A New Zealand high school has apologised for giving students a homework assignment to plan a murder and describe how they would get rid of the body, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The principal of Howick College in Auckland, Bill Dimery, apologised to the parents of one 14-year-old boy who complained, and blamed his teacher for ”poor judgement”, the New Zealand Herald reported.
Dimery said the aim was to peak the interest of students reading the Roald Dahl book Lamb to the Slaughter, in which a woman kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and then serves it to an investigating police officer.
”The intention was to get kids thinking about people and their actions and their motivations, and there was an assignment which was couched in terms of plotting your own murder,” Dimery said.
He said it can be hard to get boys motivated, so teachers try to come up with interesting or innovative ideas. ”But, at the end of the day, hey, we can’t really have kids plotting murders.” — Sapa-dpa