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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37947 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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An Interview With the School Board Chair Who Forced Out a Principal After Michelangelo’s David Was Shown in Class

On Thursday, the Tallahassee Democrat reported that the principal of a local charter school, the Tallahassee Classical School, was forced to resign after three parents complained about an art teacher showing a picture of Michelangelo’s 16th-century sculpture of David.

Reading the entire interview, the school board comes out looking only slightly more reasonable than was portrayed in the "mainstream media".

The chair of the school board, Barney Bishop III, insists that the David incident was only a small contributing factor, but when asked to elaborate why the board decided to pressure the principal to resign, he says:

based on counsel from our employment lawyer, I’m not going to get into the reasons.

To me, the overall tone of Bishop's statements suggests that the David incident was in fact a major reason, if not the sole reason, for the firing (sorry, "resignation under pressure"). Bishop says:

The teacher mentioned that this was a nonpornographic picture, No. 1. The teacher said, “Don’t tell your parents,” No. 2. (...) Three parents objected. Two objected simply because they weren’t told in advance. One objected because the teacher said nonpornography. Nonpornography—that’s a red flag. And of course telling the students, “Don’t tell your parents”—that’s a huge red flag!

The interview doesn't say in what context the teacher told the students not to tell their parents or that the images were not pornographic. (Maybe the original article does? I haven't read it because it's paywalled.) Out of context, it does sound suspicious. I suppose the first could have been a joke. As for the second, I'm not sure why the teacher would need to tell the students in the classroom that the images were not pornographic. In any case, my priors are that it is extremely unlikely that the teacher was a "groomer" trying to sexualize the kids.

The year before, the school had notified the parents that their children, who are 11 and 12 years old, were going to be exposed to the horror of a statue depicting a human. This year, the teacher teaching the class told the principal (the one who was later fired) to send out a similar notice, but the principal apparently forgot. This is an "egregious mistake":

98 percent of the parents didn’t have a problem with it. But that doesn’t matter, because we didn’t follow a practice. We have a practice. Last year, the school sent out an advance notice about it. Parents should know: In class, students are going to see or hear or talk about this. This year, we didn’t send out that notice. (...) This year, we made an egregious mistake. We didn’t send that notice.

Michelangelo's sculpture of David is "controversial":

Well, we’re Florida, OK? Parents will decide. Parents are the ones who are going to drive the education system here in Florida. The governor said that, and we’re with the governor. Parents don’t decide what is taught. But parents know what that curriculum is. And parents are entitled to know anytime their child is being taught a controversial topic and picture.

Parents choose this school because they want a certain kind of education. We’re not gonna have courses from the College Board. We’re not gonna teach 1619 or CRT crap. I know they do all that up in Virginia. The rights of parents, that trumps the rights of kids. Teachers are the experts? Teachers have all the knowledge? Are you kidding me? I know lots of teachers that are very good, but to suggest they are the authorities, you’re on better drugs than me.

The interview ends with the reporter saying "I just don’t think this statue is controversial", to which Bishop responds:

We’re not going to show the full statue of David to kindergartners. We’re not going to show him to second graders. Showing the entire statue of David is appropriate at some age. We’re going to figure out when that is.

And you don’t have to show the whole statue! Maybe to kindergartners we only show the head. You can appreciate that. You can show the hands, the arms, the muscles, the beautiful work Michelangelo did in marble, without showing the whole thing.

An article in the BBC relates this to the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, AKA the "Don't Say Gay" Bill. Personally, I think it's just typical American prudishness. In other Western countries, it is perfectly normal and unremarkable for statues with exposed penises and breasts (non-pornographic, of course) to be displayed in public, where they are easily seen by children of all ages.

At one point, in describing the school, Bishop says:

We don’t use pronouns.

Obviously the sentence is false if taken literally, as critics have pointed out. But does anyone know what he might have actually meant? They don't have pronoun badges? They don't put pronouns in their email signatures? They don't use trans people's preferred pronouns? I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious as to what leads people to say nonsensical things like this, what they understand the word "pronoun" to mean.

Obviously the sentence is false if taken literally, as critics have pointed out. But does anyone know what he might have actually meant? They don't have pronoun badges? They don't put pronouns in their email signatures? They don't use trans people's preferred pronouns? I'm asking because I'm genuinely curious as to what leads people to say nonsensical things like this, what they understand the word "pronoun" to mean.

I mean, it seems quite clear what they mean - especially if you look at the full paragraph: they're not paying respect to the new woke pronoun regime and all that entails.

Why can't they see the issue with phrasing it that way? If we have to unfurl it:

The old conception of pronouns was unchosen titles that were assigned to people based on which of two sexes they were. This was done automatically and many older people may not have even considered themselves as having "personal" pronouns as a result. They just consider those pronouns the appropriate ones for their sex. Before the woke wave the way to correct someone was not "those are not my pronouns/use my pronouns" but "I'm actually a man/woman" - and then the other party would be expected to switch.

It's thus not a shock that random people slip up and say "we don't use pronouns" instead of "we don't use preferred pronouns" or "we don't use neo pronouns" for two reasons:

  1. the Leftists are the ones who keep talking about "use my pronouns" so you can assume that any ask to "use [someone's pronouns] will involve "woke" deviations from the old conception. So "pronouns" as a culture war issue means "woke/preferred/neo pronouns"

  2. normies aren't always watching every single word to thwart some Twitter nitpicker from having a dunking session. A more cautious or introspective person might have avoided it, but it's hardly a big impediment in debates.

My bet is that almost everyone knows what they mean. Including the people "owning the cons".

I'm down for abolishing gender, we can go back to sex! For nearly all of history there was no real concept of gender, no notion that it deserved a word. Ignorance is, in this case, bliss.

