Living people and the death: Short stories about life and death
Death, Life, Experience, Science Teaching, Death Education
Why do we avoid thinking about our own death and the death of those we love? Why does
death frighten us so much? Why do we pretend that death is dead? When these questions
became part of my intimate and daily reflections, this work started to live. In the search for
possible answers, I came across other questions: Why did I, a teacher of two subjects [Science
and Biology] dedicated to the study of life and the multiple ways in which it presents itself, had
never discussed, in my classes, aspects related to human death? How does one talk about death
in a classroom? Is a Death Education possible? The texts that constitute this thesis reflect the
uncertainties and possibilities that go through these questions: 1. In the opening text - Is death
dead? - it is possible to find the theoretical-methodological foundation that guided the
development of this research; 2. Part I - Reliving life in death - portrays some of my intimate
experiences related to death and the process of dying and, maybe, the reading of these stories
may help in understanding how I got here; 3. Part II – Reliving death in another’s life – can be
read as my field work’s result, which focused on answering the following question: What
meanings do Elementary Students (last years) give to death itself and the process of dying?
Looking for these meanings, I observed, listened to and read a set of accounts of experiences
lived and shared by the boys and girls who were a part of this study. The analysis/interpretation
of these accounts will be presented through short stories about living people and living stories
about the dead; 4. Finally, each reader can still lean on a brief afterword or transitory final
remarks. I hope that this set of texts may open space, in some awareness, for more intimate
dialogs about death, and, who knows, talking and meditating about death we can better hear the
concerns of our lives. All stories gathered here are lived, felt, reinvented, and imagined. These
are stories that reflect not only death, but what we can perceive and risk discussing: Death in
the living.