When the father of a girl in my daughter’s fourth grade class died. The school addressed it AND gave an excused absence to any child that wanted to attend his funeral. My daughter went to support her friend. I gave her the choice. So proud of her. I talked to my kids about death and grief from birth, just like I did sex and consent.
Loved your comments on schooling and the curriculum! Aussie primary teacher here. It's really hard when the subject of death comes up in the classroom because some kids can become very upset, while others want to discuss every detail, and want it to be as gory as possible. I don't like sweeping things under the rug, so I try to stay respectful and scientific. When kids talk about family members, including pets, who have died, I tend to focus on the love and how it's ok to cry. I hope that's alright!
When I was in my first year of middle school U.S. around age eleven. It was a small town and our class had roughly 80 students we all knew each other on some level. A sweet boy died of a farm accident. The day of the visitation we were escorted down the street to the funeral home (ironically a few blocks from the school) and filed past his open coffin. We didn’t have to go but I think that almost everyone did. That was one of my first experiences and left a profound impression on me. I wrote about it occasionally as I reflected that he didn’t look like the boy I knew, resembling him but he wasn’t present💕 As an adult I am very pro death and dying education so thank you for your service ❤
I remember reading about old yeller in class and we had a conversation about sadness and death. When the class pet died we talked about it then too. And then there was the boy who caught meningitis, the teacher with cancer, all the classmates and their families who offed themselves or over dosed (don't move to a small town thinking it will get your kids away from drugs) over the years. We talked about death as a class and as a school lots. I don't know why people are suddenly up in arms about it. Were they this freaked out when i was a kid and I just didn't notice because i was a kid? I geuss there was that time I got sent to the counselor for drawing a cemetery in October. IDK. Point stands death has always come up in school.
My daughter was 3 1/2, when her grandfather died. My son was one year old. We took the kids to the hospital, the funeral home and funeral.Her grandmother went 6 months later. We did the same. Explained in very,very simple terms. That was over 30 years ago. They are great adults. Both were at their dad's side when he died. I was proud of them.
I grew up in a tiny country town my primary school had 80 kids total so everyone knew everyone. In the 7 years I was at the we had a pre schooler pass from brain haemorrhage, my best friend who passed at school from a heart problem, and another little boy who died of brain cancer. We were all told about these deaths at school although being a small town most us already knew. I really wish someone had taken the time to educate us about death and funerals and grieving because it was a hell of a struggle.
US here... While growing up I saw death around me in people dying, saw the general 50000' view of how it was dealt with, but never anything in detail. It wasn't until I found AskAMortician that I really got any real detail in how death is actually handled and thank god I did! It wasn't too terribly long after that when I lost my mother. In the US you are given 0 education on how to handle any of that situation unless someone pulls you aside and tells you or you read the short pamphlet handed to you by a hospital if you were lucky enough to get that. There was no education on the legalities (not to mention every state is different), body disposal or even what to do with all the stuff. If it wasn't for content creators like yourself, I would have been completely lost.