No-one may have conceived of the notion of gender in the current usage in ages past, but that doesn't mean gender was simply non-existent. Which is to say that retrospectively we can distinguish between sex and gender in history, even if no-one did so then.

Don’t forget the man who invented “gender” was a pedophillic child molester. German sexologist societies honoured him for his work in forcible castration of little boys and molesting them soon afterwards.

nothing new under the sun eh?

The people you're arguing with think that gender was always a thing, and that abolishing it would mean zero social expectations would be placed on people due to sex.

I'm down with whatever. As long as people keep making babies instead of being "cat and dog moms".

It's thus not a shock that random people slip up and say "we don't use pronouns" instead of "we don't use preferred pronouns"

Is it really a slip-up? If that is a slip up then so is "please use our pronouns" or "what are your pronouns?". The reason that is never corrected to "preferred pronoun" is because everybody knows that "pronoun" can refer to the progressive idea.

Qualifying "pronoun" with "preferred" would be a tactical error by gender-believers. The way they say it now is a rhetorical technique to obscure the fact that the mainstream idea and progressive idea are different. Rather than framing the discussion as "should we change how pronouns work?" it is "please use my pronouns." It's not much different than the "basic human decency" rhetorical technique.

"please use our pronouns" or "what are your pronouns?"

Well those are different because of the possessives. What are 'your' pronouns unambiguously refers to preferred pronouns, because it couldn't be anything else, whereas 'we don't use pronouns' or equivalent is just a nonsense.

That's a good point I hadn't considered. I was focused on the word "preferred" that the original poster had brought up.

Is it really a slip-up?

Yes, because the literal reading is wrong and it doesn't reinforce the normative point you're making.

"There's no such thing as preferred pronouns" or "the pronouns for men are "he/he" or "you don't have 'your' pronouns; you have the pronouns of your sex' are not problematic on a surface reading and also highlight that there is a change being pushed here and therefore aren't slip ups, even though they does what you want (highlight that it is indeed a change being asked for here)

"Don't tell your parents."

Feels like this could easily be an off-hand gag in the genre of the chemistry teacher telling her class "We're going to be playing with fire today. Don't rat me out!" Such quotes, said every day, can look monstrous in print when a personnel decision needs to be justified.

If we found out that high school chemistry teachers were frequently enlisting their students to cook meth in the school labs, it might be a good idea for the ones not doing that to that stop making the joke.

The reality is that some teachers are bad actors. So when a kid comes home and says “mommy today teacher has having us look at photos of naked men. He told us not to tell you, but you always taught me not to keep secrets from you” it has kind of a different timbre than it might have 20 years ago.

I expressed a similar sentiment elsewhere ITT, but the good actors here need to be calling out the bad ones the loudest, not making cheeky jokes. “Your teacher might be sexually abusing your child” is not a joke most parents are going to like.

If those quotes are said every day, they are monstrous, because they are setting up an expectation that students should be active collaborators in shielding teacher behavior from parental oversight. Teachers that undermine parental relationships with their children are abusing both their own authority and their students.

As an isolated incident, that sort of "off-hand gag" is in poor taste. If it becomes time-worn, it is abusive.

If those quotes are said every day, they are monstrous, because they are setting up an expectation that students should be active collaborators in shielding teacher behavior from parental oversight.

It can be humor and text doesn't work very well at capturing this.

No, it does not matter if they are intended as jokes or not, it still builds the same meme. Especially when the schools are also rife with sincere and unironic efforts to undermine parental authority, the "joke" actually plays out as "haha, only serious."

Good god, do you only allow pro-social humor in your world? There's almost always a force threatening to destabilize someone's authority.

Wait, edgy humor is OK again? When are we unbanning all the shitlords?

In what way is this an edgy joke?

Aren't edgy jokes a subset of non-pro-social humor?

More comments

They're said every day by different teachers across the globe, not the same teacher or even the same school repeating it every day.

As an isolated gag, it's funny. Because the teacher I'm sure had 0 actual fear of getting fired for showing his students Michaelengo and was perfectly fine with them showing their parents, and thought that was common knowledge for everyone listening, until he actually was fired.

As an isolated gag, it's funny. Because the teacher I'm sure had 0 actual fear of getting fired for showing his students Michaelengo and was perfectly fine with them showing their parents, and thought that was common knowledge for everyone listening, until he actually was fired.

If the teacher "had 0 actual fear of getting fired" why would the joke ever occur to them? It's the joke of someone who is aware of the hazard, or there is no joke. Now, it may be that a teacher in an urban Portland Oregon school full of good little liberals might make that joke as an outgroup dig, but a teacher at a Florida school where "we don't use pronouns" is surely aware that he is operating in a different environment.

If the teacher "had 0 actual fear of getting fired" why would the joke ever occur to them? It's the joke of someone who is aware of the hazard, or there is no joke.

My chemistry teacher made the same joke a couple decades ago about not telling our parents we were playing with fire when we first got to use Bunsen burners. I guess I can't entirely rule out that she genuinely thought there was a .0000000001% chance of her getting fired for having us use them, but come on.

I'll grant that in his current environment he would have a better idea of things on the ground, but prior to this I really thought the level of antagonism towards teachers was mostly just getting played up by teachers who were pushing borderline pornographic shit in the name of inclusivity (and God knows this place opened my eyes up to some of the things some teachers were putting in their curriculums) and they were bullshitting about the degree to which they were constrained in terms of teaching normal stuff to get other teachers and average people to fall in line on their side.

Was the teacher fired? The top level post here talks about the principal being fired, but I haven't seen any specific news about the teacher.

It's not clear. I think the principal is fired because they were responsible for sending out the notice and because (as with most cancellations) the Board was already unhappy with them and this was just a politically palatable pretext to do something they already wanted to do.

deleted

This has nothing to do with the law.

