Research paper on death education for children and adolescents: 10 peer-review journal articles.
Introduction
The last few decades have seen an alarming increase in community, family, national, and even school attacks, which have engendered despair in parents, students and teachers. In all settings, people have experienced challenges in coping with death because the American culture has long considered death a taboo subject. People are afraid to talk about death and in schools, such discussions only occur after death occurs as a national disaster, for instance, in the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting and the 1999 Columbine School shooting. More recently, schools are witnessing death in the form of students committing suicide over body-shaming, bullying, and other such issues that affect their psychological wellbeing. It is only in such instances that children and adolescents talk about death, and usually, such conversations are riddled with emotional and psychological pain and apprehension. Thus, there is need for adults and especially teachers to know how to prepare students for death to enhance conversation on this taboo topic and consequently help them understand how to cope with the resulting consequences at school, in the community, and at home.
1) A summary of what you learned from this research
I have learned much from researching on the topic of death education for children and adolescents. According to my understanding, death education is the assortment of activities that foster understanding about death and mourning, which agrees with the definition advanced by Testoni et al. (2018). I have learned that generally, people know that at some point, death will occur, and that they will be impacted directly. They know that a friend, a pet, a parent, a beloved teacher, or a close acquaintance will die. However, even with this understanding, people, and especially young children and adolescents, rarely want to talk about death. For instance, the American culture celebrates youth and one would be viewed as morbid if they attempted to introduce such a subject as a topic of conversation in such a society. So ignored is the subject of death among the young population that their only understanding of death is only encountered through movies and video games, where it is more frightening than in reality. As such, children and adolescents are often afraid of encountering the grim reality in real life and when they do, they get so emotionally, physically, and psychologically scarred that all the affairs of their daily lives are thrown off balance. Thus, there is a need to get young people talking more openly about this issue because as advanced by Johnson et al. (2017), numerous variables, such as a person’s age and their connection to the deceased determines their response to bereavement. Consequently, introducing death education in the school curriculum would go a long way in making death less traumatic for children and adolescents and help them make better decisions by talking more openly about issues such as euthanasia. From a practical perspective, schools and other learning institutions can easily integrate death education in their curriculums. For example, they can adopt a practical approach in teaching about death in biology classes by focusing on the processes of death. Hence, educating children and adolescents about death and dying gives them a chance to address the undesired outcomes of not talking about death, such as the possibility of negative outcomes in the family setting when a parent dies without making a will. Educating children and adolescents about death and dying creates a transparency that helps them comprehend the interplay between ethical, medical, and legal concerns on this topic.
2) How can you use this information as a future health educator (or any other health and human service professional)?
The information I have obtained on conducting this research will help me as a future health educator. I now understand that although children and adolescents are very reserved towards the concept of death, using the right approach to sensitize them about this issue would help them get acclimatized to death by viewing it as a natural aspect of life. As implied by Snaman et al. (2016), bereavement engenders significant psychosocial consequences that dem llbeing. In light of this, I will use this information to show people the danger of living in denial and changing their uninformed attitudes and perceptions about death. Many families continue suffering from parents dying without wills and being unable to make the right medical decisions to help their ailing friends and members of family because of their apprehension about their loved ones dying. Young people refuse to accept this reality and hence, when it occurs, they are unable to cope effectively with grief, resulting in poor performance, falling into depression, drug abuse, and even suicide. As a health educator, I will tech people that death is not the enemy in life, and that it can be an effective way to help people organza their life affairs more efficiently to avert the undesirable outcomes associated with death. I would teach about death to show how it restores our perception of the value of life and living and how it can help us get back everything we have lost by living in denial and taking life and death for granted. Ultimately, I would use death education to teach young people about dying, death, and grief to enrich their lives and inform and direct their engagements with society. Further, death education would help me prepare people for their public duties as citizens and also help prepare and support them to commence or reorganize their personal and vocational roles.
3) How does what you learned from these articles relate to your own experience or other outside reading/research that you have done?
