‘No-Touching’ Rules At School Are Evil

One of the things that bothers me about society’s obsession with child predators is how it criminalizes or otherwise denigrates normal and healthy ways of interacting with children. This story out of Canada is both horrifying and inspiring.

Apparently there is this awesome music teacher called Maestro Uwe Lieflander. Parents love him for his engaging teaching style and the results it produces in the children who are under his instruction. One father said he’d heard good things about the instructor but was “gobsmacked” when his son said that while he liked the first and second movements of Moonlight Sonata, he definitely favored the third. His 6-year-old son asked if they could put “Mr. Beethoven’s” Rage Over A Lost Penny on the MP3 player. And they they “burst into a harmonic version of Jubilata Deo.” This father got a chance to watch him in action and says that Lieflander places equal import on music and discipline.

Sounds like the perfect music teacher, right?

Well, it all came to a brutal halt because of a complaint over Lieflander’s “hands-on” approach. And rather than agree to abide a “no touching” policy, Lieflander said he didn’t want to participate in a culture of fear where touching of children is not allowed.

AMEN.

“My teaching involves a tactile approach,” he told CBC News. “I don’t want to take part in a growing culture of fear that is creating a very sterile teaching environment.”

This guy has taught more than 14,000 children throughout Ontario.

What is the grievous error he’s made? Well, there are the games of tag to relax the students. And there’s the touching of the head and sternum to teach proper singing techniques.

What a joke. But kudos to Lieflander for standing up against these policies. There is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with an adult touching a child. The inability to distinguish between proper and improper touch is a failure of people who enact these stupid policies and its time we say “enough!”