“School is Making Me Suicidal”
Monday, 13 October 2008 Clay Burell 
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These are common Google search terms from visitors.
Can the web help students who, when school is making them feel suicidal, turn to Google for support?
I must see five or ten Google search hits like the above each week from students. What advice would you give? Do counselors help? Parents? Teachers? Organizations? Preachers or secular social workers? Early graduation/GED? Home-schooling? Books? Poems? Films? Songs?
Perhaps better: Do you have any success stories or experiential advice to share?
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No. 1 — October 14th, 2008 at 10:49 am
I once had parents who complained that the literature in class was too depressing. Their son suffered from bouts of depression. Was Romeo and Juliet appropriate for study for impressionable Grade 10 students?
I told the parents that the play is a celebration of life, not death.
We confronted the issue of suicide in the play with an emphasis upon the life affirming elements.
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No. 2 — October 15th, 2008 at 6:47 am
I’ve read this post a couple of times now. Each time, I think about adding a comment and then I change my mind because it is such a complex issue. On the one hand, we have all had to deal with depression among teenagers, and I could give some clinical answer, of what I have done or been instructed to do.
Yet, the fact of the matter is that for many kids, school is depressing.
I hate the way we school our children, I really do. I hate the fact that our schools are like warehouses of children who are forced together because they were born during the same year.
The model that we use breeds a herd mentality and a Darwinian Survival of the Fittest.
It’s a nightmare for a sensitive child. Some teachers work very hard to create a nurturing environment, but many are caught up in the herd themselves.
It is definitely not the way to create thoughtful, creative individuals- in fact those very traits are the ones that can torture children who try to express some kind of individuality in a system designed to breed conformity.
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