I witnessed first-hand the effects of living in denial of death. I was 15 years old when my father died and since she passed on during the summer holiday, I did not have to deal with the initial upshot of her passing at school. My mother had openly talked to us about the gravity of my dad’s illness and my siblings and I knew it was terminal. Our close family friends also knew about this issue, and hence, there was no embarrassment and unease amongst us. However, when we returned to school, several friends and teachers acted awkwardly around me. One teacher grabbed my arm and stared at me, absorbedly as a way of ascertaining that I was okay. Several friends became teary eyed when I discussed shortly on the almost taboo topic of my father’s death and funeral. These awkward encounters continued for several weeks for my siblings and me, which confirmed that teachers and adults were equally fearful and apprehensive of discussing about death. I realized that our society is in a constant state of denying death and is emotionally and mentally averse to handling issues related to death and bereavement, notwithstanding the unavoidability of these issues. Just as I have realized from researching several articles on the subject of death, adults are generally scared of teaching about matters of death and when they do, they often give inconclusive answers that make the situation even weirder. Some adults fear appearing stupid when they cannot provide conclusive and definitive ethical, religious, cultural, or intellectual arguments about death and what occurs after death. Hence, I believe that death education is important in school settings and particularly for young people because it helps them open up about lighter issues such as drug use, which they often prefer keeping to themselves. Moreover, when teachers talk about death, it becomes easier for them to deal with bereaved students and also improves their capacity to tackle other sensitive issues that affect student’s and young peoples’ psychological and emotional wellbeing, both at school, at home, and in the community.
4) How does the information from these research studies relate to the information in the “Last Dance” book?
The “Last Dance” book is an essential book in understanding the aspects that would enhance the delivery of death education in a school setting. The book provides an interdisciplinary approach to studying death as in integrates the intellectual, academic, practical, emotional, personal, and social aspects of death. The book highlights the importance of having solid instruction in theory and study on death and articulates the fundamental concepts required in an introduction to grief on death. The book is a practical application on death education in schools because it identifies the central issues about death and concurrently underscores the positive values of listening to, tolerating, and having compassion on others as the avenue for constructive self-discovery. The information in the book highlights the importance of understanding death in the contemporary culturally diverse settings of life. As such, the book’s contents on death relate to this study because they emphasize the essence of making death education a continuous process. Further, the book the studies show that the responsibility for providing death education to children and adolescents lies with parents and guardians at home, schools, the church, and other essential community agencies.
The link between the information from the book and the studies shows that a death program must fulfill certain goals. For instance, death education must inform children and adolescents of the fundamental information regarding the multidimensional facets of death. Additionally, death education should teach children and adolescents about using death to improve their quality of life by reorganizing their priorities beforehand. Hence, the book and information from the studies show the need for learning institutions at the school and community levels to incorporate death education on a larger scale and frame it in a context that relates to today’s highly technologically savvy children and adolescents. Additionally, since death education demands a multidisciplinary approach, the content and teaching approach must be tailored to suit the needs of young learners at different learning levels. For instance, young learners in the middle schools can learn about the legal, biological, economic, and socio-cultural elements of death, which promotes an integrated understanding of death and its consequences. Ultimately, young learners at all levels will have the capacity to talk about death and handle the resultant outcomes effectively.
5) What questions or concerns do you have based on what you learned from these studies?
Many questions and concerns arise from the information obtained from studies on death education for children and young adolescents. For instance, why should schools assume the responsibility of teaching young people about coping with death when such conversations should be held at home under the discretion of parents and guardians? However, I now realize that children and young people can still seek for help on dealing with matters of death from their teachers. The fact that teachers have long avoided such conversations and schools have not provided death education has contributed significantly to the inadequate school performance, depression, anxiety, drug abuse, low self-esteem, and suicides among bereaved children. Additionally, concerns arise on the kind of training that teachers should undergo to equip them with skills on delivering death education to children and adolescents, which would also help curb the varying and usually conflicting attitudes between teachers and parents on introducing death education in school curriculums. Care should also be taken to ensure that the introduction of death education in school curriculums does not take away from the responsibilities of parents and guardians. Moreover, questions arise on how to integrate death education in the learning curriculum of children and adolescents, especially because of the need for teachers to provide conclusive and definitive answers to young learners when they are bereaved. As advanced by King-McKenzie (2011), practical strategies must be designed to facilitate the effective integration of death education on teacher preparation programs and student learning curriculums. Lastly, I have observed that since death education has not been widely incorporated in the learning programs used for young people, there are no standardized guidelines, terminologies, and concepts to guide the development and delivery of the topic in schools. Hence, as also implied by O’Brien & Guckin (2014), extensive research is needed to determine the required training and teaching strategies and materials that would facilitate effective delivery of death education to children and adolescents.
