Censorship comes in all shapes and sizes, so let’s start with the odd case of David’s willy. It happened earlier this year in Tallahassee Florida in a private secondary school — Tallahassee Classical — which aims to give its pupils a “content-rich classical education in the liberal arts and sciences, with instruction in the principles of moral character and civic virtue”.
In accordance with that rather precious ethos the children in sixth grade (11 to 12-year-olds) were given a lesson which looked at Renaissance art. Some of that art depicted the unclothed human form, including Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (nude, rising from a shell), Michelangelo’s David (nude, holding a slingshot) and the same artist’s “Creation of Adam” from the Sistine Chapel. Adam too is nude, having just been created. You will recall that he was naked until his and Eve’s ejection from Paradise.
