TEACHER USED NAZI RANKS

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30738, 30 April 1965, Page 11

TEACHER USED NAZI RANKS

(By

MELVIN SUFRIN,

Special

Correspondent, N.Z.P.A.)

TORONTO, April 27.

The case of a Roman Catholic teaching brother who used Nazi military ranks and pictures of Adolf Hitler to “stimulate” his pupils has blown up into a lively controversy in French Canada.

The Catholic School Commission of Montreal suspended 22-year-old Brother Rene Lahaie, a first-year teacher, for the rest of the school year and removed two of his superiors from their jobs. But after the initial shock, some of those who originally condemned the teacher are having second thoughts. An argument has arisen over whether the commission should have acted summarily, and it now has agreed to reconsider its action. The furore was touched off in March when newspaper reporters were tipped that curious teaching methods were being used in a Grade seven class at Ecole de la Mennais, a Roman Catholic public school for French-speaking children. On the walls of the classroom they found swastikas and drawings of Hitler along-

side pictures of Jesus Christ. A wall chart indicated that pupils had been given military ranks ranging from private and corporal to commandant and S.S. (the initials of Hitler’s elite guard). Photographs of the classroom appeared in newspapers next day along with statements by Lahaie and Brother Hector Asselin, the 39-year-old school director.

The men explained that the youngsters were not being taught Nazi doctrine but merely the instincts of competition and that Hitler was just being used as a symbol of leadership. Lahaie said the pupils had been taught to click their heels, salute and chorus “Heil Christ” as a means of dramatising their role as “soldiers of Jesus.”

“Hitler and Jesus had many qualities in common, such as courage, tenacity, leadership and the love of work. Besides, Hitler was a military leader and children at that age (11) love that sort of thing." Lahaie added that “Hitler is to Christ as shadow is to light,” meaning that while both had great talents. Hitler misused his while Christ put his to good purposes. Brother Asselin, who has 20 years’ teaching experience, said the aim was to stimulate pupils, some of whom were bright but lazy, and added that the teaching results were excellent.

The first reaction of news-

papers was almost unanimous condemnation. The Canadian Jewish Congress said it was “astounded” such thing could happen in 1965, and the powerful Montreal Labour Council demanded strong action against Lahaie, Asselin and Antonio Girard, the 59-year-

old district school board supervisor. The school commission, responsible for public education of French- and English-speak-ing Catholics who represent a majority of the pupils in Montreal, met on April 2. After a 75-minute meeting it announced suspension of Lahaie because of his “naive and certainly very imprudent” teaching methods. Asselin and Girard were dismissed for not taking action when informed of what Lahaie was doing.

But the fact that the commission acted without giving the three an opportunity to explain has stirred criticism, and a number of prominent teaching organisations in the province of Quebec have demanded the case be reopened. Claude Ryan, publisher of the influential French-langu-age Montreal newspaper, “Le Devoir,” is one who came out for reconsideration. He calls the punishment excessive. “At no time was there any question of Nazi indoctrina-

tion or of the spreading of an ideology in this case,” Ryan

wrote in an editorial. “In Brother Lahaie’s scheme of things. Hitler served only one purpose—as the personifica-

tion of evil, of a man’s perverted use of the talents God gave him.” Ryan added that Lahaie said he did not know the significance the Nazis attached to the “three top degrees of excellence derived from Nazi organisations.” Another who sides with Lahaie is Francois-Albert Angers, the prominent Quebec economist, who dismisses the affair as “an immense journalistic fraud.” He not only wants Lahaie returned to the classroom but demands that the French-language Jouralists’ Union set up a court to judge the reporters who wrote the story. Among those who disagree is the English-language “Toronto Star" which said editorially: “This is a clear

case of Fascist methods in operation, even if the object was to instil admiration for Jesus.” “Defenders of Brother Lahaie try to whitewash his teaching by saying there was no question of Nazi indoctrination. But his Nazi system of organising and inspiring the youngsters under him could condition their attitudes long after they left school

“His apologists claim he used the Nazi symbols innocently. But if a man who teaches children does not know that they are the symbols of the vilest evil that has visited this earth in the 20th century, he has no place in a Canadian classroom."