The transformative potential of death education : death systems and death ambivalence

Death is an inevitable part of all human existence, and it is estimated that by the age of 8 most people have experienced a bereavement. Yet, despite its omnipresence, literature and popular media frequently assert that death is a taboo topic and that a reticence to acknowledge death as part of life has implications for how people are emotionally, socially and practically prepared when someone is ill or has died. This perceived taboo is particularly pertinent in relation to children, and there is a growing body of research which acknowledges the absence of death and bereavement in both school curricula and support and the important need to address this. This presentation explores this absence drawing on the concepts of death systems and death ambivalence to understand the associated effects. In doing so, it argues that death education has transformative potential to meaningful shape children’s knowledge of, and engagement with, death and loss. The presentation will begin by discussing the idea of death systems, developed by Robert Kastenbaum in 1977 to draw attention to the social structures, practices and rituals that influence how death is ‘known’ and experienced. Here, death education is viewed as part of a wider network of practices and relationships which suppress or strengthen different ways of knowing death, and which has practical implications for how death is understood and managed. The presentation will then examine the related sociological concept of death ambivalence, developed from the presenter’s research with children. This research found that death was both present and absent across multiple domains in children’s lives, influenced by wider social norms, relationships and individual needs. Death ambivalence is thus an active process whereby the children fluctuated between being both attracted and averse to death according to social, educational, relational and individual factors relating to what it is to be a child, student and friend. As can be seen from the brief discussion above, death systems ...