Module Assignment #15 - Path Ahead and Choices
“Death, of course, should not be feared,
but awaited with certain wonder.
To die was to step across a threshold
into a new world, unknown, unimaginable.”
― Juliet Marillier
Blade of Fortriu
15.1 - Overview
The Path Ahead and Choices
Edmund White (1940-Present), the gay U.S. writer, wrote in his book States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980), "The AIDS epidemic has rolled back a big rotting log and revealed all the squirming life underneath it, since it involves, all at once, the main themes of our existence: sex, death, power, money, love, hate, disease, and panic. No American phenomenon has been so compelling since the Vietnam War." ["Afterword- AIDS: An American Epidemic," was added to his 1986 edition.]
And Italian judge Giovanni Falcone (1939-1992) wrote, "One usually dies because one is alone, or because one has got into something over one's head. One often dies because one does not have the right alliances, because one is not given support. In Sicily the Mafia kills the servants of the State that the State has not been able to protect." [Men of Honor, Chapter. 6 (1992). Falcone, along with his wife and three bodyguards, was blown up on his way into Palermo, Sicily on May 23, 1992.]
And finally, "Between my head and my hand, there is always the face of death" wrote Francis Picabia (1878-1953), French painter and poet. ["Pithecomorphes," in Litt'rature, Second Series, Number. 6 (Paris, November 1, 1922; reprinted in 'crits, Volume 2, "1922," edited by Olivier Revault d'Allones and Dominique Bouissou, 1978]
The purpose of Homework Assignment #15 is to: (a) provide you insight into personal and social choices concerning death that the "path ahead may hold" for you, and (b) provide you with "hands on experience" in learning about these many choices.
Topics include (a) appreciating the importance of studying issues surrounding death and dying, (b) exploring new directions in "death education," (c) how death in the future may be viewed, handled, and managed, (d) living with death and dying issues in your own life, and (e) learning how to humanize death and achieving a personal "good death" in your own life.
Caution - Please keep in mind, that while minimum length is suggested for each task assignment, a length of several times the minimum is generally necessary to obtain good to exceptional grades. Always be sure to weave in solid scholarship, as evidenced from the text and Website readings, and be certain to "compare and contrast" what you have learned. This will help to assure me that you in fact are learning each week. Thank you.
15.2 - Using The Internet To Conduct Psych Research
Researching Thanatology
Theme - In this "Internet Research Project" you are to seek out one of the following: (a) a scientific journal article, (b) a national media article or, (c) a Website that discusses, provides a fact sheet, or reports other such findings.
Task - Using one or more of the above resources, discuss some of the important reasons for studying death and dying. General topics might include death education in general. Specific topics might include the value of death education, new directions in death education, and new ways of living with dying. Review this week's readings in The Last Dance for additional themes to write about.
Your report is to be in the form of a discussion paper" of at least one to three typed, double-spaced pages.
You are urged to use the Internet exclusively, though you may use Plover Library or other such "land-based" resources. AND you have permission to explore other links, such as found on "YouTube," etc. I provide students with extra credit who direct me to good online video clips that support, explain, and/or reinforcement the topic at hand. Thank you.
Commentary - "The chief problem about death, incidentally, is the fear that there may be no afterlife- a depressing thought, particularly for those who have bothered to shave. Also, there is the fear that there is an afterlife but no one will know where it's being held." So said Woody Allen (1935-), U.S. filmmaker in "The Early Essays," Without Feathers (1976).
Clearly what the "path ahead" holds for us is uncertainty at best. Uncertain areas include bioethics and efforts to improve care near the end of one's life. The following two links address the interesting and fascinating subjects of "feminist perspectives on bioethics" [Georgetown University] and an "End of Life" video discussion that addresses "improving end of life care." The latter link is about 5 minutes, but is quite good. I've added one further link with the noted actor Jack Klugman. In this video he urges viewers to choose, in part, elected officials based on how they deal with "one's right to die on their own terms. It is only a minute or two, but quite effective. It was a "political infor-mercial!"
Feminist Perspectives on Bioethics
Some of the following video links have poor captioning, so it is optional for any student with visual challenges. Such students may choose a suitable and related link of their choice or one of the others provided in this task section.
End of Life: A Video Discussion
Links to an external site.
Jack Klugman - End of Life Care - Video clip
Links to an external site.
