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.

I did start out thinking they were wrong but misguided rather than evil and revised my view related to subsequent info from the thread.

So if I was the teacher I have serious problems with memory retention

the article was in the Times , too but better expressed.

I am an English teacher : I can tell you that task (as actually set) is a real old chestnut and has never caused me issues (I have called it her 'last letter : it emphasises the motif of letter writing in the play)

Also, because of various information sharing issues in school, it is likely that the teacher did not know her pupil's personal experiences. In fact,the whole text could be problematical there rather than only the task.

The exam board once set Education For Leisure ( a pome). They had to recall the anthologies because of a picture of a knife. Our school had permission not to teach it because of a murder.

English teaching is a bit of a mine field : so may texts confront MH issues . this year, I have had to avoid Plath at A level but have still got the potential awkwardness of Streetcar and God Of Small Things

(Disclaimer : wouldn't get class t write Plath's suicide note)

poem not pome ...

Ah, just seen Education For Leisure mentioned by a PP.

It is a great poem* but we simply couldn't teach it to the brother of our murdered girl as I hope the PP appreciates.

*Stealing is better and I don't think E4L is anti knife crime...it's the fun of the psychopath so went with Hitcher, which glamourises murder by Crooklock. That was a violent anthology!

I remember EFL being withdrawn: a pity as it was one of the best things in that anthology!

That teacher needs to be investigated and disciplined. People with such terrible judgement should NOT be educating our children.

Of Mice and Men has tough issues and language. Never had a parent complain.

Did have a friend who personally couldn't teach it.

I disagree btw that a better tasks would be to somehow modernise LM and ask about ways in which she could seek help these days. That seems like a facile task and one that actually could delve deeper into students' troubles : it seems more invasive in fact.

So, doctor, I am imagining ravens cawing

lime is the OP who first queried the wisdom of the homework being set. Now we've uncovered the real story, she has changed her mind- how does that make her worked up?

She isn't the one muck-slinging, inferring teachers, by definition, are child abusers, and throwing nasty misogynistic insults around.

RTFT Phyllis, there's a love.

I think it is a subject that needs to be approached in schools along with broader mental health education. However I think it's more appropriate for a personal development class than to be used as an almost throwaway task in an English class.

Slightly off on a tangent here I remember very vividly at school in year 10 (So I was about 14) we were made to watch 'Threads' in Personal Development, you know, that 1980s film where Russia nuke Sheffield, starting a nuclear winter and all sorts of horrible things happen. I don't think it made any of us more educated on nuclear issues, it just scared the shit out of us.

I think scaring the shit out of people about potential nuclear war is pretty worthwhile actually. We all seem a bit relaxed about it nowadays - slating the only politician who said they wouldn't press the button for a nuclear strike. I remember Where the Wind Blows from when I was a teen. These things don't leave you, and nor should they.

Lady Macbeth didn't have a mental illness. She wasn't a real person. She is a construct created by Shakespeare for effect. You can't psychoanalyse her; that is absurd. Writing in character as her is a useful exercise in English as it serves the purpose of teaching creative writing skills.

I wrote Eva's suicide note for An Inspector Calls in my GCSE. I enjoyed it and it wasn't a remotely controversial task. This is a fuss about nothing.

Teenagers don't need to be shielded from difficult issues; they need to engage with them in safe environments. Literature provides an excellent opportunity for catharsis and to tackle challenging and sensitive subjects in a useful and important way.

It's a known thing that there can be "epidemics" of suicide where one sparks off another, and so on. The media have guidelines on the reporting of suicides to avoid copycats.

and it is also well known that this sort of exercise makes such an event more likely now, and in the future

Ooh Education for leisure, is that the one where the budgie is panicking? Our kids loved that poem. It was dark but to be struck off the syllabus seems a bit reactionary verging on censorship.

My English teacher made us write a story about murdering our sibling under similar premise. He was eventually fired and struck off. I think it is extremely poor judgement and the teacher doesn't have any position being responsible for young and impressionable minds

I always thought We Remember Your Childhood Well was very dark. Brilliant poem though.

We studied Macbeth in year 10 I think and were given the same assignment! I can remember it well... I studied drama and Stanislavsky method acting, had to put ourselves in lady macbeths shoes. I acted the 'out damn spot' scene as part of my exam.
This might go against the grain here and I haven't rtft but I think kids are much too sheltered and pampered. Suicide is a thing, it's part of what we live with unfortunately. I know more than most because I lost 3 cousins to it very recently. I think it needs to be talked about more, studied more, discussed and feelings around it normalised and dealt with. Maybe then we wouldn't have so many kids unable to deal with life and it's challenges... wrapped in cotton wool millennials who see ever little road bump as a major crisis.

Ooh yes lime the gaslighting parents and the child that you assume something grim happened to whilst on holiday with whoever they'd palmed her off on. Dark.
And there was a short story about an exam in a dystopian future, whereby the parents try to convince the child just to do their best, no pressure when in fact lives are depending on it Don't Have Nightmares

We Remember Your Childhood Well always makes me think of the MN Stately Homes threads.

This might go against the grain here and I haven't rtft but I think kids are much too sheltered and pampered. Suicide is a thing, it's part of what we live with unfortunately. I know more than most because I lost 3 cousins to it very recently. I think it needs to be talked about more, studied more, discussed and feelings around it normalised and dealt with. Maybe then we wouldn't have so many kids unable to deal with life and it's challenges... wrapped in cotton wool millennials who see ever little road bump as a major crisis.

you can say that about almost anything else you want, but not suicide, because all research show that the more it is talked about, studied discussed, etc, the more it happens.

"If your 16 year old kid was raised so badly that she/he would commit suicide just because a teacher mentioned it (or a show came on TV) you need help."

That really is a vile thing to say.

Children do not commit suicide because they were "raised badly".

FFS what has Mumsnet become. That's disgusting.

User- can you link to this well-known research please?