A David vs. Goliath clash of artistic taste and parental choice | Bill Cotterell

When my son went to Buck Lake Elementary School, and I was a Capitol reporter, I offered to get the school signed up for the now-defunct “Newspapers in Education” program so teachers could use the Tallahassee Democrat as a learning tool.

That would be terrific, his teacher said, but could we wait a few weeks until President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky got off the front page? The staff couldn’t discuss the “how” of impeachment without delving into the “why” for fourth graders.

Their moms and dads probably wouldn’t have liked that, either, but maybe classroom choices were easier 25 years ago. Now, teachers have to figure out, somehow, not only what their students are ready to learn, but what stuff might need a trigger warning for easily offended parents.

Florida is being roundly ridiculed for the forced resignation of a principal at Tallahassee Classical School, which failed to give parents two weeks’ warning that a photo of Michelangelo’s sculpture David was going to be shown in an art presentation. Three parents complained — two because they didn’t get the warning and one who considered the famous nude obscene — and board chairman Barney Bishop told Principal Hope Carrasquilla she could resign or be dismissed.

Bishop said there were other performance problems over several months, not just the David incident. But perhaps the board should show some spine and tell irate parents to find another charter school if they want teachers to clear every artistic image with some modern-day Savonarola.

Perhaps students, even in elementary school, know the difference between Renaissance art and porn — and if they don’t, maybe lessons like this will teach them that difference. The purpose here is to educate the children and, unfortunately, some facts sometimes make some people squeamish.

More:Tallahassee principal ousted after complaints about Michelangelo's 'David' in art lesson

Sorry, but they’ll get over it.

But we’ll never see everyone agree in matters of taste. Many TV news reports picked up the Democrat’s story about Tallahassee Classical — but digitally blurred out the naught bits, or cropped photos of David so’s not to make anybody blush.

I’ve known Barney Bishop for a couple decades and he’s neither a blue-nosed prude nor a redneck yahoo. He’s a conservative guy who knows what kind of charter school he chairs, and he realizes that — as he said in a few interviews last week — parental choices and voices are “supreme” in this DeSantis era of public education.

Tallahassee Classical has used the photo of David in lessons before and will again. Parents will be forewarned, so they can pull their kids from the classroom if they think they’ll somehow grow up blissfully unaware of human anatomy.

Ay, there’s the rub, to quote a classic line those students might encounter if their parents let them read Shakespeare someday. The problem is not whether David is porn — it’s not — but whether a school that holds itself forth as a classical academy should let parents impose their personal tastes, even their moral strictures, on the next generation. Should teachers keep rosters for every class — this book is OK for these kids, we need to excuse those students when discussing civil rights, that boy’s parents don’t want him hearing about vaccines….?

It’s comforting that Bishop said almost all the Tallahassee Classical parents had no problem with the sculpture, even if they did wish the school had provided the advance notice.

And there are reasonable concerns of age-appropriate and common-sense considerations. You wouldn’t want little kids hearing George Carlin’s comedy routine about “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television,” which might be OK for a high school discussion of censorship and evolving standards of taste.

But where to draw the line? If David requires a parental warning, how about Picasso’s Guernica? Is a biblical figure, nude, contemplating a distant horizon too much for elementary students, then at what grade can they see helpless Basque peasants being bombed by the Luftwaffe?

No one, not even little kids, has a right to go through life perpetually un-offended. No one is suggesting obscene materials should be used in any public school but, if some materials go farther than some parents like, they can explain it to their kids without saddling teachers with the requirement of trigger warnings.

Many TV programs have an advisory like, “The following program contains scenes that may be upsetting to some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.” The school ought to give parents such a warning at the start of the school year, then let the teachers teach.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Tallahassee Democrat capitol reporter and columnist.

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: A David vs. Goliath clash of artistic taste and parental choice | Bill Cotterell