Cement Soul, an Inside Stories Series, is a 26 minute film about the efforts of family and friends to grant a request of a dying man who had worked in a cement factory. Against all “cultural attitudes” the man was buried in cement. After viewing the film, the teacher selects an avenue of discussion activities, one having students work in pairs to negotiate the right of a worker to be buried on the job! One lesson on death and dying ¹.

Courses on death and dying, with a little digging, were found in California’s Instructional Technology Clearinghouse in the 90’s; The Black Death, Cruel Spirits: Alcohol and Violence, Death by Design, Coffin: a Ray Bradbury Theatre Series, Epitaph for a Drug User, Mind Games, Teens with Cancer, Underworld and Kids Killing Kids: Deadly Confrontation, ad nauseam.

Key words for the lessons cued teachers on the nature of the videos; narcotics, self-esteem, grief, accidents, assassination, conflict resolution, firearms, hunting, problem solving, violence, dreams, decision making, mind, burial, cultural diversity, child and physical abuse, sexual abuse, date rape, incest, epidemics, terminally ill, suicide, ad nauseam.

Last week, a local charter school announced plans for a field trip to a cemetery, bringing to mind ABC’s 20/20 program following the tragedy at Columbine High School, in Littleton, Colorado. The media frantically sought to pin down the motivations of why two intelligent young men killed 13 fellow students and then committed suicide.² A shocked nation wanted answers, and of all the media coverage, the 20/20 segments hit the mark, the death curriculum’. One student bravely shared a class discussion; “We talked about what we wanted to look like in our caskets”. At the end of the show, ABC’s Tom Jarriel asked if these courses “suggest death as an answer to adolescent problems?” His facetious statement was foretelling, as the stories of violence in our schools continue and as investigations and the media grapple for more answers.

As early as the 50’s, a president of the University of Chicago, wrote in response to the “conflicting demands” in changing the course of education away from the traditional norms of schooling, whether by weakening the standards or forming a new set. Standards, meaning the purposes and means of education in America.

“It is even difficult to tell whether the ills which beset us presently are the result of changing social conditions or the changes brought about in the schools by progressive education.”³

Ominous, isn’t it. Progressive education has carried values clarification’ like a polio virus into classrooms, without a vaccination to curb it. Since Dewey was put on a pedestal and the heralding of Prof. Sidney Simon’s book, Values Clarification: A Handbook of Practical Strategies for Teachers and Students, assessing values is primary purpose of schooling. Teacher training programs inherently adopted psycho-social methods to facilitate discussions of issues relevant to your children. “How many of you would choose to die and go to heaven, if it meant playing a harp all day?” Lessons on value formation similar to Prof. Simon’s “values-voting” exercises designed for elementary and middle school, are found and sold at http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/topics-and-issues

A new paradigm of defining terms separates parents from school reform jargon. Simple phrases, as decision-making’, are not only vague, but can be quarrelsome. What decisions are students guided to make? What is the nature of discussions that take place in classrooms? According the advocates of youth, individualized lessons offered for ages 12 to 18 are inclusive of “Emergency Contraception, GLBTQ Issues, Abortion, European Approaches, Condom Efficacy and Use contraindicated by Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage programs.

Today, death and dying lessons are found in a helter-skelter manner, creeping here and there in health, science and social studies classes. Values clarification, however is a daily exercise. Student groups gather information, sort out the pieces and organize it into a semblance of well done research. The finality is to tack on a personal or group evaluation, create a presentation and share their conclusions or opinions. Summarily, it is a self-discovery exercise in order to formulate a personal value (attitude) on the subject. Common Core Standards delineate these steps as Determining, Analyzing, Synthesizing and E-value-ating. The embedded Sustainable lessons evoke a depressing world of environmental disasters, poverty and malnutrition, over population, natural disasters, wars, racism, sexism, unemployment and social injustices.

Columbine was infested with all of the elements towards disaster. Young imaginations are still unbridled from authority figures, asked to solve real-word’ problems, make decisions based on constructing knowledge through self-discovery, discussing controversial issues, learning in the end that current institutions are not trust worthy to solve them, existing in a dismal world only to die in the end, ad nauseam.


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1 – California Instructional Technology Clearinghouse: AGC Educational Media Video, Grades 7-12: Key words Burial, Cultural Diversity, Death, Dying, Friendship, 1989.

2 – ABC-TV 20/20 segment aired September 21, 1990.

3 – National Society for the Study of Education, 54th Yearbook, Part I; Univ. of Chicago Press, 1955, pg. 7.