“People with a university degree fear death less than those at a lower literacy level,”according to a report by psychologist Claudia Fabiana Siracusa and colleagues at Spain’s University of Granada.
The study, “Education on Death: A Study on the Building of the Concept of Death in Children Aged Between 8 and 12 at School,” sampled 288 children between 8 and 12 years, including their parents and teachers. The researchers analyzed how adults’ understanding of the concept of death affects children’s attitudes, fears, beliefs, and approaches to death.
The psychologists concluded that children generally believe in life after death, have had some degree of experiences related to death, and that they remain concerned about it. Girls more commonly believe in life after death than boys, they found.
Only 20 percent of teachers said that death was ever mentioned in the school curriculum.
An appropriate approach to death is vital for children’s health and personality development, the researchers stated. They consider it is essential to provide death education “as a way to value life, and an instrument to end the misguided and unreal idea [of death] transmitted by the media. Such education would provide children with the appropriate strategies and resources to approach death during their lives, avoiding any slight or severe negative impact on their physical or psychological health,” they said. “If death were introduced in the educational system, children would have a more real and intense approach to life, and many of the problems derived from the mourning process in adulthood would be prevented.”
The study found that a high level of education among parents prevents negative attitudes such as fear of death and avoiding the topic.
The study will be published soon in a book devoted to the subject.
Can the implications of this study find traction in the United States? Perhaps in private schools, but it is difficult to imagine how “death education” could enter the public school curriculum. The concept of death and the afterlife differ greatly among the various faiths. Just as sex education and school prayer have proved contentious in public schools, death education would likely evoke similar responses. For this reason, education about death from parents, not teachers, seems the most reasonable approach in our society.
The exploration of death and the afterlife is no longer just a matter of religious beliefs and convictions. An empirical database has been building for years around the phenomenon of near-death experiences or NDEs. Explore will feature articles related to NDEs in the January 2011 issue.
Larry Dossey, MD
Executive Editor
Reference:
University of Granada. People with a university degree fear death less than those at a lower literacy level, Spanish study finds. December 2, 2010. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 3, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2010/12/101202124209.htm.
Posted on December 6, 2010 by Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
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