publishers for review and passed the Parental Rights in Education Actwhich prohibits any conversation about sexuality and gender in kindergarten and the first three years of primary school.
DeSantis also passed a bill that allows teachers to be armed in school and instituted the “Stop the wake up act“, aimed at preventing “discrimination in the workplace and in public schools”. Its targeting of tenure, affirmative action and measures of diversity, equity and inclusion in public universities of the The state reflects a nationwide Republican project to regulate and politicize education.
