Death and Understanding

                The grass is green, the snow is cold, the dog is soft, and the tree is tall. These are common thoughts in a young child’s mind. Is it learning? No, not really for them, it’s more like something new that awes them, common sense. I never thought I was learning when a touched a new texture or saw something I’ve never seen. In the simplest form, I was learning without knowing I was learning.

“The School” is about a teacher’s experiences while teaching young kids responsibility of taking care of a living thing. He tried using various plants like orange trees and herbs, and animals like fish and even a puppy. Though each plant and animal died within weeks, he kept trying. He see’s the affects of the deaths, not only of the plants and animals but of the people in town, on the kids and has a serious conversation because the kids wanted to. After the discussion he realizes just how much the children comprehended from every death.

                To me this was really proving that we all learn without knowing. We may not realize it for a few hours or a few years but eventually we grasp that everyday we gain new information that we may or may not use. In The School Barthelme writes, “One day, we had a discussion in class. They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? And I said, I don’t know, I don’t know. And they said who knows? And I said, nobody knows. And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said no, life is that which gives meaning to life.”  These children prove that we learn so much while we’re young, the fact that they can ask “Is death that which gives meaning to life?” ,in one form or another, amazes me.

                What amazed me more was this story wasn’t even about how much information children can discover on their own, but that it was actually about cultural relativism. What is cultural relativism? From what I’ve gathered it means no morality, law, politics, or beliefs of one country are superior to another. There has been one question asked about The School; if this mostly takes place in a white European classroom or could it take place in any classroom of any race or ethnic group?  I think that it could take place in any classroom with any ethnic group. No matter where you’re from or what ethnic you are, you always learn. There are schools in every country; therefore there are students in those schools, so any child could make that realization. Sure not all schools can afford that many different responsibility experiments, but there are always deaths, always something to learn from.

                In my short amount of years alive, I’ve experienced 32 deaths. That’s two deaths a year since I was five of people I know. My first death was my uncle. I was five when it happened. He was like my best friend. I always wanted to go over to his house and play. I was told that Uncle Bud was taken away by angels, that he was in a better place. My mom told me the first thing I said was “He’s dead? So he’s very coming back and we can never play.”  Apparently it came as a huge shock that I knew what death was before we ever really talked about it.

                This thought of kids being able to make realizations about such a serious topic, life, is hard to wrap your mind around. To me after all that I’ve been told from various family members, about my uncle and my grandmother’s deaths, it’s very probable. So, have you ever been told a story about your reaction to a death as a child? A reaction that was maybe too mature for your age?