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Gone Grandmother

Investigating the ways we come to know through picture books

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Gender And Sexuality Education Philosophy with Children Reflections on Pedagogy

RHEA KUTHOORE

Sept 05, 2023 · 6 min read

Goal

An exploration of what happens after death. Children, drawn to ghosts, are often concerned with the question of after-life. How can we know what happens after death, even though we have not yet experienced it? Why do we want to know what happens after death?

Pre-stimulus

1. From the cover page, where do you think Grandmother went?
Response: terrace, died

2. Do you know anything/anyone who does not die?
Response: ghosts
Me: Why can’t ghosts die though?
Response: Yes, actually, ghosts may also kill, die and become something else.

Aha!

Stimulus

Draw an image of what you think we become or of where we go after death.

Inquiry based on their drawing:
‍
1. Butterfly
C1: When we are good, we come back as humans and when we are bad, we come back as butterflies.
Me: Why do we think that the life of a butterfly is cursed?
Thinking skill: challenging assumptions
‍
C1: Because they only take from beautiful flowers.
Me: Butterflies help to pollinate flowers, just as bees do. Also, why do we think that human lives are better than other species?
Me: If I am half good and half bad, will I be half human and half butterfly?
Thinking skill: drawing out implications‍
‍
C: Nooo…
C1: Why do you think we will become butterflies and not something else, like cats?
Thinking skill: questioning assumptions
C2: If all bad people became butterflies, will there not be too many butterflies?
Thinking skill: drawing out implications

2.
C3: I think bad people go to hell.
Me: What is hell and how do we know? Could it be that hell is a place that is meant to scare us into doing good things?
Thinking skill: drawing from analogy
Me: Also, should bad people not get a chance to do things differently?

3.
C4: I think, since we burn bodies, we just become ash?
C5: But our atma goes up.
Me: What is atma?
C6: it runs through all of us.
Me: Is it in our brain? In our hearts? In our blood?
C7: we cannot see it. It is like a shadow.
C8: If our arm breaks, does our atom also break?
Thinking skill: clarifying definition of atma
C9: I do not think our atma can break. But it is what drives all of us.

Resource

Here, we read ‘Gone Grandmother’ together. Given that a few children had also drawn stars, soil, water and air for their responses, this book is very apt! In this book, Nina, a young girl loses her grandmother and is looking for answers to where her grandmother must have gone. Although her mother mentions that her grandmother has gone to the stars, Nina is not convinced. Through the book, she learns about how mountains form and die and how trees die. She also reads about stardust. By the end, she also changes her thoughts on this question as she discovers new information. I recommend this book for two reasons — first, when searching for the answer to her question, Nina is very motivated to find something that feels reasonable to her, rather than merely accepting her mother’s response and is also open-minded about newer answers and second, because Nina, very humorously, exhibits the skill of considering different alternatives when she draws all the ways in which her Nani may have reached the clouds.

During reading conversation

1. Have you lost a grandparent? What reminds you of them?

2. What are some other things that fly upwards that Nani could have used?
Responses: cotton, hair, kite, air, smoke, tornado, parachute

3. If you were Nina, what would you do to find out what happened to Nani?

4. After a star exploded, how were planets formed?

After reading:
C1: Now, I think our bodies become ash and soil but our atma becomes the stars.
Thinking skill: restating views

C2: Why do we burn bodies after death?
Thinking skill: questioning

C3: Why did God leave us on Earth and then come to take us afterwards?
Thinking skill: wondering

Further suggestions

1. Children can try and find out what different communities around the world do when humans and other species die and what their reasons are for the same.

2. Children can explore other creation stories — i.e how the world and species were created.

RHEA KUTHOORE is an educator who is passionate about facilitating philosophical and feminist thinking amongst young people.

Thinking Rhizomatically

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