Banning ‘suicide’ from the syllabus: We need a more sensitive pedagogic style without having recourse to bans.

AQA’s decision to ban references of suicide from textbooks has been met with criticism from the sociology community. Anaïs Duong-Pedica argues it is naïve to assume that young people will never have encountered the idea of suicide prior to their A-levels. Refusing to engage with suicide in the classroom also marginalises students’ own experiences of suicide. Rather, measures should be put in place with and for students to accommodate the teaching and learning of sensitive topics such as suicide.