The purpose of this study is to examine what students learned through a death education course and what kind of knowledge and skills a teacher expected the students to acquire.Semi-structured interview was conducted at a college in NY during autumn semester in 2012.

According to previous studies about death education in American higher education, researchers focused on curricula（White,1970;Leviton,1975; Corr, 1984; Wakabayashi,1986; Noppe, 2004）. However, they did not interview students but introduced the topics of curricula in death education course. Although what topics death education course should deal with were showed in these research, what knowledge and skills students could master through the course were not examined. In addition, the latest theories and terminologies used in American death education courses have not been unveiled for 10 years in Japan. Explaining the latest theories and analyzing students’ opinions, this study is valuable.

Five students who enrolled in Grief, Mourning and Bereavement class participated in this research. I also took the same course. Therefore, my classmates willingly cooperated with my interview. The students were interviewed in the second or third week of the class and at the ten thirteen or last week of the class. To compare the students’ opinions with the teacher’s ones, the lecturer was also interviewed.

The motivation to register death education course were various. Some students were motivated to register the course because of taking the certification of counselors and Certification in Thanatology: CT）. Other students heard good reputation towards the course and the teacher, they decided to take it. Some students had reasons to reflect on their losses objectively and academically.

The results of the interviews showed that the teacher expected the students to learn the latest theories related to grief counseling such as the task model and dual process model. The teacher regarded Kübler-Ross’s the five stage of grief as classical models. Didactic style was preferred by the teacher rather than discussions and group works because he needed to encourage the students to know different theories during the short time.

The depth of knowledge which students acquired was different, depending on the students. A student read a text book, Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A handbook for the mental health practitioner.（2008）before the class. Therefore, she remembered the name of the task model and used it to do assignments. In contrast, other student did not remember any theories even though she attended the class every week and submitted all the assignments. All her skills she learned through the course were to listen to clients’ speeches carefully when counseling them. As the teacher did not give students clear instructions to analyze case studies, some students did not use the task model to categorize clients. The students’ level of understanding grief theories showed the difference. It implied that teachers should provide students with direct and clear instructions to encourage them to understand different theories for writing assignments, if death education course focusing on grief would be introduced into Japanese universities.

Free school movement of the 1960s shifted to alternative school movement from the second half of the 1970s. A certain researcher says that free school movement once declined at that time. On the other hand, a certain researcher says that free school movement was expansively inherited by alternative school movement.

What did free school movement inherit from the educational thought of Neill? And I considered what was inherited from free school movement to alternative school movement. The purpose of this research was to solve what happened, when shifting from free school movement to alternative school movement.

After free school movement declined, did alternative school movement arise? Or did free school movement develop expansively to alternative school movement?

I mentioned two special features which free school movement inherited from Neill.

The 1st is anti-power and anti-public education thought. The 2nd is the education of release and self-government. With the progress of free school movement, anti-public education thought was changed when free school educators overcame such thought.

It is becoming difficult to find out adversary relationship between alternative school movement and public education in recent years. The trend which an alternative school contributes to public education is seen. On the other hand, the trend which is going to take place in alternative education to public education at the administration side is also seen.

If the essence of free school movement is a part of the counterculture, I can say that free school movement disappeared in the 1970s. However, I think as follows. The essence of the education of Neill is securing freedom of the child and cultivating sociality. I think that the excessive organization criticism by Neill was only a means to protect a child from all the oppression.

I think that free school movement is not on the decline.

It is because the education of release and self-government was expansively inherited by alternative school movement.

There were the following ideas in the classic free school since Neill. -- "a teacher center" versus "a child center", "an intellectual training" versus "release of a sentiment", and "control" versus "freedom". The idea of alternative education is redefined on a different level from it. That is, alternative education is shifting to the holistic thought which grasps all the phenomena by wholeness.

In fact, Neill released the child from oppression by regarding a teacher and a child as an equivalent personality. Moreover, by building the flat relationship of an adult and a child, Neill successfuly made the self-government community by the child itself. That is, I think that Neill’s thought developed to the holistic thought of alternative education.

In other words, I can say that the starting point of holistic educational philosophy was in practice of Summerhill’s self-government community.

In the law case on teacher tenure laws, with nine public school students as plaintiffs, the Superior Court in California affirmed the Challenged Statutes violated the equal protection clause of the California Constitution, known as Vergara v. California.

The plaintiffs were minors from ages 7 to 16 who attended a public school in Los Angeles United School District（LAUSD）, Oakland Unified School District（OUSD）, the Sequoia Union High School District, Alum Rock Union School District（ARUSD）, and the Pasadena Unified School District. In Vergara v. California, the group of student plaintiffs backed by a Silicon Valley millionaire, argued that state tenure laws had deprived them of a decent education by leaving bad teachers in place. Judge Rolf Treu sided with the plaintiffs’ argument that "California’s current laws make it impossible to remove the system’s numerous low-performing and incompetent teachers, because the tenure system assures them a job essentially for life"; that "seniority rules requiring the newest teachers to be laid off first were harmful"; and that "granting tenure to teachers after only two years on the job was farcical, offering too little time for a fair assessment of the teacher’s skills." In his ruling, Judge Treu compared the Vergara case to the desegregation battle of Brown v. Board of Education, saying that the earlier case addressed "a student’s fundamental right to equal of educational experience", while the Vergara case involved applying that principal to the "quality of the educational experience."

The teacher unions’ statement suggested that this lawsuit was never about helping students, but was about scapegoating teachers for problems originating in underfunding, poverty and economic inequality. Further, Dennis Van Roekel of the president of National Education Association argued that "this lawsuit is yet another attempt by millionaires and corporate special interests to undermine the teaching profession and push their own ideological agenda on public schools and students while working to privatize public education."

The decision was a landmark case, one that could alter how California teachers are hired and fired and move changes to tenure laws in other states.

In the late 19th century, Teachers College, Columbia University, was founded under the name of New York College for the Training of Teachers. It was born as a result of the efforts of Grace H. Dodge, a philanthropist, and Nicholas M. Butler, an academic from Columbia College. From the beginning, it was regarded as a professional school rather than a normal school. Then, at the turn of the century, James E. Russell, dean of the college, had it incorporated into the Columbia University system and tried to make it a professional school at the same level as law and medical schools.

In this paper, I attempted to clarify the curriculum innovation of Teachers College’s kindergarten teacher training in its founding years. At that time, free kindergartens spread explosively throughout the United States and were to become a part of the public education system. It was time for normal schools, which had mainly trained elementary school teachers, to also start training kindergarten teachers. Dean Russell made clear what the professional school students should learn. This included general culture, special scholarship, professional knowledge, and technical training. He thought they must be taught what to do, how to do it, and why it is worth doing. To realize this vision, students were taught educational principles through educational psychology, philosophy, and history of education classes.

Under the reform headed by Russell, several characteristic changes were introduced into the curriculum of the kindergarten teacher training. First, the amount of time spent observing and practicing kindergarten teaching was drastically reduced and time spent on theoretical subjects（psychology, philosophy, and history）increased instead. Second, the amount of time spent on many subjects related to Froebel’s kindergarten philosophy and theory were reduced. Some of the subjects were reorganized for the teaching of kindergarten and primary grades. Third, a new subject, "Kindergarten Supervision and Critic Teaching" was designed to meet the needs of advanced students. These students were expected to be leaders in the future.