Doyle Library Electronic Databases
15.3 - Psychology Based Websites
Using Internet Tools To Learn About Death and Dying
Tasks - For the following psychologically oriented Website(s), report back what you learned from exploring any one of the many sub-categories listed. A tighly written paragraph--or better yet a typed, double-spaced page--sharing what you learned and what your reactions were, would be most appreciated.
Professor's Favorite Section: The following links examine several "cutting edge" issues that will face us all "down the road" as our life approaches its end. Please note that one of the links, DeathNet, takes some time to load, but has very exciting and polished graphics if you are patient with the "loading" at various stages. Also note that the "Natural Death Center" link is an Australian based organization. I've found several such centers around the world but not one in the US. Let me know if any student finds one here in the US and if I use the link, I will give students some nice extra credit.
Death and Dying Resources Links to an external site.
Links to an external site.The Natural Death Centre Links to an external site.
Links to an external site.GriefNet: Where Grace Happens Links to an external site.
With Eyes Open Links to an external site.
15.4 - Reading Assignment - Chapter 15
Chapter 15 -The Path Ahead: Personal and Social Choices
Your primary textbooks include The Last Dance (10th ed.) by Lynne Ann DeSpelder and Albert Lee Strickland (New York: McGraw, 2014) and Grieving Days, Healing Days, by J. Davis Mannino (San Francisco, California: TeddyBear Publishing, 2013).
Primary Readings
As you read Chapter 15, "The Path Ahead: Personal and Social Choices," you should keep in mind the following key questions and core concepts.
Content Overview
1. Death is the ultimate challenge to human vanity or pretension.
2. Exploring death awakens us to the precariousness of life and the preciousness of relationships with others. It fosters insight and knowledge and helps us come to terms with our own mortality.
3. Coming to terms with our own finiteness and mortality can be understood as a process of mourning—a lifelong experience in coping with uncertainty, impermanence, and vulnerability, all qualities inherent in being mortal.
4. Achieving cultural competence and a global perspective helps make a difference in attitudes and practices regarding dying, death, and bereavement.
5. The study of death takes into account the actions of individuals as well as the customs of entire societies; it leads naturally to the arena of political decisions and ultimately brings us to choices of an emphatically personal nature.
6. A “scholarship of application” and practice requires integrating research and practice.
7. The goal of “compassionate cities” denotes a model of public health that encourages community participation in all types of end-of-life care.
8. Achieving an appropriate death (defined as the death a person would choose for himself or herself should such a choice be possible) requires that we first rid ourselves of the notion that death is never appropriate.
9. The conceptualizing of death in the future raises intriguing questions relating to technology, ethics, law, and the whole range of customs and practices that have been part of the way humans traditionally have dealt with death. For example, given an ever-growing population and increasing demand for land, will ground burials continue to be a reasonable option for future generations?
10. Awareness of death enhances life and brings added dimensions to the circumstances of human experience.
Chapter Objectives
1. To identify and evaluate the social and personal consequences of studying death and dying.
2. To define cultural competence and evaluate its role in modern societies.
3. To assess new directions in thanatology and to suggest concerns that should be addressed.
4. To gain a global perspective and cultural sensitivity in studying death and dying.
5. To appraise difficulties in bridging research and practice in thanatology.
6. To identify features inherent in creating “compassionate cities.”
7. To notice how the study of death and dying engages both your mental faculties and emotions.
8. To identify and appraise for oneself the qualities associated with an appropriate or a "good" death.
9. To analyze speculation about attitudes and practices related to death in the future and to assess the potential effects of these changes on individuals and society.
Key Terms and Concepts
appropriate death
compassionate cities
cultural competence
death awareness movement
good death
iceberg theory of culture
post-self
respectful death
self-mourning
shiseigaku
Questions For Guided Study and Evaluation
1. Describe potential benefits from taking a course in death and dying.
2. Define cultural competence.
3. Summarize the current state of thanatology and suggest areas that you think deserve further study.
4. Describe the features of a “compassionate city.”
5. Summarize the conditions associated with an appropriate death.
6. Cite the ten criteria for a good death according to Edwin Shneidman.
7. Discuss the social forces that are likely to influence our relationship with dying and death in the future.
8. Interpret the poem “The Angel of Death” and explain what you think the author is saying about the relationship of death to life.
