Is it inappropriate to take 11-year-olds to an art museum?
Some Florida parents apparently think so, as one of them complained that sixth graders at Tallahassee Classical School viewed images of Michelangelo’s David as part of their curriculum, likening the sculpture to pornography. The Renaissance master’s Creation of Adam and Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus were reportedly also items of concern.
RELIGIOUS COLLEGE ENDS RELATIONSHIP WITH CHARTER SCHOOL OVER 'DAVID' DRAMA
This set off a moral panic that caused the supposed educators of the school’s board to force out its principal, who apparently should’ve notified parents that students were about to be exposed to great works of art.
So Hillsdale College, my alma mater and a partner of 70-plus charter schools in the United States, made the right call: It chose to cut ties with the school.
“Tallahassee Classical previously held a license to use Hillsdale’s curricular materials,” spokeswoman Emily Stack Davis said in a statement. “That license has been revoked and will expire at the end of the school year.”
Hillsdale College, which calls itself “a small, Christian, classical liberal arts college in southern Michigan,” has long supported classical education, and not just within its own campus. The David incident underlines its commitment to the liberal arts — and shows that being religious doesn’t mean being puritanical.
“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,” Davis said. “Of course, Hillsdale’s K-12 art curriculum includes Michelangelo’s ‘David’ and other works of art that depict the human form.”
Parents have every right not to highlight works of art containing nudity in their own homes, but there is no reason that the presentation of a work such as Michelangelo’s David, nearly as ubiquitous as the Mona Lisa, qualifies as a “controversial” image warranting parental notification. Parents might as well request that students never take an anatomy class.
As conservative parents and educators broadcast what they’re against, including critical race theory, gender ideology, and similar topics being taught in schools, it is just as important for us to champion what we’re for: great literature, original historical texts, classical art.
There’s no way David would fail former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s sniff test (“I shall not today attempt further to define [pornography], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.”).
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When parents are so ready to be triggered by school curriculum, they forget the very simple test for whether something is worthy of our attention, one championed by Hillsdale itself: Is it good? Is it true? Is it beautiful?
If so, it’s worth our study and especially that of the next generation.
Madeline Fry Schultz is the assistant contributors editor at the Washington Examiner and a visiting fellow at the Independent Women's Forum.