Parents, school officials clash over teen’s suicide note homework assignment

School officials in eastern Ontario are challenging a claim from parents that their daughter was told to write a suicide note as part of a high school English assignment.

The Ottawa Sun reported the Grade 10 student at Notre Dame High School in Carleton Place, Ont., was given the homework assignment as part of the class's study of "The Chrysalids," by John Wyndham.

The 1955 novel, by the author of "Day of the Triffids," is set rural Labrador after a long-past nuclear war. Survivors live in a kind of theocratic pre-industrial community called Waknuk, which abhors the genetic mutations caused by the fallout, so children born with abnormalities are put to death.

According to the Sun, students in the Grade 10 class were asked write a suicide note as if they were a character named Aunt Harriet, who's had three mutant babies and kills her self when a plan to save her surviving child fails.

The parents, who did not want to be identified, contacted the Sun but said they had not made a formal complaint to the school.

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School principal David Chaplin promised Sunday to investigate but seemed leery about the complaint. It's not uncommon for students to misinterpret their assignments, he told the Sun.

"I don't know what the assignment is," he said. "I have to wait until I see the assignment."

By Monday, the local school board said Chaplin had verified the suicide-note assignment was not handed out.

"The principal has reported that the students were to complete the following: Write a letter from Harriet to her sister Emily, expressing her frustration about the society of Waknuk," the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario said in a news release.

"The goal was for students to use the medium of letter-writing to demonstrate their understanding of the oppressive society in which the novel takes place."

The assignment was not intended to be a suicide note, the board said.

"Suicide and children’s mental health is a very serious issue, which our board does not take lightly," it said. "The [board] has invested, and will continue to invest, many resources to support our most vulnerable students."

But the girl's parents say she seemed clear on what the assignment called for, and they worried some other teens in the class might have a hard time dealing with the topic of suicide.

"How would you feel if your son or daughter was going to counselling, just starting to turn a corner and get better and then they are given an assignment that forces them to look directly at it?" one of the parents told the Sun.

"Thanks to this assignment they now hear it talked about during the day? Weeks, months, years of therapy can be undone in a second. Ten years ago, I think this would have been a risky assignment, but if done properly, it could be for the good. Today, I think it is very irresponsible and dangerous and has the potential to do more harm then good."

Suicide among young people is an undoubted problem, the second leading cause of death among Canadian youth behind car accidents. According to the Centre for Suicide Prevention, an average of almost 300 kids a year kill themselves. Rates have been rising since the early 1960s but the centre stops short of calling it an epidemic.

So, should a classroom examination of suicide in the context of a novel character be off limits? If the kids are as fragile as the complaining parent suggests, perhaps they shouldn't study "The Chrysalids" at all.

Or would a structured examination of the mindset of suicidal Aunt Harriet by putting yourself in her place via the letter/suicide note be helpful? Students who find it too stressful could perhaps opt out.

[ Related: Toronto teacher fired for offensive jokes; but what were they? ]

The same kind of assignment at a New York City private school got parents up in arms last spring.

The New York Post reported in June that students in a Grade 9 English class at York Prep were told to write first-person suicide notes from the perspective of a character who kills herself in the novel "The Secret Life of Bees."

“How would you justify ending your life?" the project asked. "What reasons would you give?”

The school's headmaster said had not received a single complaint, though like the Ontario incident, parents seemed to vent in the media.

“We were pretty stunned at the scope of the assignment,” one angry father told the Post.

“We thought this was such an outrageous assignment for a 14-year-old to get. We pay a lot of money to send our kids to the school.”

But philosophy professor Simon Critchley, who taught a suicide-note writing workshop for adults at The New School University, called the concerns overblown.

“I don’t see why this is inappropriate at all. If it is, then suicide is a taboo, and I simply think we have to think rationally about our taboos,” he told the Post.

“I think it might even help students acquire a more mature and reflective approach to a hugely important topic.”

In France last year, a high school teacher was suspended for asking his 13- and 14-year-old students to write their own suicide notes, according to the Huffington Post.

“You’ve just turned 18. You’ve decided to end your life," the assignment reads.

"Your decision is definitive. In a final surge you decide to put in words the reason behind your decision. In the style of a self-portrait, you describe the disgust you have for yourself. Your text will retrace certain events in your life at the origin of these feelings.”

The assignment was not part of the curriculum, the Post reported.

[ Related: Adopted teens may be at higher risk of suicide ]

"We are not prone to questioning the school curriculum, but there are limits," a group of parents stated in an anonymous letter sent to the school, according to French media. "What is the next subject? ‘How do you feel when you shoot up?’”

Back in the U.S., a Texas arts teacher drew the ire of parents when she asked her Grade 7 students to imagine they were victims of the 9/11 terror attacks and to write a goodbye letter to loved ones.

"They were supposed to pretend like they were either in the Twin Towers or on the plane and they weren't going to make it out ... This was their 'goodbye letter,' parent Kate Gurka told Fox News. "This was almost like [reading] a suicide note ... she showed me the paper, and I thought it was absolutely ridiculous."

The school district apologized but Fox noted some parents were fine with the assignment.