I never really experienced death around me until I was almost a teenager. And, being from a conservative, Southern US town, we had the whispers. The first person remotely close to me that died was my paternal grandmother, then her husband a few years later, and a few years after that was my maternal grandfather, who I was closer to. And his death was the hardest one, until his wife passed in 2015, when I was 34. There were other people who I knew who passed, including a friend from HS who put a gun in his mouth. ... But I was disconnected from everyone in my high school years by that point. The first time I really had to deal with grief was losing my grandmother in 2015. And it was basically a month of me on auto-pilot, eating nothing but fast food and stuff I could just take out of a package. There was a similar, though not as long period after I lost my father in late 2016. I had so much else going on (like being pregnant), I just didn't have the brain capacity to handle it. But in the intervening years, I've done a lot to delve into death-related topics. The facts, and also different cultures and religions. It's been.. fascinating. So, when earlier this year, my dog suddenly died, while my daughter was home with me, all of that got put to use (including some information from one of your earlier videos, where you were able to share a person actively dying) to help not only her, but me. (Which, thank you. I think I said it on that video, but I want to say it again here. It's not 1-to-1 for humans and dogs, but it was close enough to help.) Kids tend to bounce back from things easier than adults. My daughter gave one of her stuffed animals who happened to look similar to my dog his name, and that's one of the ones she most often sleeps with. It's been half a year, and I'm still grieving. But, it was so hard on me, losing my 13 year companion, who I'd known since the day he was born, that I likely had a heart attack that I didn't find out about until a provider wanted me to have an EKG before I went on a certain medicine... And I never realized because everything has just hurt since then. (I'm going to cardiology as soon as they can get me in.) Because of what's happening with me, I had the serious talk with her about some of the things that grief can do. It's hard to explain to a 7 year old, but I did the best I could, and we do talk about it sometimes still. I don't mind if a school teaches my kid about death (or sex, sexuality, gender, and so on) as long as it's based in facts, and not belief systems. There are kids who I know their parents just won't tell them facts, because they might not know either, and it's not healthy to be 34 and lose an extremely close family member, and have no idea about the details of all that. Just like it's not healthy to spend the first 3+ decades of your life going "... I don't feel like a girl, but I don't think I'm a boy either" and then having the "right" feeling word suddenly shoved in your face because you're on Tumblr at 4am while you're sitting up with heartburn and morning sickness. The school shouldn't have to teach this stuff, but they end up being the place that does, especially when there's religion involved.
In the US public school I work in as a library assistant teachers in all subjects grades 6 to 12 (ages 11 to 18) are required by law to give homeroom lessons about sex abuse, cyber bullying, date rape, and suicide prevention. We are required to have monthly fire drills and annual lockdown practice. But we don't talk much about death or funerals.
Was on the fence about it. But when I cared for my uncle declining, on hospice. I decided she needed to see the natural process of life, grief and all. She seen what I went through when my best friend and passed away. It helped her with dealing with the passing of her great grandpa. We just need to be honest with them
woohoo you go girl!!!! I'm sooooo glad someone is pushing back against schools being expected to parent children. Society wonders why children aren't learning to read or do maths. it's because teachers are too busy teaching your child how to be a decent human
Would sure help if parents weren’t all expected to totally mentally and physically exhaust ourselves putting that “roof over head and food in bellies”, plus clothing, medical care, extracurricular activities, before, after, and summer childcare, and on, and on, and ON. Then maybe we would have time and energy to do something besides just try to SURVIVE. This is in America, BTW; I understand it is less awful elsewhere. 🫤
In the US I think the closest we come to death education is literature class. We puritanically don’t want the kids reading about - gasp - sex, so every poem, story, and novel is about death. But not in a helpful way like you’re talking about.
Having just unexpectedly lost my stepdaughter, I think all workplaces should address the issue as well. People are well-meaning but insensitive, at least here in the US.
In an ideal world, I believe the approach should be two-pronged: parents educate kids on death from their personal standpoint and experiences, and the school complements that with other points of view and scientific facts that might escape parents' own level of education. The role of teachers in death education should be more focused on "making it less mysterious and less scary," something parents may not be able to do. On their side, parents can still draw upon their own experiences with death so that they can help their children understand grief and cope with feelings of loss.
My social studies course in middle school in the 90s had maybe a paragraph about death and was meant to highlight that different people handle death differently because burial mounds existed in my area and it was 5th grade TN History class. It was followed by a lecture of how to be respectful for the near future field trip to a Civil War battlefield turned cemetery.
Agree with everything you said. It does need to start at home and if a parent or guardian doesn't know where to start, your videos are a great start for them. Having a paid presentation at local libraries would also be a good place for adults to be educated.
Absolutely!!! The fact that every single living thing on Earth will 100%, totally and without a doubt die, it should be addressed at the same time as the talk about life. This would be an important first step toward getting rid of all the garbage about the afterlife. Here's hoping!
You had me until you called beliefs regarding the possibility of an afterlife “garbage”. Facts about the physical process of dying, the legalities surrounding it, and the emotional impact on the living, needn’t negate beliefs regarding an afterlife. Maybe don’t call the deeply held, comforting beliefs of others “garbage”? 🤨
There was a coming-of-age-movie titled "Submairne", in which the idea was floated that the main purpose of pets is to die and thus introduce children to the topic of death. Part of the plot was the protagonist trying to murder a friend's dog. Her mother was sick with cancer and he wanted to make sure the dog dies before.
