Thursdays With Morrie: The Use of Contemporary Literature in a Death and Dying Course

Abstract

Educating college students about death and dying can be a difficult task when their experiences have been limited to trivial encounters through television and movies. The use of a book such as Tuesdays with Morrie (Albom, 1997) in a course on death and dying offers both college age traditional and older non-traditional students an opportunity to become acquainted with the dying process and to confront contemporary issues such as the September 11th tragedy in a non-threatening manner. This article describes the method in which this book has been incorporated into a death and dying course, a sampling of questions used with a class project and an overview of the adjustments made since its inception as a required reading.