Death education’s “period of popularity”: Lessons for contemporary P-12 schools in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

As students gradually return to P-12 classrooms in the United States during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, they will have faced and been inundated with images of death at unprecedented levels. Teachers, administrators, and other school personnel will be challenged with assisting students in processing these encounters with death. While death education is no longer a formal component of the American curriculum, death education took on a prominent role in the curriculum during its “Period of Popularity” from 1968–1977. Lessons from this period can help guide educators in bringing back needed components of death education to P-12 classrooms today.

Notes

1 See “Preventing Suicide: A Toolkit for High Schools” (https://store.samhsa.gov/product/Preventing-Suicide-A-Toolkit-for-High-Schools/SMA12-4669). In addition, individual states also offer resources for their school districts. See, for example, Oregon (https://www.oregon.gov/ode/students-and-family/equity/SchoolSafety/Documents/oregonschoolsresourcecatalogue.pdf) and Colorado (https://www.cde.state.co.us/cdesped/ta_suicideprevention).

2 The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has created materials for schools that “explore the health impacts of climate change both in the United States and globally.” See https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/scied/teachers/cchh/index.cfm.

3 “Teaching for Change” (https://www.teachingforchange.org/) and “Teaching Tolerance” (https://www.tolerance.org/) are organizations that provide schools with resources concerning teaching social justice topics.