I wish there had been someone in my earlier life who could have discussed death in an unbiased way. All I heard at home was that Mom lost her mother before she started school and she was sent to live with her aunt and uncle while her father made his living on the road. Then, he died as well as many other family members around her. Beyond that death is there, my parents never talked about it --- in those days, how could they do otherwise? (Yes, I'm even older than you!)
As a parent and in my case a secular homeschool parent this is definitely an interesting topic. In my life I lost my paternal grandfather as a child but I didn't know him well so it did matter to me. My daughter is 5 and lost her material grandmother my mom at 4 but being of her age and the infrequent visits caused by covid she only really understood that mommy was sad and that I still get sad. Death education in school can be talked about in history especially the American Civil war and it should really be talked about during high school economics because planning a funeral and writing a will are a big part of life. As much as we don't want to talk about it eventually most of us will be part of planning a funeral and dealing with an estate. My dad is 74 and he has had to death with my grandmother, my grant aunt and sadly my 56 year old mom. So it is important to know about all the legalities of a funeral and dealing with an estate especially since there are some people in the funeral industry who will try and take advantage and people who will try and make the grieving believe they are personally responsible for their loved ones debts.
Just wondering why the algorithm recommended your video. It was fascinating though. And yes, i think schools probably need to teach about death given that most parents won't or can't. I like your costume ❤
I never talk about death in all my education years even when a boy in year 12 when I was in year 10 ( I was dating a boy in the same year) my bus driver stood up when he pulled up outside our school and told us he had taken his own life and a teacher who lived a few streets away from him was walking his dog in the local park and found the body and we had a whole school assembly and nothing more we said
Living here in is Israel is one big education in itself. Every preschooler knows where to run in case of rockets. Everyone lost somebody in Holocaust, wars, terror attacks. On one side we are very aware of death and grief and kind of ready for it, but I hope no one else will have to learn the same way…
Hard to teach something that you’ve be brought up as being taboo. Even trying to talk to my friends with children about being death prepared with wills etc, let alone the impact that one might feel when a death happens.
On the subject of parents finding something to complain about… not death related… We were learning about culture in my 2-3yo kindy class. Celebrating all the different places of the world our children’s families have come from. I am first Gen Aussie on my fathers side - the rest are from Japan. And I’m proud of that heritage. The rest of the families supported this learning and sent in many cool cultural artefacts for us to explore….except for one family. One family became very upset and told us that we were causing division and unnecessary focus on where his daughter’s family came from (Iran), instead of the fact that they were Australian. I tried to explain to him that it was a celebration of differences AND to remind them that, yes indeed, they came from different places, but we are all Australian. But yeah, he wasn’t happy. I looked at the situation as being that his daughter would eventually feel ashamed that her heritage is Iranian. I mean, we have a kid in my class who is proudly Russian AND Ukrainian! And we celebrate that!
I honestly wish that death was taught in my school. The way death was introduced to me was (I think) in the most horrific way possible. I was around 9-10 or so, and my parents forced me to go to a wake in a funeral home for a random relative I didn't know at all. I was basically forced to stare at a corpse for a few hours. You have no idea how much that traumatised me. And no, nobody had any discussions with me, and this being in the 80s, information access was extremely limited. I remember this overarching fear and anxiety looming over me for what seemed like months afterwards.. and I'm fairly certain that this is what has more or less caused me to devolve an avoidant personality disorder, which is the baggage I carry with me today. And by the way, I won't tell Xi Jinping about your little 'slip-up'. My lips are sealed! ;-)
If you have to ask, no. I was teaching fourth grade on 9/11 and as a staff we decided to let the students go home and let their parents discuss it with them. No matter, the parents should be notified first, and staff should have permission.
