Death Education for Teachers and Educators

Educators are trained to be able to educate for life. But, without including death in a conscious way, this action will always be incomplete and misguided, so that full education will not be possible.

Death is a subject that has generally been avoided and hidden in different educational contexts. Despite being present in everyday life through the media and forming part of disciplines (history, philosophy, biology, art, etc.) and cross-cutting themes (peace, environment, health, road safety, etc.), death has been, until a few years ago, a taboo in education.

At difficult times, associated with the loss of loved ones, we often wonder what we can do for ourselves and for our children or pupils in situations of death of loved ones. The health emergency caused by the pandemic (COVID-19) has intensified this question, which has taken root in cloisters and family conversations. It has also been discussed in these forums how our children cope with loss with relative maturity and fortitude.

The pedagogy of death is the scientific discipline that studies education that includes death, for example, in teaching, formative learning, curriculum, teaching methodology, resources, training of educators (managers, teachers, family members), etc. If education is a shared task, we must not lose sight of the fact that the family is a fundamental agent of education, also in this area.

In this course we work on understanding the educational possibilities of death and loss, broadly understood, in order to grow or be formed internally, not only existentially. It is approached both from a normalising didactic perspective in the curriculum of any educational stage, as well as from the educational accompaniment of tutorial action, when a student loses significant people.

Death is considered as a formative imperative, from the education that the awareness of death and finitude can generate in pupils. This is why it is developed from an integrated perspective of the pedagogy of death, from various angles: educational, psycho-pedagogical and anthropological foundations, curriculum and pedagogy of death, educational resources and accompaniment from the school in situations of bereavement in students or other members of the educational community, etc.

The final objective is to understand how to educate including death and loss in a conscious way. That is, from the cause of the project, which points out that it is not necessary to educate for life - being as it is, globally, a disaster - but ‘to change life and to do so radically’, that is, from the ego to the conscience of each one of us.