To feel sorry for this teacher

[limestrawberry]

Teacher sets homework to write a suicide note, based on Macbeth.

Terribly, terribly ill judged and misguided. But surely an apology is enough rather than this making the national press.

Bloody hell. That's terrible.

The Scum carry the same article word for word. On the complaints page linked to by Leanne there is an "add publication" button.

I do love it when I can complain about the Scum

I will too, leanne

So have they been asked to write their own suicide note? (stupidly crass/of no educational merit) or as Lady Macbeth's which is writing in role having committed regicide & being culpable of other murderous deeds?

If the latter the task shows understanding of character/theme & recall of quotation which is necessary for the exam. However, the task needs tweaking. Macbeth writes to his wife earlier in the play and now presumably the idea is she - cut off from him - writes back. No need to call it a suicide note although, if set having read Act 4 and you know the play, it would be. But hardly triggering if writing in role unless you've got regicide, a host of other nefarious murders & a bit a baby brain dashing under your belt.

Shakespeare, the texts at GCSE & much of adult literature deals with frightening and socially taboo subjects as a way of making such subjects explainable & less frightening.

I can't get too aerated by this [shrug]. I can remember a Lutterworth exam invigilator getting the now Poet Laureate's 'Education for Leisure' banned as she thought it glorified knife crime. The stupid bint didn't understand it did exactly the opposite, as 300,000 GCSE students could attest.

I don't at all feel sorry for the teacher at all. What a stupid and misguided homework! I think there are better ways to deal with issues like suicide than walking in the shoes of a mentally ill person.

Beverely have you RTFT?

The teacher asked them to write in character which is entirely different to them writing their own suicide note which is what the Telegraph article implies.

Obviously suicide is a terrible thing but in the case of Lady M, who discusses bashing her baby's brains out early in the play she's not exactly sympathetic!

Writing in character is still a bit weird. I read it as though the teacher had asked them to write a personal suicide note to their loved ones saying goodbye, which is undeniably savage.

I retract my previous comment, that article was written weirdly and I'd been swayed by the sub-heading.

Still slightly odd homework though. LM had serious mental illness, you can't really 'get into her head' without a background in psychology. Cool character, though.

The article got to me. I slit my wrists aged 13 and having to write a suicide note as homework would've have messed me up further.

True. Naive.

But if she's going to stray into the topic of mental illness she needs to think this through.

The kids may write about how she felt guilty about killing Duncan and being followed by a forest (spoiler alert) but it's more than that. It&s a chemical imbalance in the brain which was unknown about in those times and therefore help wasn't available.

Asking them to write about how LM could've dealt with her illness today would be better.

It's not inappropriate. They are studying English, not psychology

So a typical homework might have looked like: dear Macbeth, I am sorry but I can no longer live with myself knowing my encouraging you to kill Duncan resulted in the death of lady Macduff, her children and who knows how many others? I thought I was so strong; I thought it was fun to play at being evil and feel cruel and powerful as men do every day. I imagined I heard a raven laughing as Duncan entered our castle. O how powerful I felt! Now all has gone wrong ...

Writing something like that has NOTHING to do with teenagers slitting their wrists. Not even a tenuous link.

I slit my wrists aged 13 and having to write a suicide note as homework would've have messed me up further

If you slit your wrists at 13, then you probably would have had issues with studying most of Shakespeare's texts. Can't opt out of getting an education because you tried to kill yourself - you need to get help and develop strategies to help you overcome your previous issues.

Diary entries / writing in character are tasks that have been set since the dawn of time. They aren't just limited to English either - I was always writing diary entries of historical characters!

Yes but respectfully just because you wouldn't set it doesn't mean there is something inherently wrong with students being asked to do it.

Now I can't think of a Shakespeare tragedy that doesn't feature suicide you know

Are you the teacher concerned Lime?

If not why are you getting so worked up?

They'd be nothing to write about if we ruled out sex suicide tragedy etc

What's left? Disney?

I'm not worked up

Can we not discuss anything without stupid and childish accusations being flung around.

It is an English class, not a psychology class and anyway you can't glibly decide a fictional character has a mental illness. It is a text to be interpreted and that can be done in many different ways, you could consider she had an illness or was inherently evil or clear sighted and ambitious but let down by her status as a woman and a weak husband. The 16 year old young adults can interpret her mental state and motives in any number of ways. That is literature for you - it is many faceted and deep, not a simple 'she was ill'.

To be fair, Disney is far more disturbing than Shakespeare.

Can we no longer have a discussion without resorting to accusations?
Obviously the op must be the teacher simply because she doesn't think they were wrong