It's not a direct result of that law - it's not like the law required this firing, or anything like that. But do you really doubt that's a significant part of what set the context for this incident?

it has nothing at all to do with the law

the law was a response to the context of school teachers using public institutions and their authority over other people's children to groom children and normalize behavior and gender ideologies they know full-well their parents find at the least objectionable for children and engaging in various acts to hide that from parents

the law didn't cause school teachers to do that, it was a response to them doing it

the context is the reason this happened, too, and it has nothing at all to do with the law

School parents upset with their kids seeing nudity? No, I don't think the law was part of it. It might have set the context for the coverage, at most, but that's a separate issue.

They even showed it in years past with a permission slip and just forgot to send out the slip this year. It's a paperwork mishap elevated to a firing offense because of the ongoing culture war over parental rights.

failing to get permission to show potentially sexual content to other people's children isn't merely a "paperwork mishap" and trying to downplay it to that characterization looks like agenda

potentially sexual content

What precisely do you mean by this term?

something which can be viewed as sexual content by a reasonable person

not interested in playing these games where you pretend you don't understand what that phrase means when the reality is you simply disagree a reasonable person would view showing penises on the statue of David to children is potentially sexual content

Why put it in terms of perception or the display to children? A penis is a sexual organ. Is there a context where you wouldn't regard a representation of a penis as sexual content?

A penis is a sexual organ. Is there a context where you wouldn't regard a representation of a penis as sexual content?

Equivocation fallacies are a dirty trick.

  • "Sexual content" = "Pornographic content"

  • "Sexual organ" = "Reproductive organ"

More comments

I'm just trying to say it's incompetence not malice, their policy was to send out a notice to parents, they had sent that out in the past when they showed the same images. They just didn't this year and the principal blames miscommunication. This wasn't a malicious conspiracy to sneak nudity into schools without parents permission, they had been showing this stuff and getting permission for a while they just messed up this year and didn't send out the notice.

You can say that's a really severe a form of incompetence and we can disagree about that, but it's not malice.

causing an accident and killing someone may not be malice, but the person is dead all the same

if this "paperwork mishap" was failing to send homework home, no one would care

you don't think there is even a reasonable argument for there to be harm (or even justifiable suspicion) in this scenario which sets the context for the strategy of downplaying anything you cannot look past through benefit of the doubt

Yes there are forms of incompetence that have severe consequences and which people need to be fired for. I don't think this is such a case, you may think it is, but it's still not a conspiracy to corrupt the youth.

What is the harm done to a 12 year old when they see Michelangelo's David? Are the 49/50 parents who said they're totally fine with their kids seeing this sculpture abusive parents authorizing the school to harm their child?

I'm not one for blaming people for the over-reactions of others.

But...perhaps one should show some judgment about saying such things right before showing nudity (which some Americans will view as introducing their kids to sexual material).

Like...even if LibsofTikTok has everyone on their guard about overreaching teachers there's a reason this is seen as sketchy.

You'd think teachers of all people would know this.

I'm on the fence about this. I have no problem with my kids seeing nude figures in classical art. But it seems to me this teacher was either asking for trouble or had some motive that superseded his job survival instincts.

It's clear from the chain of events that this teacher knew this might be an issue for some kids/parents, because:

  1. The school already considered it controversial enough to (fail to) send out a warning letter.

  2. The teacher felt the need to categorize it as "non-pornographic" (Why, exactly, did he feel this was necessary? ISTM that raising the topic of porn is more likely to get him into trouble, not less likely. Hopefully, it wasn't to differentiate Michael from the art he showed the students on other days....)

  3. "Don't tell your parents." Come on. Maybe he wanted this. Maybe he wanted to become a cause celebre for the left. This is not the behavior of a teacher without some other motive. He got what he wanted. He poked the bear and the bear gutted him and we all know about it and I'm sure there's a related GoFundMe we can support or a TikTok we can heart.

Given all that, I have another question: Why Michelangelo's David? Yes, it's famous. But it's not like it's the only work of art in existence. I don't know enough about art to tell you why David is more famous or worthy of study than any other partially clothed statue. They all look pretty good to me. He chose it for a reason. Maybe laziness. Maybe a lack of imagination. Maybe he just a little bit likes to make kids look at schlongs. Maybe it's his favorite work of art and he has a unique and scintillating perspective on it. Maybe he holds that fraction of parents in contempt and wanted to fuck with them. All or some of the above, still it was poor judgement on his part, unless it's what he wanted.

#2 Is straight up witch-hunt logic. Defending yourself by saying the sculpture David is non-pornographic does not suggest you were on other occasions showing kids pornography.

These are all the cognitive biases that goes into cancel culture just pointed the other way. If someone assigns Huck Finn should we assume there is some part of them that loves making kids read the n-word? If you become hyper-vigilant for any signs of secret child molesters/secret racists then this becomes the terrain on which institutional politics are fought.

Only 1/50 parents actually objected to showing David and they fired the school principal not just the art teacher. My money is that this is some internal conflict between board and principal and they used this as pretext because right wingers are in a frenzy about this stuff right now.

#2 Is straight up witch-hunt logic. Defending yourself by saying the sculpture David is non-pornographic does not suggest you were on other occasions showing kids pornography.

Imagine a teacher in a cooking class giving the students baggies of sugar powder to decorate their muffins and telling them, "It's not what it looks like, it's not cocaine, don't tell your parents". I understand the need to build rapport with the kids, but you don't do it by making drug jokes.

EDIT: I think the joke works much, much better if you don't pull it in different directions. Don't say "nonpornographic/not cocaine" and "don't tell your parents". Lean into the joke. Say that what counted as porn back during the Renaissance. Of course, this only works when your audience is old enough to know what porn looks like.

Sure, but should we suspect from such a joke that the teacher had on other occasions given the children cocaine? That is what the point I was rebutting suggested.

