Manhattan Teacher Tells Students to Write Suicide Letters

An English teacher from the York Preparatory School asked her students to write a suicide note from the viewpoint of a character from the book "Secret Life of Bess," reported New York Post.

The teacher, Jessica Barrish, told her students at the school to write a suicide note asking "How would you justify ending your life?" and "What reasons would you give?"

The assignment did not go down well the parents of the pupils and drew criticism. They called it as "outrageous."  "We were pretty stunned at the scope of the assignment," the father of a ninth-grader told the Post.

But school principal maintained that the authorities have not received any complaints.

York Prep is a high-end school in a posh locality of Manhattan and enrolls students between sixth and 12^th grades. It charges nearly $41,000 annually for each student.

According to Simon Critchley, a philosophy professor,  people need to think rationally about topics as sensitive as suicide. "I don't see why this is inappropriate at all," he said. "If it is, then suicide is a taboo, and I simply think we have to think rationally about our taboos."

However, Barrish isn't the first teacher who assigned her students to write a suicide note. A teacher in southwestern France told a 13-year-old student to write suicide notes for homework. A local French newspaper reported that the teacher concluded that the note was "not precise enough" and showed dissatisfaction.

The Daily Caller reported that last June a mother in England got nervous when she mistook her child's false suicide note for a real one.