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.

Oh -and whilst it is not in the job description - teachers are often expected to be in the vanguard of spotting abuse.

Every time the government is concerned about something ( MH , terrorism , obesity) schools are charged by the government with healing it.

I feel hugely sorry for the teacher involved, it sounds like the piece of writing had been set before and on this occasion one parent wasn't happy and decided to go to the press, and it has been misreported?

My Dad tried to take his own life 3 times while I was in year 12, he was in and out of hospital for about a year. Suicide was not a subject ever discussed at school, and not a single teacher asked me about how Dad was getting on at any point. It was as if nothing was happening. It was absolutely awful. The comments about potential negative impact on the pupils - (& recognising that they were writing a letter from Lady Macbeth) - I wondered if a school environment where people talk about suicide openly and non-judgmentally, in this & wider context, would be better than the silence of stigma many of have experienced? Or is that too tenuous?!

When I was 15, I had to write a suicide letter for Eva Smith's character from An Inspector Calls.

I thought it was an excellent idea for a task, and so did my peers. It was very thought provoking. Our Teacher also hosted a planned debate for our class on suicide, and my friends and I still talk about it, the suicide letter task, and that Teacher over 15 years later.

She was a great Teacher, and managed to energise and engage all students, especially those who were disinterested and disengaged with the subject. We are all in consensus that these activities were wholly appropriate, and highly engaging.

Very best of luck to the Teacher involved in this current 'situation.'

I'm also wondering if open discussion about suicide could be beneficial - my childhood friend's mother took her life when she was 5 years old, friend found out from a drunk relative at 16. Needed psychiatric help. I often think if suicide wasn't seen as scary , shameful, or if we didn't think talking about it could cause it , maybe there could be benefits.

The same goes for many things though - best lessons I had were teachers who taught us about things that weren't on the syllabus e.g. female genital mutilation etc. Handled sensitively and taught to the right pupils (in that case 17 year old girls) it works . Has to be handled correctly though .

Fwiw I studied Sylvia Plath in great detail for university whilst actively self harming and suicidal . Weirdly I found seeing her thoughts on paper , 'Cut' especially , I realised how disturbed her mind was and how abnormal it was and it helped me put things into perspective and get help. Made me realise what I felt wasn't good . I realise that's not necessarily typical though.

yellow

Please refer to the statement from the school that I posted upthread. It states:

The exercise was to write a suicide letter from Lady Macbeth to Macbeth explaining her decision to kill herself.

The Telegraph article is misleading.

I don't disagree with you said but several misgivings:

1. that's not a classroom teacher's job 9in most subjects anyway) and she could mishandle it, giving rise to student and parental complaints as we have seen!
2. some students respond to talking about issues ; for others that's counter productive. My own DM was institutionalised at one stage. We never talked about it and I would not want to speak of it at the time or now.

I think what is crucial to protect teachers is that they have enough (important) information about the students they teach so that they can make judgement class about teaching : this is a big problem in large school.

We also need to ensure students have rapid access to expert counselling... don't get me started on that one..

I teach a girl who attempted to take her own life very recently as I previously said, no one officially told me. The one big meltdown so far has centred around boys in the class talking - amongst themselves- what she called insensitively about mental health issues. A teacher can watch what they say and do but we cannot patrol everything that goes on. We aren't the thought police.

I think Plath is actually very popular with young people - precisely because she seems so damaged. Students like The Bell Jar too. I wouldn't want to have to hijack Plath though into a psychiatry lesson, so it can be an awkward choice for teaching. To be honest, the same issues of 'minefield' arise these days (I am trying not to sound reactionary) over any texts about/ featuring LGBT characters or issues (which are still few and far between, shockingly). But student and parental complaints / monas often come from different viewpoints there, so it's even harder to navigate!

Bloody Nora. I really can't type!

I know this school! My friend's younger sister went there, she said it was absolutely awful - they basically didnt teach the kids anything. I know they changed heads a couple of years ago - at least they are teachng now! What a crazy topic to teach. In the article it states that a child had lost 3 friends to suicide (shockingly high number),that must have been awful for her to write something related to that. Think the teacher really misjudged this, they could have held a supportive discussion about it - not make the kids write a suicide note as Lady Macbeth!!! I would be upset if it was my child, they are putting ideas in their heads. If a child knows somebody who jas comittedd suicide they should be given personal support, all schools should have a school counsellor - which they used to have until all these cuts came into place.

They really didn't mundo.

Who is to say this child wasn't getting support anyway? Whether (s) he was or wasn't isn't really relevant to the task set by the teacher. The biggest question I have is whether the teacher knew of the extraordinary circumstances of this child in her class before embarking on the text at all.

That said, the other main Shakespeare choice is probably Romeo and Juliet which is equally, if not more, problematical...