If someone did exactly that, I would be approximately 100% confident that they were joking and think that a parent that was angry about the joke was deranged.

Imagine a teacher in a cooking class giving the students baggies of sugar powder to decorate their muffins and telling them, "It's not what it looks like, it's not cocaine, don't tell your parents".

I had teachers who made that kind of joke at school. Nobody complained, but then again, we weren't Americans, and our culture (rural conservative Presbyterians/Catholics) might be more relaxed about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll...

The likelihood of a 11-year-old not getting the joke and going, "mom, what's cocaine? Miss Rafa told us what she gave us wasn't cocaine and said not to tell you" is much higher than that of a 15-year-old doing the same.

Our physics teacher used to smoke with us behind the school and tell us about HBD of penis sizes, but

  • we were in high school

  • he wasn't doing it during the lessons

#2 Is straight up witch-hunt logic. Defending yourself by saying the sculpture David is non-pornographic does not suggest you were on other occasions showing kids pornography.

If you are displaying nudism in art because nudism is natural and non-lascivious, there's no need to draw attention to other lascivious forms. By classifying David as "not porn" you are not only virtually inviting the students to be curious about the mentioned alternative but you are implicitly categorizing "porn" as the default and "not porn" as the exception. I understand why someone would psychologically feel the need to defensively declare "not porn!" if one is already anticipating cries of "porn!" but that's not the act of someone who is not already defensive about their course.

If you are displaying nudism in art because nudism is natural and non-lascivious, there's no need to draw attention to other lascivious forms.

Who says that nudism or natural and non-lasicvious?

Let's leave aside "natural" as too complex and vague. Is nudity lascivious? It depends on the context and our thoughts. Explaining that the purpose of Michaelangelo's David is not pornographic, but Christian, is providing context and influencing student's thoughts in the appropriate direction.

If you are displaying nudism in art because nudism is natural and non-lascivious, there's no need to draw attention to other lascivious forms.

Yes, there is. Lots of kids at 12 may have literally never seen visual depictions of human genitalia, but they have heard of the concept of porn. So their teacher shows them a picture depicting genitalia, they might be wondering "wait did my teacher just show me porn?" because they don't yet understand what exactly is porn and eroticism vs nudism in art.

You are inviting students to be curious about what is porn, but that's not really an issue imo. 12 is a fine enough age for kids to be aware of the concept of porn and what does/does not qualify as porn even if they probably shouldn't be watching it. Everyone has to learn sometime, and I don't think delaying it for 4 years or whatever reduces the odds of them being groomed.

Yes, and the teacher was totally correct to be defensive given what happened! Wanting to be extremely clear that you are showing artistic nudes and not porn at a conservative school in the middle of an 'anti-groomer' culture war means you accurately understand the political climate not that you have a guilty conscience.

And I don't think mentioning the existence of pornography constitutes an invitation to seek it out.

Yes, and the teacher was totally correct to be defensive given what happened!

Which is why he should've known not to do it. Unless he is a new transplant with no sense of the community, it's either pure stupidity or intentional self-sacrifice.

I don't think we can reasonably speculate about the teacher's sinister ulterior motives given that they asked the principal to notify the parents and it was the principal who forgot.

Given all that, I have another question: Why Michelangelo's David?

Per the BBC article:

The lesson, given to 11 and 12-year-olds, also included references to Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" painting and Botticelli's "Birth of Venus".

Both images depict nudity. Note that it isn't claimed anywhere that this is an exhaustive list. It is quite possible that other artworks that don't feature nudity were discussed in the class, and the news reporting only mentioned these three because they are pertinent.

Both images depict nudity. Note that it isn't claimed anywhere that this is an exhaustive list. It is quite possible that other artworks that don't feature nudity were discussed in the class, and the news reporting only mentioned these three because they are pertinent.

If it's not the teacher's choice and they are merely following a curriculum set by the board, that's the board's problem. If the board is telling teachers: Pick any lesson that doesn't contain nudity, and the teacher picks one full of nudity, they have only themselves to blame. If a teacher is required to inform parents of something and doesn't and then tells students not to tell their parents, they should be fired. There is no situation in which teachers/school should be hiding things from parents, and that's the key to this entire culture war chapter.

tells students not to tell their parents

Do you think that the teacher might have been joking?

Doesn't matter. That specific "joke" (EDIT: "Don't tell your parents.") is off-limits to teachers. Teachers, as mandatory reporters, should be keenly aware of this.

I think this is a very good point. Imagine a defense lawyer who's opening statement to the jury is "You know what, my client did it! hahah...jk, ok, let's get going." I feel that would be close to an instant mistrial and maybe action by the state bar association.

So, I think there is a really interesting conversation to have here, because I am actually genuinely curious about the trad-con take on the issue of not-obviously-sexualized depictions of nudity displayed to children. While I differ from the tradcons on some important issues, I’m genuinely very favorably-inclined toward their approach to sexuality, and I can see a very compelling argument in favor of those parents’ complaints.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that instead of showing the class David, this teacher had Googled “nude man” and showed the top result to the class. Or, hell, in the interest of ensuring he doesn’t find porn, he Googles “nude man posed like Michelangelo David”. What, practically, in terms of its effect on the students, is the difference between that scenario and what the teacher actually did. Now, in terms of the teacher’s intent, or what the teacher is hoping to achieve, the distinction is clear: he wants to show the students a seminally-important work of Renaissance art, and the amazing skill demonstrated by the artist, and presumably isn’t doing so for any sexual reason. Still, in actuality, what he has shown them in either scenario is a very detailed (even graphic) depiction of a nude human male body. Presumably if there is any sexualized or prurient effect on the children that we would expect to result from showing them a naked man - particularly if they are young enough or sheltered enough to have never seen one before - that same effect would likely occur when showing them David.

