Florida, teacher forced to resign after showing image of Michelangelo's David

In Florida, and specifically in the capital city of Tallahassee, a teacher at a charter school (i.e., a school funded by both public and private funds) was was forced to resign from her position after some parents complained that she showed images of Michelangelo’s David during an art history lesson to some 6th graders (corresponding to our sixth grade), which caused discomfort to some parents, who felt that the sculpture (and other Renaissance images such as the Creation of Adam and the Birth of Venus) would upset their little ones. The teacher, Hope Carrasquilla, was also the school’s principal, and resigned from her post after a school board meeting last Monday.

The news was reported by a local newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat, but quickly made the rounds. “It saddens me that my time here had to end like this,” said Carrasquilla, who let the Florida capital newspaper know that she was forced to resign after the school board president, Barney Bishop, told her that if she did not resign of her own free will, she would be fired. Bishop confirmed the version, reports the Tallahassee Democrat, however he also made it known that he could not reveal why he intimated that she resign. Indeed, it appears that there is also a history, as she pointed out in an interview with the Slate news outlet, but she would not say further. The only thing she did say was that the “rights of parents come first, and that means protecting the interests of all parents, whether they are one, 10, 20 or 50,” and that the lecture on David was but part of the problem.

There were three parents, however, who complained about the lesson: two would have preferred to have been notified earlier, and one expressly said that the teacher should not use the word “pornography” in school (the teacher would in fact emphasize in front of the students that the images she would show were not pornographic in nature). Carrasquilla let it be known that a letter to be sent to parents informing them of the contents of the lesson had been prepared anyway, but it would not arrive due to internal communication problems at the school (in fact, there is a rule at the institution that in the case of lessons with “potentially controversial” content, parents must be informed at least two weeks in advance). Bishop, in the Slate interview, however, said that in connection with the lesson the issue was not so much the content (“We’re a classical school, why shouldn’t we show Renaissance art to kids?”) as the form: “98 percent of the parents didn’t have a problem,” he said, “but it doesn’t matter, because we didn’t follow a rule.”

Fortunately, however, there are also those who defend the teacher. One mom, Carrie Boyd, who has two children at Tallahassee Classical, said Carrasquilla’s resignation came as a shock to her and other parents. “It’s starting to feel like the school is becoming part of an agenda,” Boyd said, noting a stiffening on the school’s part. Finally, it should be added that, according to the Tallahassee Democrat, School Board President Bishop agrees with the positions on schools of Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, a fierce rival of Donald Trump to the party leadership, and known for not exactly progressive views: on the issue of schools, for example, he has been a supporter of the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, a law that bans lessons on sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms from kindergarten through third grade (and is working to extend the ban to twelfth grade, or the last year of school), and prohibits procedures for maintaining confidentiality on the issue of students’ sexual orientation from parents. “We agree with everything the governor is doing in the educational arena. We support him because he is right,” said Bishop, who added, “All the indoctrination going on about pronouns and drag queens is not appropriate in schools.”

Florida, teacher forced to resign after showing image of Michelangelo's David

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