MHS puts controversial topic to rest

MULLAN — A student-led health assignment descended into a full scale social media frenzy earlier this week at Mullan Jr./Sr. High School.

A concerned parent turned to Facebook on Sunday, alleging that the school was teaching topics in their freshmen health class that she deemed inappropriate.

“On Monday January 3rd, her health class had an assignment to do a presentation on a mental illness,” the post reads. “When she came home after school she was horrified by what she learned in class that day. Out of all of the mental illnesses in the world to research, one of them was necrophilia (Google it if you don't know what that is) when I called the principal and asked why this was even brought up to 14 year olds, I was told ‘to bring awareness’ among other things… I did not know what that even was. For my 14 year old daughter to come home and have this in her head was so disturbing.”

The school — which has policies in place expressly forbidding any sort of defensive interaction on social media platforms — had a slightly different account of the situation.

According to the health teacher, the assignment was a student-led assignment where they were allowed to suggest topics concerning mental health to be added to a list for potential individual project topics.

The students were also given extra credit if they were able to properly spell out on the whiteboard, the topics that they were suggesting.

Topics such as depression, kleptomania, body dysmorphia, anxiety, bi-polar disorder, and several others were among those that were also suggested.

When the topic of necrophilia was thrown out there by a member of the class, followed by a crass comment from a student — the teacher turned the attempt at sophomoric humor into a teachable moment.

“Necrophilia is clearly defined as sexual intercourse with or attraction towards corpses,” the teacher explained. “The underlying issues tied to necrophilia certainly fit the topic of mental health, issues like past trauma from abuse, fear of rejection, depression, fear of isolation, and desire to have power over someone.”

According to the teacher leading the class, other than the definition of the word itself there was no instruction or distributed content concerning necrophilia — however, the student that did chose that specific topic for their report, “did a great job with their research highlighting what could've caused someone to become a necrophiliac. Including highlighting the issues of abuse, and the fear of rejection.”

Mullan Jr./Sr. High School Principal Jacki Almquist stood by her teacher in regard to the situation and how it was handled.

“I feel an informed, guided discussion provides students with the critical thinking skills to distinguish between factual information vs. misinformation regardless of their age level,” Almquist said. “This particular lesson is an example of that process at work in the classroom.”

There was also controversy over the addition of Down syndrome to the list, which was part of the teachable moment — explaining the difference between a mental health issue and a genetic disorder that can cause an intellectual disability.

It also had a direct segue into their discussion before it was removed from the list of available topics.

“People with Down syndrome are over 30% more likely to experience anxiety and depression which could've been a topic of discussion had somebody chosen the topics but that didn't happen,” the teacher said. “It was simply seeing the students engage with each other to see their prior understanding of mental illness and their familiarity with any of it.”