Should parents teach about cooking, sex, and consent? There are some things parents can’t teach about either of these things. Body literacy needs to be taught be a professional, and we should be teaching natural family planning and alternatives for medical uses of birth control instead of contraceptives. We need to teach girls about their menstrual cycle in a way parents aren’t prepared to teach that a naturopath, doctor, or fertility awareness instructor is able to. Consent also is too nuanced for parents to properly teach on their own. Parents can teach cooking, but what if they’re bad at cooking? Not all parents are prepared to even teach kids to cook. I had a mom who burned pre-made cookies somehow. Clearly, she can’t cook. With death, there are also many layers that parents may never be able to teach. Why are we putting so much on parents?
Parenting, real parenting ; anger management, time management, expectations, age appropriate experiences, should be taught. My parents were bad at it. I could have done so many things better.
I was a kid lucky enough to have parents who could and did teach me about ethics, sex, death, how taxes work, basic life skills etc. I think those are things parents should be teaching children. However ai agree that it needs to be covered in schools too. Not every kid is luck enough to have parents who will teach them these things. Some parents would love to but don't have the knowledge themselves to do it. I was 6 when a family friend was killed in a motor bike accident; the following year a beloved member of the community in our very small country town passed. Having adults talk about it helped. Age appropriate books about death helped too. We had one called "Lifetimes" By Bryan Mellonie and Robert R. Ingpen. I pulled it out of storage and passed it onto a friend's young children when their uncle passed away a few years ago.
Sometimes death cannot be avoided I went to a Catholic school and 3 people died while I was going to elementary school. In first grade on of the teachers died from cancer, a little later the pastor of the church died and after that one of the students died when his bicycle was hit by a car. It is easier in a religious school to have discussion on death since one doesn't have to worry about trampling on diverse beliefs. In my case death of real people wasn't discussed from a religious point of view. I don't think that any parent of my generation avoided discussion of death.
So, just what are parents’ responsibilities? We keep heaping more and more responsibility on schools/teachers. The parents just have to sh’t the kids and they’re done?
@@TabooEducation Yes. ? Edit: perhaps I wasn’t clear in that my question wasn’t to you but to parents who don’t want to be accountable for any education for their children.
@@TabooEducation My comment was snarky but it wasn’t directed at you. My apologies. In the current political climate in the U.S. I need to take a break from anything on YT that isn’t simply hearts and flowers and kittens. My bad.
In a word, "Yes". The reason I say "yes" is that schools are part of the wide range of institutions involved in instilling the mutually constructed social realities that allow societies to function. Ideally, schools, houses of worship, and families would all be promoting similar ideas about death, dying and how we should talk about them -- the more openly, the better. But, as you pointed out, Sam, talking about death confronts many of the same taboos you've encountered in educating people about sex. If people don't get the home component at home, and if houses of worship aren't talking about it within their spheres of influence, we're failing future generations if we don't cover the subjects of death and sex _somewhere_ . Given the squeamishness we here in the States have about death and dying (I _love_ George Carlin's take on the subject!), I think we're doing a horrible disservice to future generations by insisting that these conversations _have_ to take place _solely_ in family homes or places of worship. And, just to be clear, "I don't want any of that funeral $h!t -- don't wanna be cremated, either. I wanna be BLOWN UP! (explosion sound) There he goes, God love him!" But I'll settle for being cremated and having my ashes loaded into fireworks shells to light up the sky upon my passing!
I am loath to put yet another burden on teachers, but I do think death is something that needs to be addressed in schools. It should be comprehensive, taught in stages, and in age-appropriate ways. Because as much as parents rail about teachers "staying in their own lane", they refuse to take the wheel at home. I feel the same about sex education, by the way. And there's a bit of a link between sex and death, isn't there?
When the father of a girl in my daughter’s fourth grade class died. The school addressed it AND gave an excused absence to any child that wanted to attend his funeral. My daughter went to support her friend. I gave her the choice. So proud of her. I talked to my kids about death and grief from birth, just like I did sex and consent.
Loved your comments on schooling and the curriculum!
