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Teaching Death & Dying

Reviewed by Stephen Henwood.

This is a scholarly work that has much to commend about it. It covers an important and neglected subject, namely teaching others about death and dying.

There are six sections in this volume. The first considers the curriculum for a course on death and dying. The second looks at the practical approaches of training professionals who deal with death and the bereaved. The third section turns attention to examining how the media portray death. The fourth “discusses how one might take the students out of their comfort zones and situate them in such a way that brings death into focus for them.” We move into section five to look at what the textbooks and narrative accounts of death and dying have to say. The final section looks specifically at the afterlife.

Each chapter is well written by academics who are skilled in their own particular discipline. There are many thought-provoking paragraphs that make you realise we do not prepare future ministers well in the art of supporting the dying and bereaved. There needs to be creativity in training that will inspire individuals to be thoughtful practitioners. A few seminars focussed on conducting funerals and visiting a crematorium are not sufficient for the task.

The weakness of the book is the North American flavour. Of the sixteen academic authors, only one is UK based. Our two cultures are quite different and this makes the book quite difficult to translate into our way of life.