Comment: Managing children’s concern about suicide – Gulf Digital News

Comment: Managing children’s concern about suicide – Gulf Digital News

DURING a recent visit to my hometown, I happened to pass my old school compound. Now managed by another school trust, the entire architecture of the place has changed. The granite morning assembly platform, shaded by leafy neem trees has been replaced by additional classrooms.

The popular Elliot’s Beach was just a couple of kilometres away and strictly off-limits. Still, once in a while, daring boys jumped the wall and went during lunch time for a quick dip in the curling waves of the Bay of Bengal. On one such adventure, three boys played beach hooky and one drowned.

The news reached us after lunchtime and we gathered for a hastily-called assembly where the sad news was announced. What I remember vividly is the headmaster’s refusal to suspend the surviving two students, saying: “They will carry this grief lifelong. This is punishment enough.”

And, the gentleness with which all teachers treated them.

Contrast that with the utterly shocking pronouncement of a teacher in a Bahrain school who told a class of tweens that a child who unfortunately died by alleged suicide recently had done so following an altercation with his mother about low marks.

Now, it is possible that the remark was taken out of