M. McGovern and M. M. Barry climate, the Irish social rituals surrounding death and grieving are also changing. The traditional house wakes are being replaced with a more clinical approach to death, allowing little partici- ation for children in death rituals. Increasingly, schools are being asked to provide educational and counseling support to students xperiencing situations involving death, suicide, or grief trauma. A number of handbooks and support materials for schools in dealing with adult and child bereavement have been circulated by statu- tory and voluntary agencies. Placing death education on the Irish educational agenda requires that the perspectives of both teachers and parents be explored fully. However, to date there have been few published empirical studies on attitudes to death education in an Irish setting. Existing studies on death education in a North American context have underscored the critical role of parental and teache attitudes to the development and success of childrens death educa tion programs(Crase Crase, 1982; Jones, Hodges,& Slate 1995).While the majority of studies suggest that parents and teachers are supportive of death education programs in theory, it appears that personal attitudes and anxieties concerning death and dying significantly influence their level of support. Jones et al (1995)report that greater knowledge of death and grief has been found to relate to greater support for death education. They also suggest that increasing parental knowledge will, therefore, help to increase parental support In a study exploring the perceptions of parents toward early childhood death education, Crase and Crase(1982)explored par ental anxieties concerning children being scared by the concept of death being explained to them. Concerns were also expressed regarding teachers' philosophical and religious values about death being conveyed to their children. McNeill(1983 )investigated par- ental concerns around discussing the topic of death with the children and reported that while the majority of women had dis cussed death within their families, they reported great unease in doing so. In one of the few European studies available, Kuterovac- Jagodic (1996), in a study carried out in Croatia, also reports that while a majority of parents do want their children to be taught about death in school, they expressed reservations that this might Copyright@ 2000. All rights reserved.Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved