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‘The Simpsons’ credited for predicting fate of Florida principal forced over Michelangelo’s ‘David’

Once again, The Simpsons are being credited for predicting a future dumpster fire.

Case in point: a 1990 episode of the animated Fox comedy depicted an angry mob of people protesting the planned exhibition of Michelangelo’s David in Springfield. “It’s filth,” a woman tells Marge. “It graphically portrays parts of the human body, which practical as they may be, are evil.”

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Flash forward to this week, when a Florida charter school principal says she was forced to resign after some parents complained about their sixth grade students seeing a picture of David in class. It all unfolded at Tallahassee Classical, which bases its curriculum on the conservative and Christian Hillsdale College in Michigan.

According to The Washington Post, the charter schools that rely on Hillsdale’s curriculum are supposed to teach Renaissance art to sixth graders, which includes the statue of David. But Barney Bishop III, the chair of the school board, told reporters that parents — two, to be exact — complained that they were given no advance warning of the lesson. Another nitpicked about the teacher calling it “nonpornography.”

“We have a practice,” Bishop told Slate. “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.”

Anyway, a savvy connoisseur of pop culture pointed out on social media that The Simpsons depicted (predicted?) people losing their $#@! over David. See below.

Maybe the school should follow The Simpsons‘ lead and cover David’s bottom half in jeans?

“We’re not going to show the full statue of David to kindergartners,” Bishop continued with Slate. “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.”

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