Task 15.4 - In the section above entitled: "Questions For Guided Study And Evaluation," briefly discuss any two questions you wish. Be sure to have enough length and quality to properly respond to each question.
Related Link -
When talking about death, particularly as pertains to this week's readings in Chapter 15, some of the following quotes have specific applicability.
"If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied." [Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), British author and poet. In Common Form]. "Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them!" [Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949), U. S. Novelist. Spoken by Mitchell's character Scarlett O'Hara, in Gone with the Wind, , Volume 2, Part 4, Chapter 38, 1936]. "Modern thought has transferred the spectral character of Death to the notion of time itself. Time has become Death triumphant over all." [John Berger (1926-), British author and critic. "That Which Is Held," in the Village Voice , New York, April 13, 1982 and also reprinted in Keeping a Rendezvous, 1992]. "One can survive anything these days, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation." [Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Anglo-Irish playwright and author. Spoken by Wilde's character Lord Illingworth, in A Woman of No Importance, Act 1. Lord Henry uttered similar sentiments in Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 19, 1891.] "To himself every one is an immortal. He may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead." [Samuel Butler (1835-1902), English author. Samuel Butler's Notebooks, p. 117, 1951.] "Man, as long as he lives, is immortal. One minute before his death he shall be immortal. But one minute later, God wins." [Elie Wiesel (1928-), Rumanian-born U. S. writer. Interview in Writers at Work, Eighth Series, edited by George Plimpton, 1988, paraphrasing Jewish tradition]. "Eternity- waste of time." [Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972), U. S. born French author. Quoted in: Adam, "Gods," Number. 299, London, 1962].
The following links provide lively discussion about some of the new directions in "death education." In the first link, we take a look at "massage therapy" for the dying. The excerpt is from Massage Today. The second link explores "organ donation," and the third link discusses important aspects of "advanced directives."
Task - Provide at minimum, a typed, double-spaced half-page reaction to what you discovered and learned from reviewing these Website links.
Massage Therapy For The Dying Links to an external site.
Some of the following video links have poor captioning, so it is optional for any student with visual challenges. Such students may choose a suitable and related link of their choice or one of the others provided in this task section.
YouTube - American Heart Association & Children's Organ Transplant Association
Links to an external site.
The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Promotes National Healthcare Decisions Day 2017
Links to an external site.
Practice Quiz - Chapter #15
In this section you will find a practice quiz for each assigned textbook chapter in The Last Dance. The quiz is presented in a link below.
Psych 56 - Chapter #15 Quiz - "The Path Ahead"
15.5 - Online Exam #4
Chapters 10, 11, & 12
"Online Exam #4," like the other exams, is a restricted "time stamp" exam. By this it is meant that each exam is unlocked at a certain time and must be completed and submitted within a certain timeframe--"time stamped." The exam is then locked again. Once you take an online exam and press the "submit" button, your exam will automatically be graded and the results sent back to you at the email address you provided after all exams have been reviewed, graded, and added to the course gradebook by your professor.
Though the five exams are open book, you will not be successful in completing these online exams successfully if you have not read and studied the assigned chapters--this is just a simple fact!
The links below takes you to both "Practice Exam #4" and "Actual Online Exam #4" --- know the difference! If on exam day you are submitting the actual exam be sure you click on the correct link --- "Actual Online Exam #4.
Psych 56 - Practice Exam #4 (Chapters 10, 11, & 12)
Psych 56 - Actual Online Exam #4 (Chapters 10, 11, & 12)
15.6 - "Grieving Days, Healing Days" - The Workbook
Learning Through "Hands-On" Doing
Overview
Grieving Days, Healing Days, is an interactive workbook written by Dr. J. Davis Mannino, 2013 (Formerly, Boston: Simon & Schuster, 1996). It is required for this course, because specific pages in the workbook are assigned as part of each homework assignment that you chose to complete.
Assignments to complete in Grieving Days, Healing Days will be listed in this section for each of the 16 homework assignments. Generally speaking, assignments are due by the assigned date. This workbook is loaded with readings, exercises, and activities that will enhance your learning of many important topics in the study of death and dying --- a field that is better known as "thanatology."
It is also important to remember that certain workbook pages will be required reading for assignments that you choose to complete. Therefore, always review and read workbook readings for each of the homework assignments you choose to complete as part of the course requirement. Choose assignments that fulfill your overall course requirement from GDHD.
