“Learning from the Masters” – Applying Thanatology to Teaching Modern History

Abstract

The article shows how to use the method of social sensitization of young people, i.e. the introduction of the so-called difficult topics such as dying, death, mourning, which can be referred to in the teaching of modern history. Referring to the methodological orientation of the action research, two thanatology actions were analyzed: interventional and planned, taking into account the perspective of didactics of history in the analysis and interpretation phase. The article constitutes a kind of a methodical proposal with examples, such as working with emotions, creating a school community of memory, using ego-documents and cemetery - a place of remembrance, to pursue the postulate of teaching history as an “opportunity for individual searches, discoveries and emotions”. Displaying thanatological threads in history education, or more broadly, humanistic subjects, creates an opportunity to confront the student (and the teacher) with one of the most difficult existential worries, which is death.