UK: School asks students to write suicide note as homework

London: A school in the UK fell into trouble when one of its English teachers asked over 60 teenage students to draft a suicide note as homework on Shakespeare’s tragedy ‘Macbeth’. The act made parents outrageous after their children went disturbed.

After reading one of the play’s most celebrated scenes, when Lady Macbeth takes her own life, students of Thomas Tallis school in Kidbrooke, London, were asked to pen a final note to their loved ones, reported HT.

Criticising the school for its lack of sensitivity, one mother said her daughter was told to write the note despite having lost three friends to suicide.

She was quoted as saying that her daughter had become “very distressed” over the issue, and had told the teacher in question that such material made her feel uncomfortable.

“My daughter had had personal experience with people her age committing suicide,” the mother said.

“On what universe was it ever, under any situation, a good idea to ask a group of teenagers to write suicide notes?” she said.

Other parents branded the decision “absolutely disgusting” and “insensitive”, with one claiming that the assignment had been ill-conceived given the age of the students involved.

“I can’t imagine why a place of education would do something so insensitive, especially as childhood and teenage depression and anxiety is at an all-time high at the moment,“ another parent said.

However, the Headmistress Carolyn Roberts said that they have apologised to the parents: “A parent contacted us with concerns about a written exercise given to a class during studies of a play by Shakespeare. I met with the parent last week and apologised wholeheartedly on behalf of the school and reassured them about the actions that have been taken. The parent accepted the apology in a meeting that was friendly and cordial,“ she said.