6) What were your own experiences with death education in school when you were growing up, what would you change and why?
When growing up, one of our favorite teachers was battling cancer and later, I realized that our teachers avoided talking to us about the imminent catastrophe as we were young. The apprehension also upset our school’s leadership as they could not devise any strategies to articulate the problem to us as they believed that the news would appall us. Shortly after, one of our classmates passed on, and our teachers fumbled through the entire session of informing us about the tragedy. When I went home, my father inquired if our teachers talked to us about the incident. I told him that although they did, they discouraged students from talking further on the issue. My father, just as my classmates, was disappointed with the approach the teachers used to manage the incident. The tragedies unearthed the inability of our teachers to talk about death to young people, implying that they had not been trained on how to deal with matters that could potentially affect the psychological wellbeing of students, notwithstanding that such occurrences are inevitable. Their reactions showed they were living in denial and unfortunately, they were also inculcating this detrimental perspective in students by refusing them the chance to talk amongst each other and with their teachers about death.
I would change use a different approach if I were in such a situation. Firstly, I would ensure that teachers receive the appropriate training on integrating death education in their curriculums and delivering the content to children and adolescents. Such training would help the teachers understand how to manage student concerns and questions regarding the death of their loved ones in different settings. For instance, training teachers adequately on death education would make it easier for them to engage students in instances of school shootings and help allay the resultant debilitating anxiety and fear students face after such experiences, as intimated by Graydon et al. (2012). Moreover, training teachers would help them devise better approaches to allow children and adolescents communicate openly about death and express their inner feelings because not all children have someone they can talk to at home. Lastly, I would also outsource the services of bereavement professionals to provide regular counseling to teachers and young people to enable them manage situations where their loved one is in a slow process of dying, such as when they have cancer.
7) What are your recommendations for improving death education and bereavement services for children and adolescents in the US?
The numerous school shootings have exposed students to death grimly as they have encountered it directly in their learning settings and in most cases, without any initial preparation on how to handle such egregious occurrences. As such, several recommendations would help improve death education and bereavement services for American children and adolescents. There is a need for the young population to learn about the cognitive, physical, behavioral, and even psycho-social aspects of death. In light of this, schools should partner with death education specialists to develop, integrate and deliver comprehensive death education programs in school curriculums. Death education programs must focus on helping young people understand the dying process to help them attain the needed mental, emotional, and psychological balance that enhance their capacity to mourn without suffering the harmful outcomes of depression, drug abuse, and suicide. Children and adolescents in the US must also be taught on how to make decisions for traumatic death, loss, and bereavement because as Sikstrom et al. (2019) imply, professional support in bereavement improves overall personal wellness. Failing to enhance the decision making capacity of children and adolescents after encountering death means that they remain stuck in the event, which eventually interferes with their ability to return to and live their lives normally. Thus, their health, academic performance, relationships, and overall wellbeing suffer from indecision or making poor decisions due to the instability engendered by encountering death. Learning institutions must also teach death education should also be taught in formal and informal settings to improve learning outcomes among children and adolescents. For instance, death education may be formally provided in classrooms and professional workshops and informally taught in forums, videos, and coaching sessions. Adopting such an integrated approach would help young learners and talk more openly about death and ultimately change their attitudes about death, as implied by Kim & Kim (2018). Hence, students would find it easier to open up on their fears about death, and especially when they are upset from the imminent death or death of a loved one.
8) If you were instructed by the principal of a local school to develop a working group on improving death education at the school, how would you go about forming this group, who would you include and why, what would be your main goals, how would you measure these goals?