Aussie primary teacher here. It's really hard when the subject of death comes up in the classroom because some kids can become very upset, while others want to discuss every detail, and want it to be as gory as possible. I don't like sweeping things under the rug, so I try to stay respectful and scientific. When kids talk about family members, including pets, who have died, I tend to focus on the love and how it's ok to cry. I hope that's alright!
@@Druklet Absolutely! Spot on 😀
When I was in my first year of middle school U.S. around age eleven. It was a small town and our class had roughly 80 students we all knew each other on some level. A sweet boy died of a farm accident. The day of the visitation we were escorted down the street to the funeral home (ironically a few blocks from the school) and filed past his open coffin. We didn’t have to go but I think that almost everyone did. That was one of my first experiences and left a profound impression on me. I wrote about it occasionally as I reflected that he didn’t look like the boy I knew, resembling him but he wasn’t present💕 As an adult I am very pro death and dying education so thank you for your service ❤
I remember reading about old yeller in class and we had a conversation about sadness and death. When the class pet died we talked about it then too. And then there was the boy who caught meningitis, the teacher with cancer, all the classmates and their families who offed themselves or over dosed (don't move to a small town thinking it will get your kids away from drugs) over the years. We talked about death as a class and as a school lots. I don't know why people are suddenly up in arms about it. Were they this freaked out when i was a kid and I just didn't notice because i was a kid? I geuss there was that time I got sent to the counselor for drawing a cemetery in October. IDK. Point stands death has always come up in school.
My daughter was 3 1/2, when her grandfather died. My son was one year old. We took the kids to the hospital, the funeral home and funeral.Her grandmother went 6 months later. We did the same. Explained in very,very simple terms. That was over 30 years ago. They are great adults. Both were at their dad's side when he died. I was proud of them.
I grew up in a tiny country town my primary school had 80 kids total so everyone knew everyone. In the 7 years I was at the we had a pre schooler pass from brain haemorrhage, my best friend who passed at school from a heart problem, and another little boy who died of brain cancer. We were all told about these deaths at school although being a small town most us already knew. I really wish someone had taken the time to educate us about death and funerals and grieving because it was a hell of a struggle.
US here... While growing up I saw death around me in people dying, saw the general 50000' view of how it was dealt with, but never anything in detail. It wasn't until I found AskAMortician that I really got any real detail in how death is actually handled and thank god I did! It wasn't too terribly long after that when I lost my mother. In the US you are given 0 education on how to handle any of that situation unless someone pulls you aside and tells you or you read the short pamphlet handed to you by a hospital if you were lucky enough to get that. There was no education on the legalities (not to mention every state is different), body disposal or even what to do with all the stuff. If it wasn't for content creators like yourself, I would have been completely lost.
I never really experienced death around me until I was almost a teenager. And, being from a conservative, Southern US town, we had the whispers. The first person remotely close to me that died was my paternal grandmother, then her husband a few years later, and a few years after that was my maternal grandfather, who I was closer to. And his death was the hardest one, until his wife passed in 2015, when I was 34. There were other people who I knew who passed, including a friend from HS who put a gun in his mouth. ... But I was disconnected from everyone in my high school years by that point.
The first time I really had to deal with grief was losing my grandmother in 2015. And it was basically a month of me on auto-pilot, eating nothing but fast food and stuff I could just take out of a package. There was a similar, though not as long period after I lost my father in late 2016. I had so much else going on (like being pregnant), I just didn't have the brain capacity to handle it.
But in the intervening years, I've done a lot to delve into death-related topics. The facts, and also different cultures and religions. It's been.. fascinating.
So, when earlier this year, my dog suddenly died, while my daughter was home with me, all of that got put to use (including some information from one of your earlier videos, where you were able to share a person actively dying) to help not only her, but me.
(Which, thank you. I think I said it on that video, but I want to say it again here. It's not 1-to-1 for humans and dogs, but it was close enough to help.)
Kids tend to bounce back from things easier than adults. My daughter gave one of her stuffed animals who happened to look similar to my dog his name, and that's one of the ones she most often sleeps with. It's been half a year, and I'm still grieving. But, it was so hard on me, losing my 13 year companion, who I'd known since the day he was born, that I likely had a heart attack that I didn't find out about until a provider wanted me to have an EKG before I went on a certain medicine... And I never realized because everything has just hurt since then. (I'm going to cardiology as soon as they can get me in.)
