School choirmaster quits after complaint over hands-on approach

By Sarah Boesveld

OTTAWA, ON — Put your child in Uwe Lieflander’s choir and he’ll
hold her hand, fix her posture and dig his fingers under her
ribcage to show her how to breathe.

The Ottawa choir director may also lift her off the ground in a
game of tag, which they’ll play with other children at evening
practices, parents watching from the sidelines.

A recent game of tag, however, put an end to the Ottawa Catholic
School Board’s choir program after a parent complained about Mr.
Lieflander. He quit, saying he refuses to be part of a “culture of
fear” that prohibits teachers from touching children at all.

His departure from the pilot program has not only devastated
many of the 1,700 elementary school participants and their parents,
it has also raised questions about hands-off policies in schools
and whether they go too far.

“I, being on the outside have always said to myself ‘I will go
into the school, but I will not take part in this fear culture,’ ”
Mr. Lieflander said on Thursday. “If the [circumstance] of the
moment requires me to give a hug or requires me to pump the
diaphragm or straighten shoulders or to hold a child to make them
safe, then I will.”

No one has ever complained about his hands-on approach in his 13
years of running the Sparrows children’s choir program through the
Sacred Music Society in Ottawa.