Rouen, France – A high school English teacher in Rouen, France who began classes this morning by asking students to observe a moment of silence this morning in memory of Mohamed Merah, who died yesterday after a standoff with French police in Toulouse, was suspended as per the request of Luc Chatel, France’s Minister of Education.
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A disciplinary panel will meet to determine whether the Department of Education will impose sanctions on the fifty six year old teacher, which could include being banned from teaching. A representative of the teachers’ union described the teacher as “a colleague who has health concerns and is fragile.”
According to French news site Le Express, the teacher called for the memorial, saying that that Merah was a “victim” and that any links between Merah and Al Qaeda had been invented by the media and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who requested a moment’s silence in schools all across France on Tuesday in memory of the victims of the Toulouse shooting. Fifteen out of twenty students in the class reportedly left the class to express their indignation and immediately wrote a letter to the headmaster to notify him of their concerns. According to published reports, one student who stayed in the classroom said that after the incident, the teacher, who has thirty two years experience, said that she was not well and might be in need of some time off.
Reports on French news site Paris-Normandie say that the teacher described Merah as “the victim of an unhappy childhood.” One parent, who hopes that the teacher will be dismissed said that if she is kept on, “I give permission for my daughter to boycott English classes until the end of the year.”
The school’s headmaster called today’s events “a sad incident” and said that an investigation into the matter is currently underway.
Luc Chatel, the Minister of Education condemned the teacher’s actions calling her actions “unspeakable” and requested that she be suspended immediately. A statement released by the Ministry of Education expressing his outrage, called for disciplinary actions to be taken against the teacher saying, “”this act alone does not obscure the dignity shown by the school as a whole throughout the week: honoring the victims of the killer of Toulouse.”
A Facebook page entitled “Homage to Mohamen Merah (Toulouse) was closed yesterday by the Ministry of Interior. An estimated four hundred and thirty five peopled had liked the page before it was disabled.
This “teacher” should be fired immediately.
He should be investigated if he is not linked to terrorists.
give credit to the 15 who left the class
He had an unhappy childhood, there was little food, they only had bread once a day with thin thin soup. Wha Wha. My heart cries for them. What about the people in the Holocaust who as children were beaten, starved, tortured, work to death, and the one’s who survived built a new life with family, children and businesses. Stop your whining and get your own act together. Nobody owes anybody anything including your parents don’t own you a cent. The more you give people freebees the more they will demand. Free housing, food stamps, free education, free clothes, etc etc etc etc. There is no thing as a free lunch. Get off you back side and get going instead of blaming everything on the whole world.
Methinks Mr. Flaubert was the one with the unhappy childhood…and adulthood.
There are no answers or insights as to how to deal with this type of unabashed anti-semitism. As Jews, what can we possibly do in the face of such open hatred against us? Their hatred is irrational and, therefore, we can’t “fight” it using rational methods. It seems obvious to me that the only answer is tefilah and teshuva.
Absolutely applaud those who left and will boycott the class.
“A Facebook page entitled “Homage to Mohamen Merah (Toulouse) was closed yesterday by the Ministry of Interior. An estimated four hundred and thirty five peopled had liked the page before it was disabled”.
Could not be better. Now the Police can investigate these 435 “people” and put them on a “watch list”; or if children, then an opportunity to investigate the parents OR the schools to which they go.
Shabbat Shalom
Chaim
Toronto
Fire the teacher!! Give additional assignments, on “Terrorism” to the ones who praised the “animal”!!
Everyday the words of Rav Kahane HY”D echo true. When will we heed?
How would she feel if it had been her child(ren) or three of her students plus her were killed by this animal? Would her feelings still be that the shooter was a “victim”? Obviously, she doesn’t realize that she would have been next on his agenda…her not being a Muslim…or maybe she is one and that’s why she sympathizes with him! This is a wakeup call to everyone in the universe what the Arab-Muslim agenda is—-Sharia Law and everyone must be a Muslim.
When this teacher leaves education, she can always find a job in the EU foreign policy department where her comments will be welcomed.
The teacher said: “…“the victim of an unhappy childhood.”
This is probably true of the teacher himself…anyway…all those ‘lefties’ who won’t use the word ‘terrorist’ at all are living in ‘Yemot HaMoshiach.’
They don’t feel there’s real evil left in the world…everybody has a good reason for the bad things they do.