ABSTRACT
Learning about death, reflecting on personal and cultural values, and understanding one’s own emotions and those of others with regard to death and dying are lifelong tasks. Hopefully people fill their typical days with the chores and joys of living, but there are junctures during the lifecycle when the need to know and to be knowledgeable about death are central. Whether the teachings about death are experiential, handed down in cultural or family lore, learned through media interactions, or formally taught in a classroom, all humans are continuous recipients of death education from childhood until old age. How such death education is received is influenced by gender, social and cultural context, life experiences, and religious orientation. Most significantly, the life span demands and associated normative developmental tasks impinging on an individual are important to the design and effectiveness of any educational experience in death and dying. The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to examine how the ways in which death education may be enhanced when it is placed within the context of human development
Death Education and the Normative Death Issues of the Life Span Erikson (1968) presented the life span as a series of psychosocial issues and tasks that confront individuals from birth until death. These issues (or crises) appear throughout the life span, but one issue takes on a particular salience at each stage of the life span-for example, trust during infancy. As Erikson (1968) insightfully noted, these developmental tasks are embedded within cultural context, so that the entry into adulthood and the tasks associated with childhood and adult life will vary with social structure. It is helpful, therefore, to link the awareness and meanings of death with the major developmental tasks of each stage. In addition to developmental tasks, conceptual understandings of death framed by overall cognitive development and individual experiences, such as the death of a parent or a sibling, greatly influence the meaning of death throughout the life span.