Because of what's happening with me, I had the serious talk with her about some of the things that grief can do. It's hard to explain to a 7 year old, but I did the best I could, and we do talk about it sometimes still.
I don't mind if a school teaches my kid about death (or sex, sexuality, gender, and so on) as long as it's based in facts, and not belief systems. There are kids who I know their parents just won't tell them facts, because they might not know either, and it's not healthy to be 34 and lose an extremely close family member, and have no idea about the details of all that. Just like it's not healthy to spend the first 3+ decades of your life going "... I don't feel like a girl, but I don't think I'm a boy either" and then having the "right" feeling word suddenly shoved in your face because you're on Tumblr at 4am while you're sitting up with heartburn and morning sickness.
The school shouldn't have to teach this stuff, but they end up being the place that does, especially when there's religion involved.
"if you don't like that, bite me." ❤🇹🇼
In the US public school I work in as a library assistant teachers in all subjects grades 6 to 12 (ages 11 to 18) are required by law to give homeroom lessons about sex abuse, cyber bullying, date rape, and suicide prevention. We are required to have monthly fire drills and annual lockdown practice. But we don't talk much about death or funerals.
Was on the fence about it. But when I cared for my uncle declining, on hospice. I decided she needed to see the natural process of life, grief and all. She seen what I went through when my best friend and passed away. It helped her with dealing with the passing of her great grandpa. We just need to be honest with them
When someone passes, I say to their kith and kin,
May the memories of love outweigh the grief of loss.
woohoo you go girl!!!! I'm sooooo glad someone is pushing back against schools being expected to parent children. Society wonders why children aren't learning to read or do maths. it's because teachers are too busy teaching your child how to be a decent human
Would sure help if parents weren’t all expected to totally mentally and physically exhaust ourselves putting that “roof over head and food in bellies”, plus clothing, medical care, extracurricular activities, before, after, and summer childcare, and on, and on, and ON. Then maybe we would have time and energy to do something besides just try to SURVIVE. This is in America, BTW; I understand it is less awful elsewhere. 🫤
In the US I think the closest we come to death education is literature class. We puritanically don’t want the kids reading about - gasp - sex, so every poem, story, and novel is about death. But not in a helpful way like you’re talking about.
Having just unexpectedly lost my stepdaughter, I think all workplaces should address the issue as well. People are well-meaning but insensitive, at least here in the US.
In an ideal world, I believe the approach should be two-pronged: parents educate kids on death from their personal standpoint and experiences, and the school complements that with other points of view and scientific facts that might escape parents' own level of education. The role of teachers in death education should be more focused on "making it less mysterious and less scary," something parents may not be able to do. On their side, parents can still draw upon their own experiences with death so that they can help their children understand grief and cope with feelings of loss.
My social studies course in middle school in the 90s had maybe a paragraph about death and was meant to highlight that different people handle death differently because burial mounds existed in my area and it was 5th grade TN History class. It was followed by a lecture of how to be respectful for the near future field trip to a Civil War battlefield turned cemetery.
Agree with everything you said. It does need to start at home and if a parent or guardian doesn't know where to start, your videos are a great start for them.
Having a paid presentation at local libraries would also be a good place for adults to be educated.
Absolutely!!! The fact that every single living thing on Earth will 100%, totally and without a doubt die, it should be addressed at the same time as the talk about life. This would be an important first step toward getting rid of all the garbage about the afterlife. Here's hoping!
You had me until you called beliefs regarding the possibility of an afterlife “garbage”. Facts about the physical process of dying, the legalities surrounding it, and the emotional impact on the living, needn’t negate beliefs regarding an afterlife. Maybe don’t call the deeply held, comforting beliefs of others “garbage”? 🤨
There was a coming-of-age-movie titled "Submairne", in which the idea was floated that the main purpose of pets is to die and thus introduce children to the topic of death.
Part of the plot was the protagonist trying to murder a friend's dog. Her mother was sick with cancer and he wanted to make sure the dog dies before.
