'Life and death education' refers to a variety of courses and activities that explore the experience and meaning of death and attitudes towards it. The purpose of such programmes is to help people come to terms with an unavoidable but seldom discussed reality that everyone faces and, at the same time, gain an appreciation of life.
Courses about death have spread in Europe, America and Asia over the past few decades. In Taiwan, life and death education gained currency after an increase in suicides and the 1999 earthquake, in which 2,416 people were killed and more than 11,000 injured.
It is compulsory in Taiwan for primary and secondary school students to take life-and-death courses, with older students learning about ageing, bereavement and hospice care, according to Dr Sam Ng Shu-sum, assistant professor at the Institute of Life and Death Education and Counselling at the National Taipei College of Nursing.
This year, a life-education subject has been added to senior high schools in Taiwan, covering topics such as organ donation and the handling of emotional distress.
'Life-and-death education is gaining importance in Taiwan,' says Ng.
In Europe, such lessons often form part of religious education, he says.
According to a study conducted in 2000, 'more than 70 per cent of Irish parents and teachers thought death education was important but [it] is not part of the school curriculum', says Paul Wong Wai-ching, of the University of Hong Kong's Jockey Club Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention.