"You compared the presence of abusers in the teaching profession to the systemic and widespread abuse of children within the Catholic Church and to the institutionalised abuse and discrimination of the police "

No I didn't. I said very specifically:“ Luckily the majority of people who go into those jobs, go in because they unequivocally want to do good, but it surely can't be a surprise that there are a minority who get a real kick from abusing their position and knowing they can get away with it. "

I'm not sure, but I think that may be the opposite of saying it's systemic.

"“I also inferred form your comments basil that a teacher setting a task asking students to empathise with Lady Macbeth's mental state was 'abusive'”. Really? What I said was I can't see what she's done wrong. Are you sure you're not reading into my posts something you think is there, rather than something that is there? Because most people think that "abusive" is the opposite of "not doing anything wrong."

Again though - in this particular exercise it seem the teacher was suggesting that the students write the suicide note for themselves, to their own relatives

No, it was imagine you are Lady Macbeth and the note you might write.

There is nothing at all wrong with this exercise, its been done countless times and you all should probably read the report before having such strong opinions about it!

There is nothing at all wrong with this exercise, its been done countless times

there is a lot wrong with this type of exercise, and it does increase the risk of suicide, and the number of times it has been done before is irrelevant; it might have been done 20 years ago before the increased risk of suicide was known, apart from anything else

Any proof at all for the wild accusations there, userwhatevnumbers?

No, thought not.

what are you calling wild accusations? I've stated nothing other than well established well known facts. If you are interested, look it up for your self, and check it out. It's nothing that isn't openly available.

In which case, if it is a proven link user all English teachers, RS teachers, and no doubt a rang of other teachers, may as well shut up shop.

Yy pig

I mean surely the answers to deal with how children have become so easily influenced than removing items from lesson plans just in case.

But it isn't just about tasks : how do we handle discussions etc? It feels a little bit like several people are suggesting teachers (part of children's lives but not the sum total) take responsibility for students' actions. I think suicide attempts are rather more complex beasts than this.

If users unfounded theories are correct that raises huge questions. A short creative task would not have as big an impact as , say, a discussion about madness in some texts, discussions about suicide and so on. (Most)Teachers are not mental health experts.

I have never ever seen any advice anywhere warning against such a classroom activity.

If a student is pushed over the edge by such a task (and actually what happened here is that a child had an emotional response to the task because of what had happened to his/her friends not because s/he herself was a suicide risk) then something has gone wrong with information sharing in a school and/ or the level of care and counselling that (unusual) child had been getting up to that point.

Definitely misjudged, especially in a school with recent suicides.
However, the idea of a "final note", as her death is not an actual scene in the play, could have been used to explore the motivations of the character? I've seen many similar exercises for Othello, Hamlet etc.
Re: the Ethics paper, I've never understood why suicide is included. OCR include it alongside euthanasia and I've had difficult conversations with pupils about the subject matter. I've normally set that part as a prep with a note home.

In my school , quite an effort used to be made by our head of RS to ascertain whether we had anyone who might be troubled by such issues. I think these issues are more prevalent and widespread now and she gave up : so now it's a case of a rider in the course descriptor booklet that makes it transparent that such issues come up.

That said, she handles it all very well.

There's no evidence btw that the suicides themselves were members of the school community . If they had been, I am sure the school would have been on high alert to any potential teaching pitfalls.

there is a lot wrong with this type of exercise

No. There isn't. I can't help feeling that some people are still labouring under the misapprehension that the task was to write your own suicide note. I think we've established that is NOT the case. That would be an ill-advised, odd (and fairly useless from a literary perspective) task.

Putting yourself in the shoes of a character and writing about their feelings (whatever they may be) is so normal a task that I can't really believe this is even a discussion.

If the suicide of a fictional character is so beyond the pale, then you can't really study Macbeth at all. Or R&J. Or Hamlet. Or loads of other texts. 'I'm the king of the castle' anyone? An Inspector Calls? Writing a first person, empathic version of events doesn't alter the events. If the plot itself is so damaging, well where does that leave us?

Indeed Merchant. I think we are banging our heads against brick walls a bit. Maybe just left with Austen.

Perhaps Gove could advise?

I'm sure he'd have the answer!

I'm more concerned at the idea mentioned by others that suicide is included in RS and ethics discussions. I suppose I can sort of see why... but it seems very wrong to group suicide with moral issues, when it's actually a medical issue beyond the control of those who suffer.

I think ti just looks at how and why world religions might view it as an ethical or moral issue - but I am sure that is in itself interesting in faith schools.

To derail, a Jewish school has just 'failed' (according to the press) its third Ofsted for refusing to engage in any teaching at all of LGBT issues.

Today I am asking a class to write the imagined letter a kamikaze pilot would write to his family before journeying to a certain death.

We read other as examples. this should help them not to just see the Japanese as a faceless, cruel enemy , so this is entirely justified.

I do hope that is OK with MN.