(Perhaps that’s a key disagreement here - maybe people would argue that the statue is so obviously fake and non-sexual that there’s no way someone would be aroused or scandalized by looking at it. However, I’m not so sure this is true, and I’m frankly not even certain that Michelangelo himself did not have a conscious or subconscious prurient intent at least partially motivating his creation of the statue.)

So, if one takes it as a given that young kids shouldn’t be exposed to a graphic depiction of a dick and balls - or a pair of titties, or whatever - then does the fact that those genitals are made of marble instead of flesh make such an important difference that one ought not to object to the display of this statue where children can see it? I’m not so sure it’s such a simple question that we can just dismiss or gainsay these parents out of hand.

then does the fact that those genitals are made of marble instead of flesh make such an important difference that one ought not to object to the display of this statue where children can see it?

Yes, in the same way that there's a difference between a church hanging up Jesus on the crucifix outside vs. hanging up a human body on a crucifix, or even a gory imitation human body. The method of representation matters.

I’m not so sure that this analogy holds. For example, passion plays - dramatic presentations of Christ’s crucifixion, using real actors - have a long and rich history in the church. Sure, if a church fatally crucified a real man then the effect would be markedly different from the display of a crucifix statue, but it seems to me that there is little to no difference between the effect produced by the display of a crucifix status and the effect produced by the presentation of a flesh-and-blood re-enactment of the crucifixion.

it seems to me that there is little to no difference between the effect produced by the display of a crucifix status and the effect produced by the presentation of a flesh-and-blood re-enactment of the crucifixion.

Have you ever seen a passion play? I remember how I felt after watching the passion of the christ. Shellshocked. That thing was worse than an Eli Roth movie because it felt so much more real. As a piece of cinema it is a work of art, but I never want to see it again. That is not a feeling imparted by crucifix statues, if it was haunted houses would just have to recreate a Filipino grandma's living room to terrify people.

Yes, these things are culturally specific, but most people today would view a Jesus crucifix statue as less gory than a dramatic presentation of the crucifixion, and a more suitable sight for children randomly walking down the street.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that instead of showing the class David, this teacher had Googled “nude man” and showed the top result to the class. Or, hell, in the interest of ensuring he doesn’t find porn, he Googles “nude man posed like Michelangelo David”. What, practically, in terms of its effect on the students, is the difference between that scenario and what the teacher actually did.

Technicalities like marble having the same color and texture everywhere and thus not accentuating the same features a real naked body would aside, I don't think either picture would have any detrimental effect on sixth-graders. How old are they in human years, eleven or twelve?

Could you elaborate on what specific harm showing an anatomically correct sculpture to sixth graders does to them?

The reasons we don't want to show actual pornography are varied. We don't want to encourage kids that young to have sex by showing it to them. We don't want them to conflate the exaggerated performance of sex in porn with normal sex and have them immitate it. And we don't want them to think adults showing them pornography is normal and prime them for future abuse.

I think a group presentation in the context of art history is distinct enough from some creepy dude showing you porn alone that it's not priming children for abuse. It's not a sexualized performance or a depiction of sex children are likely to immitate. It's possible 11 year old straight girls and gays boys will experience arousal at the sight of a naked male body for the first time and seek out other depictions of naked men, leading them to engage in sex too early.

I don't think David is so fake it's impossible to become aroused by looking at him, the healthy male body is normal site of arousal for women/gay men, but he's not designed to be highly arousing either. He also expresses the Renaissance ideal that the human body is a beautiful creation of God worthy of veneration and is undeniably important in art history. The school's policy of letting parents decide through permission slips whether the harm of potential arousal at the sight of a healthy male body outweighs the educational value seems wise and it's important to note that only 1 parent of the fifty kids actually objected to his inclusion, the controversy is that they didn't issue the permission slips like they did in years past.

Could you elaborate on what specific harm showing an anatomically correct sculpture to sixth graders does to them?

This is a wholly irrelevant question. I know it's what the pro-David side likes to focus on, because it makes their opponents look like aliens to the ingroup, but it fundamentally doesn't matter.

If we can agree that there are two groups who differ on the answer to your question: regardless of the substance of their answers, this is an issue of how a community has decided to navigate through this difference in opinions. Now, it may seem to some like the question is so stupid that the community process no longer matters, but this is a great way to destroy a community. This is the essence of a lot of culture war issues at the moment, a focus on terminal values above the process by which we allow competing values to co-exist peacefully.

Now, it may seem to some like the question is so stupid that the community process no longer matters, but this is a great way to destroy a community. This is the essence of a lot of culture war issues at the moment, a focus on terminal values above the process by which we allow competing values to co-exist peacefully.

I would disagree. The essence of many culture war issues is that our ability to stand up and say "this is fucking stupid" for most of these topics is broken.

Are you complaining about "Microaggressions" or how damaging the white culture of being on time is? Are you complaining about one of the most famous pieces of art being shown to kids in school?

Well, that's not worth anyone's time to even consider as an issue. You should scream into the void where nobody hears you.

I would disagree. The essence of many culture war issues is that our ability to stand up and say "this is fucking stupid" for most of these topics is broken.

YOU think they're stupid, but other people clearly don't. What happens to your community when you're done yelling "You're stupid!" at everyone you don't like? Do they agree and change into smart people? Do they grow to hate you? What has it accomplished? You have broken more than you were trying to fix.

EDIT: Also, I don't know what world you're living in, but the number of people saying "this is fucking stupid" seems to be at an all-time high. Have you seen Twitter? This the Daily Show-ification of public discourse. It makes the person saying "that's stupid" feel smug and makes everyone else hate them. Is it working?

Could you elaborate on what specific harm showing an anatomically correct sculpture to sixth graders does to them?