I would hold a meeting with the teachers and leaders at the school to communicate my intention to form a working group aiming to improve death education. I would then articulate the resources needed to form the group and determine what is readily accessible. The next step would entail working with the school leadership to seek the relevant personnel required to form an effective working group and invite them for a meeting at the school. I would recruit the school leader and teachers because they would provide insight on the learning approaches they use at the institution to determine the guidelines required to develop, integrate, and deliver the program. I would incorporate a counselor in the group to help design effective counseling strategies in the program and also counsel teachers and students when they are unable to deal with a particular situation. The groups would also consist of a skilled death specialist to guide the direction of the program and tin teachers on how to deal with their inherent reservations about talking about death. A religious authority is also crucial in such a group because they provide the required counsel to help students increase their faith and change their attitudes on death. For example, the religious figure would help students believe in the goodness of death as a means of alleviating human suffering, especially when their loved one has a painful, terminal disease, such as cancer. Further, the religious figure would help the children and adolescents relate better with the reality of death by helping them understand that they also share in the same fate. I would also include students in the working group to allow them provide further insight on what should be incorporated in the program.
One goal of the program would entail providing comprehensive death education to teachers and young learners to help them understand and cope with death emotionally, psychologically, and cognitively. Any imbalance in the students’ capacity to deal with death results in unwanted outcomes such as drug abuse, self-denial, and suicide (Akerman & Statham, 2014). The other goal would be to create and promote an atmosphere of acceptance to help students and teachers accept that death is a normal occurrence in life and that denial cannot resolve the aftermath of a loved one dying. Such acceptance would thus help young students and teachers work through the discomfort and disarray resulting from death instead of avoiding it or succumbing to the negative outcomes. Another goal would be fostering open discussion and interaction about issues of death among students and teachers to change the underlying negative attitudes and stereotypes about death. These goals would be measured by assessing the durability of the newly adopted attitudes about death and the level of openness among students and teachers in discussing death. The degree of enhancement of the teachers’ capacity to respond effectively to student needs when dealing with death matters would also be an effective measure of the goals.
9) Identify and describe one local and one national organization involved in promoting death education among children and teens and how you could involve them in this school program.
One local organization that promotes death education among children and teens is the Threshold Care Circle TCC, which is a community resource available to the people of Southwestern Wisconsin (Threshold Care Circle, 2020). It educates people on how to grieve in the family setting and even bury their loved ones without the intervention of a funeral director. This approach provides children with the familiarity they need to relate to death and helps them grieve and still have the confidence to bury their loved ones in a home setting. This approach engenders a sense of accomplishment and independence in young children. At the national level, the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) provides death education as well as supportive counseling services in aspects related to death and grief. I would involve these groups in the school program by providing them the chance to add supplementary specialist information on handling bereavement in young children, as also recommended by McManus & Paul (2019). The groups would provide the requisite guidance on developing a program that addresses the topic of death from spiritual, cultural, social, cognitive, and spiritual standpoints to help avert the fears, generalizations and myths associated with death in each of these perspectives. Further, these groups also provide support and comfort to bereaved family members and friends, ultimately centering a dying or dead person’s life on being alive rather than being dead. Moreover, using these groups would help organize interactive meetings and workgroups to deliberate on the effectiveness of the school program, determine the changes needed and direct on making such changes effectively. Further, I would use their influence at the local and national levels to persuade interested stakeholders to direct more resources to enhance the provision of more professional training for the school’s teachers and counselors on death education. Moreover, their involvement would mean more grants to the program, which would be used to enhance the death educators’ skills in communicating and managing issues of death among students.
Conclusion
Despite the inevitability of the reality of death, governments and relevant teaching and community wellness institutions have long ignored the need to provide death education. As such, children and adolescents still grapple with the compounded outcomes of witnessing the death of a loved one as they lack the requisite physical, emotional, and psychological support to help them in such situations. Hence, learning institutions must take the first initiative to advocate for the inclusion of death education in school curriculums to help children and adolescents cope with death. The successful inclusion of death education for children and adolescents can only be attained by identifying the problems associated with death among these groups, considering all the relevant facts, and utilizing the findings to develop and assimilate program solutions effectively.
References
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