Picture books and board games: conversations about death at school

Abstract

Although death is a universal human experience, it remains a distant topic from conversations in the school context. Educational institutions and teachers do not feel prepared to address the issue. However, communities recognize the importance of talking about death. Teachers, parents, and students see this as a possibility to prepare for death and support grief. Experts affirm that it is necessary to address death from the earliest educational levels. This is how students will be able to understand death early and be prepared to deal with it empathetically. In-depth treatment through mediation practices must be prioritized, and different voices and cultural contexts must be validated in understanding death (Pfeiffer, 2003; Eyzaguirre, 2006; Bolkan et al., 2015). Therefore, it is imperative for school institutions to support and guide students. This work reports two studies on education for death where conversation is the key. The first study refers to conversations that begin with reading books in primary education; the second, conversations based on a board game in high school. The results allow us to affirm that death is a topic that worries students, and that, in turn, they are available to address it. Furthermore, the use of educational devices, such as books and games, places the difficulty of the topic in a non-personal space. By separating it from life experiences, complexity is mitigated, and death becomes an approachable topic. The work constitutes a contribution to pedagogical spaces as it shows concrete ways to address situations of death, in a scenario where there is still precariousness in approaches and methodologies.