On the subject of.......... (sorry jess. you'll have to read it [smile)

I don't know anything about this. What exactly is a "last farewell" letter? Leaving home? Dropping dead?

Sorry! Forgot link! it's here

Horrified! What on earth is going on? Whatever happened to essays such as 'When I grow up?'

what has come over schools these days!

This is terrible, what a shock for the mother.
When I was at school, this time of year we would have been writing about, 'what I am going to do on my summer holidays' and then at the start of the new term.... 'what I did on my summer holidays'. Or as soop said what about 'when I grow up'

I was shocked and saddened when I read it. "Empathy" is one thing, but this seemed totally insensitive and heavy handed, not to say "sick". With so many juvenile suicides I can only imagine the horror any parent or grandparent would feel reading it.Ghastly.

I think the issue is more to do with taking the work home than writing it in the first place. It's quite an interesting exercise in using the imagination, exploring your own feelings and expressing them. If it had stayed in an exercise book (do they have these anymore?) at school, it would have been fine. Presenting it as if it were a real letter is what caused the distress. The poor mother must have been beside herself. The teacher was thoughtless as he/she should have guessed that at least one pupil would fail to explain what the letter actually was. (There's always one!)

Appalling

What a sad, worrying story. That was an insensitive choice of topic anyway! Teachers need always to think what might be going on in a child's life when setting work on emotions. And even then you can get it wrong, even "What I did in my holidays". I am reminded of this poem:

"Where they have been, if they have been away,
or what they've done at home, if they have not -
you make them write about the holiday.
One writes My Dad did. What? Your Dad did what?

That's not a sentence. Never mind the bell.
We stay behind until the work is done.
You count their words (you who can count and spell);
all the assignments are complete bar one

and though this boy seems bright, that one is his.
He says he's finished, doesn't want to add
anything, hands it in just as it is.
No change. My Dad did. What? What did his Dad?

You find the 'E' you gave him as you sort
through reams of what this girl did, what that lad did,
and read the line again, just one 'e' short:
This holiday was horrible. My Dad did."

Sophie Hannah

The boy was 14, terminal illness and death are realities and I can't see that the exercise was in itself harmful or shocking. What I am going to do in the holidays and what I want to be when I grow up (don't all 14-year-olds think that they are already grown up?) are topics that surely wouldn't stretch a student's abilities and imagination to anything like the same extent.

But the point of the poem...

Sorry Ariadne the posts crossed. I understand the point of the poem. Nevertheless, I still think this was an interesting, even valuable exercise.

I knew you'd get it! Am pondering the exercise, but am not sure; I take your point that these issues are part of life, and I am sure that the teacher wouldn't have set it "cold", but..will think on. However, I do understand the mother's reaction.

Oooh 'eck! I think I'm coming around to absent's view. He is 14. We live in a different age, I guess.

But it shouldn't have gone home!

Jing I'm terribly afraid I agree with you (what is the world coming to when this happens?)
It SHOULD NOT HAVE GONE HOME particularly looking like a letter rather than an exercise!
I thought the actual calligraphy was very poor for a child of this age also!

j04 Has hell frozen over?

Just read this thread. I agree with absent's view, but pity the mother. That poem is heart-rending, ariadne, but there is something amazing about it too. So few words. So plain. But such a feeling of that dawning comprehension.

I've found some other poems by her. She's rather good.

I like this one

absent I reckon so!

I think this is an appalling thing to ask a child, or anyone else to do as a public exercise, which class work is, unless they have first been consulted and freely given consent to undertake the work. The fact that these issues are part of life is irrelevant. It is not appropriate to ask children to explore their own feelings in such a public manner. If other children see the work (and they will) it can be used to target children who show too much vulnerability in the letter or express 'unsuitable' feelings. Not every person (child or adult) wants to be so open with feelings and emotions, expecially in relation to their parents. Some children, like some adults are deeply private people.

When my daughter was 9 following road safety classes at school the class was asked to imagine and write about a road accident. My daughter refused to do the work. She found it too distressing. A few years later my sister was killed in a road accident and she dealt with both her own grief and that of her parents and grandparents with resolution and courage.The fact that she did not want explore the issue in creative work at school did not mean that she was not capable of exploring her feelings, or dealing with the reality when it happened. She is quite simply a person who likes to keep her emotions private.

if the teacher really wanted to explore this issue why not do it through a third party, a letter from a soldier serving in Afghanistan to his parents or somebody shipwrecked on a desert island without chance of rescue. I think the rteacher who set this work is lacking empathy themselves or has a worrying desire to delve too deeply into the psyche of their pupils.

You have summed up my own feelings on the subject, FlicketyB. It makes me feel very uneasy that this happened at all, with or without the parents' knowledge or consent. The thought of death, or having a terminal illness, can be very distressing for some children.

I have thought a bit more about it, and I still don't think it was an appropriate choice. To remove it a pace or two, as Flickety suggested, allows the imagination and empathy to kick in without a child having to face, up front, their own mortality.

So - I too agree with jingl

Glad you like the poem, jingl and Bags.

Thanks for the poem ariadne which makes a very good point and should be compulsory reading for all teachers. 'What I did in the holidays' can feel threatening to some, who know only too well that while others jetted off to Disneyland, they had a very different experience.

That said, I do feel sorry for this teacher, who has been a bit insensitive (no doubt while trying to be interesting) and finds him/herself pilloried in the national press. Who'd be a teacher?

What a lovely little letter that boy wrote. I wonder if his mother was moved as well as upset.