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Michel de Certeau’s work contains useful tools for thinking about the centrality of death in schools and the essential relationship that the teacher may have with it. To educate is to die, says Certeau, because the teacher has to articulate, on the subject of his own mortality, the tradition that he teaches and the work of invention made by his pupil. On the other hand, Certeau maintains that literature is the unique place where the unspeakable notion of death can be spoken of. This conception of literature leads us to rethink the teaching of literature—its aims, its content and its pedagogical form—which has always been essential in schools.