Michelangelo may just be one of the greatest sculptors in the history of the world. He was contracted to create, in 1501, a huge male figure for the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. He chose to create a young David from the Old Testament that was literally larger than life at 17 feet tall. The Sculpture is by scholars is stated to be technically perfect. The work was intended for the Cathedral but Michelangelo’s work was so magnificent that a commission of his contemporaries was formed to find a more prominent place for the piece of art to viewed. It was decided to be placed in front of the entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio as a symbol of the Florence Republic. Do you know what this perfect Piece of Art is considered in Florida? Pornography!

Principal Hope Carrasaquilla of the Tallahassee Classical School was given the Ultimatum of the Schools Board to resign or be fired. Carrasaquilla was not told the reason she was asked to resigned but believed it was related to the complaints over the lesson that included Michelangelo’s David. In an interview with the US outlet Slate, the School Board Chair said last year the principal sent a notice to parents indicating students were to be engaged in a lesson that would include the sculpture, Michelangelo’s David. This year he said that did not happen and was an egregious mistake and indicated parents are entitled to know anytime their child is being taught a controversial topic and picture. One of the “greatest work of art in the world, that was commissioned for the Church, and put on display for the world to appreciated is a controversial piece of work? That threw me for a loop. Even for Florida I thought that was pretty outlandish. I did a search for the Tallahassee Classical School and they bill themselves as “THE CLASSICAL ADVANTAGE”, Tallahassee Classical School is “training minds and Improving hearts of young people through a content-rich classical education in the liberal arts and sciences with the instruction in the principles of moral character and civic virtue”. You would look at that statement I would expect the work of art like Michelangelo’s would be taught and be reviewed yearly. “One of the most perfect sculptures” in the world has to be one of our more important classical pieces of art. To call it a controversial piece of art is not giving a student a content-rich classical education it is giving the student a very shallow closed-minded education. You bill yourself as a classical education then treat the greatest classics ever created as pornography. That is how I would define deplorable.

We are going to have a real problem in education if we keep letting the Conservatives push us in the direction of what I would consider ignorance. Representative Julia Letlow from Louisiana introduced the so called “parent’s bill of rights” which was approved by the House and was a largely party-line vote. This bill argues parents deserve more transparency from their schools and more of a say in what their children are taught. I find this very scary stuff. I find that there are very few parents that I feel are qualified to make any decision on what a child should be taught in our schools. In Florida we have the anti-woke legislation where a teacher can’t teach any subject that would make a child uncomfortable about his race. That wipes out pretty much all of history. If a minority of parents gain control of your school system you could have creationism being taught in our public schools. We would have teachers being told that they had to teach that the world was only 6000 years old. Art would be more than likely gone. The creativity of our young minds would be squashed and free thinking would be outlawed. Our schools would no longer be a real place of education; it will truly be a place where the government and communities groom our children. That has been tried before in history. Where it is tried the most is in Fascists and Communist countries. China and the Soviet Union for a couple of examples. The greatest example is Nazi Germany and the Hitler Youth. An organization was set up by Adolf Hitler in 1933 for the education and training of male youth in the Nazi principles. By 1935 almost 60 percent of the German boys were members of the Hitler Youths. On July 1 1936, it became expected that all young Aryan Germans to join. Not to leave out the girls, there was also League of German Girls that trained for comradeship, domestic duties and motherhood. Is this what is in our future? Remember that the Nazi movement started more as a local movement to help create the national movement. The Brown Shirt of Hitler’s are more like our local illegal militias like the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers that try and intimidate our local government and schools systems, in my opinion.

The Waukesha School district has now banned a 1^st grade Music concert to sing the song “Rainbow Land” that was originally sung as duet by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton. I have to say that Dolly Parton is one of the most respected women on the planet. The song was considered too controversial for it to be sung in the concert. Those lyrics, I guess, that are objectionable are “Living in a Rainbowland where you and I go hand in hand. Oh, I’d be lying if I said this was fine. All the hurt and the hate going on here We are rainbows, me and you. Every color, every hue. Lets shine on through. Together, we can start living in a Rainbowland.” Now I read those lyrics and I don’t find anything objectionable. I think that it is lovely sediment but then I not paranoid about Gay people lurking around every tree to pervert our children. I don’t see any race of people as a threat against the American way of life. It is a song with a message but it is not a song that is meant to groom our children. In fact our Schools don’t groom Gay children at all. They never had. Society looks for things to blame when it comes to the Gay community and, alternative lifestyles. Our schools should be a place where our children can safely learn about the real world and are prepared to face the challenges of the real world not just how a group thinks the world should be. Alternative lifestyle are part of the real world.

Our children are exposed to more things today at a much earlier age than I ever was. There is so much information out there that is not being controlled by the schools or the homes. It is all part of the Information Systems Technology that has taken over all of our lives. We no longer have just TV and Radio like I had when I was a child. We have all the information that we can handle at the touch of our fingers. We can stream just about anything today. Being a parent and monitoring what our children is watching is a hundred times harder than when I was a child. Back in the 50s my parents would not let us watch the 3 Stooges because they thought that it was too violent and that we would emulate their actions. That is all pretty mild when compared to what children can be exposed today. A couple of years ago I was watching my two younger grandchildren and they were playing on their Ipads. I thought that I would check out what they were looking at and what I saw shocked me. They were watching Slender Man videos on YouTube. He is that evil character that those girls in Wisconsin tried to commit murder for. That was not appropriate stuff for a young teenager to be watching let alone a 7 year old child. I of course put a stop to it but that is just an example of some of the evil that is lurking to influence our Children. On Sports Center this morning and I saw an E Harmony commercial of two young men sharing a scooter and looking at each other very lovingly. You can tell that the commercial was there to attract the Gay community. I am not saying that it is wrong but I am saying that it is exposing our children to an alternate lifestyle that exists whether we like it or not. All these things make being a parent that much harder and if parents are not doing their job in answering the question that our young children ask then they are just going to bring them to the schools. We have to stop punishing our Schools and our Teachers for the things that children are being exposed to everyday almost everywhere.

I have always said that education starts a home. The most important job for a parent, in my opinion, is to give your children the thirst for knowledge and the truth. Those two things are lacking in too many homes today.