A Study of Practice and Evaluation of Death Education Curriculum for Elementary School Children, University and Special School Students

Abstract

The aim of this study is to evaluate effectiveness of death education curriculum in reducing death anxiety. The Death Anxiety Scale and Death Attitude by Hardt were administered before and after 3 class sessions at elementary school (3×45 minutes) 8 class sessions at Kumamoto university (8×100 minutes) and the YMCA special School (8×90 minutes) . The percentage of children and students whose attitude toward death become more positive was increased, the percentage whose attitude had not changed and who avoided any mention of death was decreased. School children (5th and 6th grade) and students obtained Death Anxiety Scale mean scores (± SD) of 5.75 (±2.26), 5.15 (±2.19), 7.76 (±2.77) and 11.8 (±2.11) respectively, and the pretest to posttest decreased was 0.72, 0.70, 0.64 and 0.16 respectively (t-test NS). A few children and students posttest scores were increased. This suggested that increased awareness of feeling about death may be accompanied by anxiety before resolution of these feeling.