Workbook Reading Assignment
1. For this last module of the course, utilizing Grieving Days, Healing Days, complete a couple of additional workbook activities that you have not completed to date (or did not submit as part of your 16 required workbook submissions) and discuss a little about them in your response section for this module.
15.7 - Course Discussion Board
Module #15 - Thought Provoking Question (TPQ) or Article
Overview - The purpose of a course message board is to allow students and professor an opportunity to interact about topics of common interest. A message board is also a fine tool to share commonly asked questions, answers and concerns.
You are urged to use the message board, when you have questions that you think others may wish to know; when you have technical questions or answers that others may wish to know, and to share other useful tidbits with each other. I want each of you to become familiar with the message board system.
Once you have composed your thoughts and written them down in a word application program [i.e., Microsoft word] --- with grammar and spell check--- you must then click on the "Message Board" icon in the "Navigational Toolbar" and follow through with posting (copy and pasting) them. Remember, to be sure you also post your comments in the appropriate place in the task boxes that follows later in this assignment IF you are also submitting this ENTIRE assignment as one of your required four online assignments for the semester.
Task - In each class module, there will be one thought-provoking course related question or article for which discussion is expected from students. While not always related to assigned readings, they have important course-wide implications. You are expected to respond to each question by the end of each class module. Be sure to place the question/article number (#) in the "subject line" so your classmates will know which module topic you are addressing.
Since there is only one "thought-provoking question or article " (TPQ) due per module during the regular semester, a minimum response of 200 to 225 words is required for each message board TPQ posting. Also, students need to post a TPQ for EACH of the 15 online assignments.
This Assignment's Thought Provoking Question or Article #15
Thought Provoking Question #15 - "The Fire Behind the Effect."
15.8 - Assignment #15 "Blue Book" Responses
Composing Your Responses To Assignment #15 in Module #15
Overview - For each course module there is a major homework assignment that must be completed. Each of these module homework assignments has several tasks. Some entail reading, some include exploring and reviewing websites, reviewing videos, and still others involve written tasks --- work that must be submitted for review and/or grading.
Responses to "tasks" must be sent on time or you will either fail the assignment or be severely penalized. Late homework assignments are perceived as both a student who is "absent from class" and "late with work." Please always maintain a backup copy of all your written work. Glitches occur in online technology-based education, but ultimately it is your responsibility to maintain adequate backup of all work submitted. You are also encouraged to compose your work within a word-processing application and then "copy and paste" into "task boxes." This is so you may avail yourself of spell and grammar check options provided in most modern word processing software.
Please be aware that all submissions are automatically received by the course "gradebook," where they will be evaluated by your professor for acceptance, rejection, or acceptance with penalty. So make sure your work is received promptly. Much the same way that attendance is determined by you presence in the traditional classroom at the regularly scheduled class time, so too is attendance determined by your prompt submission of assignments while enrolled in an online course. Furthermore, arriving to class without homework or with incomplete homework is also perceived in the same manner with an online course. Accordingly, you are encouraged to submit you weekly work prior to deadlines, to avoid computer glitches, "downtime," and other "technological spills and inconveniences."
Directions - Each numbered task box listed below corresponds with tasks described in each module's homework assignment. Usually, tasks outlined on this webpage require written reactions and/or responses.
Be sure to follow directions carefully and precisely when completing each task. "A word to the wise!" Minimal work receives a minimal grade. For example, if a task asks that you provide a written paragraph or two, and you provide just that, then you have provided only minimal work. Simply said, minimal work is "C" work. Well thought out writing that exceeds both excellence and minimal length (word count) and quality requirements is, generally speaking, graded higher and indicative of a "good and solidly motivated student." However length in of itself does not assure quality either, so learn to strike a balance. Good luck!
Particulars - Remember this module is due by a certain date or will be penalized. Overly late assignments may NOT be accepted at all, and at minimum, marked down. The discretion of the professor rules in all such matters. Was your assignment "Online and Ontime?" Before beginning this first homework assignment be sure you understand the word count and quality requirements (1500 to 3000 words depending on grade desired). See Grading Policy in Course Basics at the Course Syllabus for further information regarding requirements and grading of module submissions.
Module Assignment #14 "Blue Book" [Graded Responses Go Here]
Revised December 9, 2017
Assignment Feedback Form - Online Psych 56
Distance Education office at Santa Rosa Junior College, Santa Rosa, CA USA