It's possible 11 year old straight girls and gays boys will experience arousal at the sight of a naked male body for the first time and seek out other depictions of naked men, leading them to engage in sex too early.

It's a violation of property rights. If I'm paying six figures a head for 18 years (well, on paper; in practice it's closer to 25) of latent ability to challenge me innocence, you better damn well believe I'm going to go after anything that threatens that. While I understand that I can't dictate society impose my standards- would that I could- it disturbs me that my property might be made to grow in ways that run counter to my interests.

I don't think it's more sophisticated than that. It's not maximizing the objective well-being of the kids we're worried about; they don't matter and are objectively worthless to society (a long-term net negative, if TFR is any indication) beyond the tasks their parents have for them.

The concept that society cannot violate parents' property rights over children are a socioeconomic wage in the calculus of having children- anytime someone says "but what if my kid grows up to be [undesirable thing]?" this is what they mean. If the wage is too low, society doesn't get kids, so society must defer to them or even the people arguing for these wages to be lower (for culture war reasons, or just rational ones) go extinct.

However, I’m not so sure this is true, and I’m frankly not even certain that Michelangelo himself did not have a conscious or subconscious prurient intent at least partially motivating his creation of the statue.)

I didn't know this until looking, but per Wikipedia (I don't have immediate access to it's dead tree citations), David may have been partially(?) clothed within months of it's original placement in June 1504:

Later that summer, the sling and tree-stump support were gilded, and the figure was given a gilded loin-garland.

Although with large commissioned works like this it's sometimes unclear whether specific details are from the artist or the ones writing the checks.

The chair of the school board, Barney Bishop III, insists that the David incident was only a small contributing factor, but when asked to elaborate why the board decided to pressure the principal to resign, he says: "based on counsel from our employment lawyer, I’m not going to get into the reasons.based on counsel from our employment lawyer, I’m not going to get into the reasons."

Refusing to comment on personnel matters is standard procedure, and in fact school boards always go into closed session when discussing personnel matters. And, removing a principal in the middle of a school year is a big deal, and is not usually done lightly. So, I find it quite credible that there were other underlying problems, and that this was simply the last straw.

An article in the BBC relates this to the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, AKA the "Don't Say Gay" Bill

I guess it is good to know that journalists in the UK are as stupid as journalists in the USA.

I guess it is good to know that journalists in the UK are as stupid as journalists in the USA.

It's worse: a lot of journalists outside America but inside American cultural hegemony basically aspire to be as bad as America's journalists.

And they are often worse, because their audience is less informed, so the journalists can be more misleading.

It's not directly related to the law but I don't think this would have been a fireable offense if there wasn't an ongoing culture war about parental rights. I agree that like most cancellations there was probably underlying conflict and this was the last straw/politically acceptable pretext, but this incident couldn't serve that function if it weren't for the ongoing culture war. And the Board Chair leans into it, he could just stonewall the interviewer and put out a bunch of buzzword speech about doing what's in the best interest of students but he starts talking about how this is Florida and they're going to defend parental rights unlike Virginia. He also starts speculating about how they're definitely not going to show David to kindergartners when the incident in question was sixth graders which is weird. He comes across as a guy who has the education culture war on his mind.

It would depend on a lot f things.

First of all, what does the district policy on images actually say? If there’s a written policy of “must inform parents in writing X days before showing a nude image” then deviating from that policy, especially knowing and flagrant violation of that policy would be grounds of dismissal. This is why companies and government agencies tend to have very thick employee manuals— there are policies in place about all kinds of things including posting images of the workplace on social media.

Secondly, how much did he actually show? Showing David from the waist up would have definitely allowed students to appreciate the skill involved in creating the statue without the baggage of showing naughty bits. And going further, if he’d done something like show only the naughty bits, there’d be little doubt that he wasn’t really trying to show kids the art but was trying to use the art as an excuse to give kids an eyeful of dick and balls. (I’m pretty doubtful of this, though it might explain why he didn’t want kids telling their parents about the incident and why he insisted it wasn’t pornography)

Third, it would matter very much whether the principal had a history of similar behavior. An otherwise good teacher who simply missed the deadline to inform parents is probably not getting fired especially if he apologizes and doesn’t do it again. A teacher with a history of trying to sneak in sketchy materials (either sexually explicit or violent) for purposes other than education isn’t getting the benefit of the doubt here.

I guess it is good to know that journalists in the UK are as stupid as journalists in the USA.

Or as motivated/biased.

We’re not going to show the full statue of David to kindergartners. We’re not going to show him to second graders. Showing the entire statue of David is appropriate at some age. We’re going to figure out when that is.

This really caught me off guard. Really, not to kindergartners? He states it as if it's just obvious that no decent person would show this famous statue in its entirety to kindergartners just because it has anatomically correct genitalia. I don't know if it's American prudishness even as an American, since American prudishness has changed a lot in the past 30 years I've lived there. I have to wonder if Donald Rumsfeld's John Ashcroft's, per correction below practice during Bush 2 of covering up breasts of statues when he was speaking in front of them had downstream effects I didn't anticipate.

But I think there's at least something to it; when I was growing up in Korea, it was pretty normal for cartoons and comic books for kids to have full frontal, often in comedic contexts (and always in non-sexual contexts - since sex didn't even mean anything to the target audience of <10 year olds). This was the case for Dragon Ball, a Japanese comic book series which is internationally popular including in both Korea and the US, and in which I discovered censorship of the protagonist Goku's dick and balls when I came to the US and read English localizations.

Also, I was randomly reminded of something from the DVD commentary of the 1999 film Election, a very good comedy about a high school president election, where one of the last scenes of the film starts with a close-up of the genitals of some statue at the Metropolitan museum. Apparently for TV/airplane/otherwise age-restricted versions of this R-rated film, they had to cut that opening shot, despite the fact that the statue was right there at the front of the museum for anyone walking in front of it to see.