I wish there had been someone in my earlier life who could have discussed death in an unbiased way. All I heard at home was that Mom lost her mother before she started school and she was sent to live with her aunt and uncle while her father made his living on the road. Then, he died as well as many other family members around her. Beyond that death is there, my parents never talked about it --- in those days, how could they do otherwise? (Yes, I'm even older than you!)
As a parent and in my case a secular homeschool parent this is definitely an interesting topic. In my life I lost my paternal grandfather as a child but I didn't know him well so it did matter to me. My daughter is 5 and lost her material grandmother my mom at 4 but being of her age and the infrequent visits caused by covid she only really understood that mommy was sad and that I still get sad.
Death education in school can be talked about in history especially the American Civil war and it should really be talked about during high school economics because planning a funeral and writing a will are a big part of life. As much as we don't want to talk about it eventually most of us will be part of planning a funeral and dealing with an estate. My dad is 74 and he has had to death with my grandmother, my grant aunt and sadly my 56 year old mom. So it is important to know about all the legalities of a funeral and dealing with an estate especially since there are some people in the funeral industry who will try and take advantage and people who will try and make the grieving believe they are personally responsible for their loved ones debts.
Just wondering why the algorithm recommended your video. It was fascinating though. And yes, i think schools probably need to teach about death given that most parents won't or can't. I like your costume ❤
❤❤❤ from Brisbane Australia 🇦🇺
I never talk about death in all my education years even when a boy in year 12 when I was in year 10 ( I was dating a boy in the same year) my bus driver stood up when he pulled up outside our school and told us he had taken his own life and a teacher who lived a few streets away from him was walking his dog in the local park and found the body and we had a whole school assembly and nothing more we said
Living here in is Israel is one big education in itself. Every preschooler knows where to run in case of rockets. Everyone lost somebody in Holocaust, wars, terror attacks. On one side we are very aware of death and grief and kind of ready for it, but I hope no one else will have to learn the same way…
Hard to teach something that you’ve be brought up as being taboo. Even trying to talk to my friends with children about being death prepared with wills etc, let alone the impact that one might feel when a death happens.
On the subject of parents finding something to complain about… not death related…
We were learning about culture in my 2-3yo kindy class. Celebrating all the different places of the world our children’s families have come from. I am first Gen Aussie on my fathers side - the rest are from Japan. And I’m proud of that heritage.
The rest of the families supported this learning and sent in many cool cultural artefacts for us to explore….except for one family.
One family became very upset and told us that we were causing division and unnecessary focus on where his daughter’s family came from (Iran), instead of the fact that they were Australian. I tried to explain to him that it was a celebration of differences AND to remind them that, yes indeed, they came from different places, but we are all Australian. But yeah, he wasn’t happy. I looked at the situation as being that his daughter would eventually feel ashamed that her heritage is Iranian.
I mean, we have a kid in my class who is proudly Russian AND Ukrainian! And we celebrate that!
I honestly wish that death was taught in my school. The way death was introduced to me was (I think) in the most horrific way possible. I was around 9-10 or so, and my parents forced me to go to a wake in a funeral home for a random relative I didn't know at all. I was basically forced to stare at a corpse for a few hours. You have no idea how much that traumatised me. And no, nobody had any discussions with me, and this being in the 80s, information access was extremely limited. I remember this overarching fear and anxiety looming over me for what seemed like months afterwards.. and I'm fairly certain that this is what has more or less caused me to devolve an avoidant personality disorder, which is the baggage I carry with me today. And by the way, I won't tell Xi Jinping about your little 'slip-up'. My lips are sealed! ;-)
Your videos are always great but this could be your best one yet 💜👍
@@AndrewCastlemaine aww thanks 😊
Yes 100%. I had a friend in middle school who died in a four wheeler accident we learned how to play trumpet together he was 13 and died
If you have to ask, no. I was teaching fourth grade on 9/11 and as a staff we decided to let the students go home and let their parents discuss it with them. No matter, the parents should be notified first, and staff should have permission.
