The Thanatopedagogical Context of the Multidimensionality of Mourning

Upbringing is one of the main elements of human activity, which prepares one for one’s future life, giving one an opportunity to gain experience and confront reality. Contemporary mainstream pedagogical literature omits the only element of human existence that must happen, i.e. death. This absence determines a number of problems of an ethical, intellectual, organizational and practical nature in pedagogical works and analyses. A certain answer to this silence in pedagogy is thanatopedagogy, emerging and developing in Poland, which, with its scope of considerations and practical activities, captures a wide spectrum of the experience of mourning. A thanatopedagogical approach to the subject of mourning allows us to look at it through spiritual and religious, biological and physical, medical, psychopedagogical, socio-cultural, legal and economic prisms. Such a broad interdisciplinary approach also allows us to look at mourning as an all-encompassing process of experiencing oneself as an individual as well as experiencing oneself as part of culture and society.