As an American of a conservative stripe I would definitely object if my children were shown depictions of genitalia as Kindergartners, and wouldn't really feel "fine" about it until they were, I dunno, maybe 10 or 11? It's just not what you do. You don't show kids penises!

Certainly Americans are more "prudish" about this than other cultures, but that doesn't change anything about the hypothetical, since it was directed at Americans with hypothetical American kindergartners. Things may be changing in certain subcultures, but generally in American culture genitals mean sex and its taboo to combine children and sex. From this cultural mindset the difference between showing a 5 year old a picture of a marble penis and showing them hardcore pornography is one of degree, not kind.

All that to say that the comment that we're not going to show the statue to kindergartners is plausibly just that obvious to the average American.

but generally in American culture genitals mean sex and its taboo to combine children and sex

How do you do toilet training with your kids if genitals mean sex and a taboo with regards to children? Besides, how does the statue with a penis become okay at 10 but not at 6 years old? They are still very much kids right?

I'm confused. Why would toilet training require showing my children other people's genitals? I'm genuinely confused here.

My understanding was that not only showing genitals but just generally talking about them was taboo since culturally genitals mean sex according to the OP. Besides, when I was a small kid I remember peeing together with my dad or older cousins and everyone thought this was pretty normal. We had contests between cousins of who can pee the farthest. It was fun. I didn't start associating genitals with anything other peeing until much later.

Ah, that makes sense. I only have girls myself so I forgot peeing with my dad to learn how to do it without making a mess.

Really, now that I consider that, I think the main taboo is against girls seeing male genitals, and vice versa.

How do you do toilet training with your kids if genitals mean sex and a taboo with regards to children?

Presumably one would not employ a real or photographed demo penis during toilet training. I think keeping the kid's focus on their own penis is good enough. Thankfully, in the Elmo book/video that was popular when my kids were learning how to become civilized, Elmo was not hanging dong.

Besides, how does the statue with a penis become okay at 10 but not at 6 years old? They are still very much kids right?

If we can agree that older kids are better at contextualization than younger kids, I think that answers your question. Anyway, these questions are irrelevant.

Do you never do things like bath with your children when they're young? Or do you always wear bathing suits even at home? I have to admit I find the attitude genuinely puzzling, I don't want to make fun of you, I just don't even get how you manage to avoid them seeing nudity until a certain age. Many children's books here include nude people. If anything, there is the problem that older kids are more likely to associate nudity with sex so you show less nudity around them, while with small children your main problem will be that they think pulling or pinching your penis is funny when they see your reaction.

Do you never do things like bath with our children when they're young?

Never! That sounds bizarre to me. Definitely taboo. Fully grown penises should not be floating next to toddlers.

I don't want to make fun of you, I just don't even get how you manage to avoid them seeing nudity until a certain age.

You can be nude around a baby, but once they're smart enough to start talking you treat them like other people. Do you walk around nude in public? Maybe you do, but that isn't done here. With our oldest I remember the day that my wife scolded me for letting our toddler see me on the toilet. She was about 2 years old, I think.

An important piece of context that might be missing is that gender really matters. My wife can be naked around our young daughters, that's not taboo. If we had young sons I could be naked around them, though it's not something you'd do casually. But in my America little girls shouldn't be looking at adult penises. It's taboo.

With our oldest I remember the day that my wife scolded me for letting our toddler see me on the toilet. She was about 2 years old, I think.

Ha, I guess the only constant is that we all get scolded by our wifes. I just want to sit on the toilet in peace, but both her and our daughter constantly come in for various reasons and if I complain I'm scolded for being silly, it's not like there's anything they haven't seen a million times before!

You can be nude around a baby, but once they're smart enough to start talking you treat them like other people. Do you walk around nude in public? Maybe you do, but that isn't done here.

Come on, "we treat our children like adult strangers" is hardly a generalising conservative principle, if anything it's usually progressives that are often criticised for that. I'm also neither changing the diapers of other people nor am I scolding them for improper manners and in general I will keep my distance, both emotionally and physically. Intra-family behaviour is just something else entirely from public behaviour. Also, we have public nude beaches here, although they are fringe they also aren't looked down upon, so I guess our culture in general is more comfortable with nudity and less sexualised.

Come on, "we treat our children like adult strangers" is hardly a generalising conservative principle, if anything it's usually progressives that are often criticised for that.

Oh I don't think any of this is a generalized conservative principle. I'm not saying this is how it should be, just how it is in conservative American culture. At least, my corner of it. I'm describing, not prescribing.

That referred to the "Do you walk around nude in public?". No, and I do not consider my behaviour around strangers to have much bearing on how I behave around family.

That was more from pre-emptively avoiding answering questions that I was not sure to answer but when I was bathing with 2 year old sister (making mini-water park in bathroom) I was wearing bathing suit (I was 18 years old at that time).

I have to wonder if Donald Rumsfeld's (I think it was him?) practice during Bush 2 of covering up breasts of statues when he was speaking in front of them had downstream effects I didn't anticipate.

It was John Ashcroft, of the Justice Dept.

I'm an American and I have a young child. I don't suppose any schools are going to be showing him artistic nudity at a young age, but I would not object to it. If we walk by statues or Renaissance paintings I'm not going to be concerned for his wellbeing.

These three parents are unreasonably prudish in my opinion.

Allegedly, one set was prudish, but the other two were more offended that they weren’t informed. I could see that as bandwagoning, looking for something to give them leverage. It could actually be a product of DeSantis’ strategy of getting parental consent into curricula. The much-maligned bill did emphasize parental notification and vetoes.