Should parents teach about cooking, sex, and consent? There are some things parents can’t teach about either of these things. Body literacy needs to be taught be a professional, and we should be teaching natural family planning and alternatives for medical uses of birth control instead of contraceptives. We need to teach girls about their menstrual cycle in a way parents aren’t prepared to teach that a naturopath, doctor, or fertility awareness instructor is able to. Consent also is too nuanced for parents to properly teach on their own. Parents can teach cooking, but what if they’re bad at cooking? Not all parents are prepared to even teach kids to cook. I had a mom who burned pre-made cookies somehow. Clearly, she can’t cook. With death, there are also many layers that parents may never be able to teach. Why are we putting so much on parents?
Parenting, real parenting ; anger management, time management, expectations, age appropriate experiences, should be taught. My parents were bad at it. I could have done so many things better.
I was a kid lucky enough to have parents who could and did teach me about ethics, sex, death, how taxes work, basic life skills etc. I think those are things parents should be teaching children. However ai agree that it needs to be covered in schools too. Not every kid is luck enough to have parents who will teach them these things. Some parents would love to but don't have the knowledge themselves to do it.
I was 6 when a family friend was killed in a motor bike accident; the following year a beloved member of the community in our very small country town passed. Having adults talk about it helped. Age appropriate books about death helped too. We had one called "Lifetimes"
By Bryan Mellonie and Robert R. Ingpen. I pulled it out of storage and passed it onto a friend's young children when their uncle passed away a few years ago.
this has gotten beyond ridiculous. soon it will be "should kids be taught in school?"
Sometimes death cannot be avoided I went to a Catholic school and 3 people died while I was going to elementary school. In first grade on of the teachers died from cancer, a little later the pastor of the church died and after that one of the students died when his bicycle was hit by a car. It is easier in a religious school to have discussion on death since one doesn't have to worry about trampling on diverse beliefs. In my case death of real people wasn't discussed from a religious point of view. I don't think that any parent of my generation avoided discussion of death.
So, just what are parents’ responsibilities? We keep heaping more and more responsibility on schools/teachers. The parents just have to sh’t the kids and they’re done?
@@HelenCamile63 did you watch the video?
@@TabooEducation Yes. ?
Edit: perhaps I wasn’t clear in that my question wasn’t to you but to parents who don’t want to be accountable for any education for their children.
@HelenCamile63 ah! My bad. My email inbox has been full of snarky messages the past couple days. My apologies ❤️
@@TabooEducation My comment was snarky but it wasn’t directed at you. My apologies. In the current political climate in the U.S. I need to take a break from anything on YT that isn’t simply hearts and flowers and kittens. My bad.
I agree schools should not be required to parent, but the world would be a less pleasant place if they do not!
In a word, "Yes". The reason I say "yes" is that schools are part of the wide range of institutions involved in instilling the mutually constructed social realities that allow societies to function. Ideally, schools, houses of worship, and families would all be promoting similar ideas about death, dying and how we should talk about them -- the more openly, the better.
But, as you pointed out, Sam, talking about death confronts many of the same taboos you've encountered in educating people about sex. If people don't get the home component at home, and if houses of worship aren't talking about it within their spheres of influence, we're failing future generations if we don't cover the subjects of death and sex _somewhere_ .
Given the squeamishness we here in the States have about death and dying (I _love_ George Carlin's take on the subject!), I think we're doing a horrible disservice to future generations by insisting that these conversations _have_ to take place _solely_ in family homes or places of worship.
And, just to be clear, "I don't want any of that funeral $h!t -- don't wanna be cremated, either. I wanna be BLOWN UP! (explosion sound) There he goes, God love him!" But I'll settle for being cremated and having my ashes loaded into fireworks shells to light up the sky upon my passing!
I am loath to put yet another burden on teachers, but I do think death is something that needs to be addressed in schools. It should be comprehensive, taught in stages, and in age-appropriate ways. Because as much as parents rail about teachers "staying in their own lane", they refuse to take the wheel at home.
I feel the same about sex education, by the way. And there's a bit of a link between sex and death, isn't there?
Yes yes yes!!! Taiwan IS a country; what’s the issue?