(ANSA) - ROME, MARCH 24 - During a lesson on Renaissance art, students in a class of the Classical School in Tallahassee, Florida, were shown images of some of Michelangelo's masterpieces, including the statue of David and the fresco of the Creation of Adam on the vault of the Sistine Chapel.
Shortly thereafter, abruptly, the president of the board of directors of the institution offered the principal, Hope Carrasquilla, two options: immediate resignation from office or dismissal outright.
Without explanations.
Suspicious, she turned to the press - reports the New York Post today - to denounce her treatment and advanced the suspicion that the cause of her were precisely the Michelangelo-esque male nude images shown to the children.
And he was right: Barney Bishop, the president of the Tallahassee Classical School, where art history is a compulsory part of the teaching curriculum, admitted to the New YorkPost that as many as three parents protested: in two cases for not having been warned in advance of the "controversial" contents "of the lesson, in a third the pupil's mother even accused the school of "pornography", saying she was "shocked" that her son "had to see those images".
Bishop said that, according to school regulations, teachers are required to notify any "controversial" instructional content two weeks in advance.
"Parental rights are paramount and this is to protect the interests of all families," Bishop told the press.
I am "really saddened," commented principal and teacher Carrasquilla, who has only been at the school for two years.
Tallahassee Classical School is affiliated with the conservative Hillsdale College of Michigan.
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