I don't think it's just classic American 'prudishness' about nudity. Only 1/50 parents actually objected to nudity being shown (the other two objected to not being informed) and as soon as he's interviewed the Board Chair goes off about larger theoretical issues of parental rights and how they're definitely not showing David to kindergartners (it was sixth graders). In a normal political environment an art teacher failing to send out a permission slip they normally send for something like David doesn't seem like such an organizational failure you'd need to fire the school principal.

My guess is there was a long standing disagreement between this principal and the School Board Chair and he seized on an insignificant pretext to oust the principle. Or, this chair board is so into right wing education politics that he kind of jumped at the chance to do something and overreacted to a pretty minor incident. The left isn't the only group capable of purity signaling or expensive signals of ingroup loyalty. I would expect some overly censorious decisions about what minors should see to emerge from right wing educational institutions, even if it leads to ironic results like a "Classical School" not showing David.

Only 1/50 parents actually objected to nudity being shown (the other two objected to not being informed)

You (and others) talk like these are entirely disjoint concerns, but how separate are they really? Why is informing the parents required in this case in a way it isn't with, say, multiplication tables? Maybe it's a failure of imagination, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a plausible answer that isn't rooted in what some posters are calling "American prudishness".

Is there some alternative to parents getting to decide whether their children should see nudity, that you favor?

Because the only alternative I can think of is "parents shouldn't get to decide whether their children should see nudity". Yet you've carefully avoided claiming that. Do you just have no idea whatsoever about the subject?

Well, what I want to know can be rephrased as "what's so special about nudity"? I mean, surely they see themselves without clothes all the time, and lots of other cultures, and not weird fargroup ones but familiar European ones, don't have these hangups according to other posters. It sounds like you're presupposing an answer to that, and indeed an answer you can't even seem to imagine anyone disagreeing with.

I don't really have an answer, beyond that "kids are property" is a nonstarter.

I don't think that really changes my response. Either parents get to decide (at least sometimes) if their children should see nudity, or they don't. If you're going to ask what's so special about nudity, that's still going to imply one of those two answers. If you don't know what's special about nudity, then you don't know whether parents should get to decide if their children should see it. Is this really something you don't know?

Of course, the answer is that nudity is related to sex. And even though some nudity isn't very sexual, there's a range of examples, some more related to sex than others, and some which are 1/3 sexual and 2/3 something else, and some which are sexual and horrific, and some which may not have been meant as sexual but which may cause the child to react sexually, or which may have been provided by the teacher because the teacher was deliberately pushing the envelope about how sexy it could be. It's a matter of judgment-and parents are the ones to make the judgment calls.

(I hope your response will not be "what's so special about sex".)

lots of other cultures, and not weird fargroup ones but familiar European ones, don't have these hangups

Even the Europeans won't allow nudity to be seen by children with no restrictions. (The French dub of Ranma 1/2 censored out nudity.)

I literally don't care how charter schools are run because everyone who attends has the option to leave and find a school they like better. Of course the media is going to find every story that's even remotely controversial about charter schools and shout it from the hilltops because they support keeping kids in public schools which are controlled by their allies (the teachers unions) and stick to the party line.

They don't have pronoun badges? They don't put pronouns in their email signatures? They don't use trans people's preferred pronouns?

Probably all of those things. It's pretty clear to me what he's trying to say even if he didn't phrase it well.

Personally, I think it's just typical American prudishness. In other Western countries, it is perfectly normal and unremarkable for statues with exposed penises and breasts (non-pornographic, of course) to be displayed in public, where they are easily seen by children of all ages.

It's perfectly normal in America too.

Personally, I think it's just typical American prudishness. In other Western countries, it is perfectly normal and unremarkable for statues with exposed penises and breasts (non-pornographic, of course) to be displayed in public, where they are easily seen by children of all ages.

This really seems to follow from a century-spanning argument over the appropriateness of not-obviously-sexual nudity. People say this is American, but the European debate over fig leaves in art goes back at least as far as the Reformation. The plaster cast of David at the Victoria and Albert Museum had a fig leaf covering the bits in the Victorian era.

Are these complaints coming from right-wingers or those on the left? Some definitely seem like false flag attacks trying to play gotcha. An old Italian statue isn’t controversial as porn. Elsewhere some have tried to brand the Bible as fail as a gotcha. Porn of course is hard to define which is the issue with these laws.

Pronouns are obviously. It means penis people are masculine and those without are feminine and not the 50 other or reverse pronoun or specifically announcing your pronouns. Non of the new religion pronouns.

An old Italian statue isn’t controversial as porn.

Multiple commenters here seem to disagree, and I would be very surprised if they were all false flags.

3/50 parents of the students at the Tallahassee Classical school objected and then the School Board Chair fired the school principal and talked about the importance of parental rights in the interview. Board Chair seems to have turned a molehill into a mountain and he doesn't seem like a liberal in the interview. My guess is parents who enroll their kids in a "classical" charter school lean right.

My guess is parents who enroll their kids in a "classical" charter school lean right.

In my experience, like catholic school, it is a mix.

A ‘classical’ charter school is usually aimed at conservative Christians.

Seems like A: ‘don’t tell your parents’ was the real reason for the firing and B: images of the statue of David with the uncircumcised bit covered up are readily available.

David is uncircumcised

Unironically how is this not considered antisemitic?

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I think it’s more he was basing it off Greek statues hence the tiny uncircumcised penis.

The penis is small because David is supposed to be nervous/scared.

Wasn't a small penis also a Greek ideal? I seem to recall that large and erect penises were associated with satyrs, wild barbarians, and otherwise be a way of telling observers, "This is a wild, uncultured idiot."

I always knew I was was sophisticated! I just need to go to Greece and start showing people my dick!

The Ancient Greeks really were smart. Consolation for those who need it, "You are a wild beastly specimen of a man" for those who don't.

Alas, only ancient Greece. From my experience modern Greeks favor biggus dickus as much as the next person.

I have some news for you about the 16th century.

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