Asha Dooley is co-owner and general manager of Grace Funerals, a small family-run business in Sydney, and believes the potential long-term benefits for children far outweigh the often sombre and uneasy topic.

She says grief education will allow children to have a better awareness of death and be better equipped to deal with the inescapable grief that death will cause throughout their lives.

She’d like to see educators nationwide address a yawning gap in our system where young children and teenagers are not taught at school about how to navigate death and dying, coping mechanisms, how to talk to those around them about their feelings, and the trauma and anxiety death can cause.

“I think most funeral directors would say that as a society, we don’t tend to handle [death and grief] particularly well,” Dooley, president of the Funeral Directors’ Association Australia, tells EducationHQ.

“...it’d be nice to see that change. And that normally comes from the youth. So, you start at the beginning.

“If you want to do generational systemic change, surely it starts at school.”

Young or old, death is a part of life, every person experiences it in various ways, whether it be a shock or with pre-warning, it might be a family member, friend, acquaintance, teacher or even a pet – when someone or something close to us passes, grief and pain are inevitable.

Our nation is made up of a rich tapestry of countless cultures and backgrounds, providing a wide range of acknowledgement of peoples’ passing through various funerals and rituals.

While death is approached more openly in some cultures and with clear and honest lines of communication, many of us in this country struggle to process the end of life, and Dooley says there are a few reasons for this.

“It’s very much multigenerational,” she offers.

“I would suspect it’s because our grandparents didn’t talk about it with our parents, so therefore, they didn’t talk about it with us, and so therefore, we don’t talk about it with our children.

“And also, unless it comes up, unless there’s a reason to talk about death, like you’ve experienced the loss in a family or whether you’ve experienced loss in a friendship group of the family, which could be an older person or a younger person, it just doesn’t come up either, because most people don’t talk to their smallest children about this.”

“…if you've lost someone very close to you, you still want to hear their name, you want to bring them up in conversation, you want it to be normalised, so that they’re just a part of a chat, so to speak, without it being a big taboo subject,” Asha Dooley says.

Grief Australia research has found that, due to a limited understanding of death, primary school-aged children may have an increased fear in regards to their own death or feel responsible for the deceased’s death. 

As well, each year in Australia, according to Feel The Magic, an Australian charity that provides early intervention grief education programs for kids aged 7 to 18, around 1 in 20 children will experience the death of a parent before the age of 18. That’s at least one grieving child in every school classroom. 

The National Centre for Childhood Grief says bereaved children often feel different and alone in their grief, leading to social withdrawal and isolation.

They may have difficulty staying socially and academically engaged. It is also common for bereaved children to experience anxiety due to the dramatically changed circumstances at home.

Dooley says if death was a normalised conversation, and discussed in other areas, and even if schools were able to help kids put some language around it, they could then talk to their parents about it outside of school time.

“You know, informally, just over the dinner table or in the car on the way to morning drop-off, or on the way home, I believe that we would just be able to help normalise it into our culture,” she says.

“One of the things about grief is, in some cases people will have complex and complicated grief for a whole range of reasons.

"And in that situation, you most likely do need some additional support, like a counsellor or a professional to talk to, but for most people who are grieving, the support of family and friends to talk about how they’re feeling, and to continue talking about their loved one, is really all you need to do to move through your grief journey.”

Dooley’s previous career was in hotels and after last role in hospitality was as training manager and assistant director of HR at the W Hotel in Doha, Qatar, she returned to Australia 11 years ago to work in her parents’ family business, Grace Funerals.

As co-owner and general manager of the company, her role involves meeting client families and arranging funerals, coordinating funerals onsite, administration, and everything from recruitment, marketing accounts, and facilitating the growth of the business.

While more than adept at developing and presenting webinars and training sessions for other funeral directors and their staff, she acknowledges she has little experience as a teacher, and as such can’t offer comment on curriculum or syllabus changes or suggestions.

However, she says simply getting the ball rolling and even discussing the possible inclusion of this difficult conversation area somewhere in schools would be a great starting point.

“I just think if we start getting a few ideas out there, maybe the right people will look into it, the people that have the knowledge and the influence to be able to get things like this into schools, even if it is a workshop type of situation.”

Undoubtedly, many would object to any suggestion of grief and death being broached at school, even in an age-appropriate and culturally sensitive way.

“You don’t want to use too many euphemisms, but equally you don’t want to scare anyone,” Dooley explains.

“It’s just got to be managed appropriately. It’s about starting a conversation so that when you do lose someone, if you haven’t ever had a chance to discuss it before, you might not know who to talk to or how to talk to them, and everyone’s parents are different and have different experiences as well.

“So, it's just about helping people get some language around it and know that they can talk to people, and if there isn’t anyone in the home or in the friendship group to talk to, where are the resources they can turn to, to talk to someone if they’re feeling a bit confused and sad.”