
It is difficult for children to learn about the concept of death without it interfering with their happiness. A large portion of what makes a child happy comes from the absence of knowledge. Donald Barthelme highlights the concept of death in The School and shows us how this concept affects the way we think and act. The way the students react to the concept of death help to explain how happiness works in young children and how it may differ from adults. While Donald Barthelme introduces multiple different controversial topics in The School, the concepts of death and happiness have the largest impact on the students and the author’s audience.

Donald Barthelme’s The School introduces young students in the typical classroom setting to concepts that even adults have difficulty understanding. The student’s professor, Edgar, is faced with the challenge of explaining the concept of death to the children in his classroom, which to his surprise, sparks up his own curiosity about death and the after-life. The students in Edgar’s class are first faced with the concept of death when they are attempting to do a school project that the teacher had assigned. The children were supposed to show their gardening knowledge by planting trees. When the kid’s trees do not survive the kids start to wonder what has happened to their tree. Throughout the story, the concept of death is repeatedly brought up and contemplated in the minds of the teacher and the students in his class. Edgar is surprised when he realizes he cannot give the children in his class a straight answer of what happens when something dies. Edgar continuously struggles with his own concept of death and what he thinks could happen after we die. The students in Edgar’s class never fully understand what death means or what causes death and a large reason for this is ignorance and innocence. 

Children’s concept of death is a great article that gives specific examples of what kids think at different ages of life when it comes to the concept of death. For an infant, they have no real concept of death. Instead infants react to separation from their parents and rely on a consistent routine from the parents to feel the safest. Toddlers have very little understanding of the death. The toddler instead senses the emotions of their parents and family and react similarly to how they are reacting (Adler). For example, if the toddler’s mother or father begins to cry and becomes very depressed the kid’s emotions will become very sad and the toddler will be confused as to why his or her mother or father is depressed. Children in preschool begin to slightly understand the concept of death. They understand that it is something that parents and other adults fear, but they do not fear it completely themselves. Death is commonly explained to children this age as something that is a sleep or that we go to heaven when we die. School age children begin to have a more realistic understanding of what death is. Children in this age group start to realize that death is a permanent thing that nobody ever just suddenly snaps out of (Adler). These children mainly start to get anxiety when they have separation from their parents and close friends. They slightly fear their own death because they do not know what happens to them after death. This is important to Donald Barthelme’s story because it shows how the characteristics shared by the kids in this short story are also shared in kids that are in the school age phase. The children in the story are very curious as to what happens not only to humans but also to other things like oranges and the trees that they are told to grow by Edgar in their class projects. It may seem like a common belief that trees and plants and things of that nature do not have after-lives, however, this is widely debated and most children do not understand what makes trees, plants, and flowers any different from other animals dying. Some may believe that all of nature has a spirit and an after-life, while others believe that only humans have emotions and an after-life. This helps show how there really is no one answer that Edgar can give the students in his class because there are so many different ideas that their different parents may teach them to believe.

 Mark W Speece wrote a different article about the concept of death where 

he discusses a child’s perception of the conept in a detailed manner. In this article he talks about how it is not uncommon for a child to face at least one near death experience. After they do, and even if they do not, they begin to wonder what death means and what happens to them and their family after they die (Speece). Mark Speece says that younger children more than older children can indicate that death is not universal. Younger children are more capable of seeing that death is something that you can escape if you are clever or lucky (Speece). They also understand that death is only in the future, it is not something that has happened in the past to them. This is important to explaining Donald Barthelme’s concept that is brought up constantly throughout the book. This further explains what the children in the short story are going through when trying to comprehend the concept of death. While Edgar was never capable of satisfying the student’s curiosity of death, he was able to help them better understand it and help the students expand their knowledge of the concept. Mark Speece talks about the different components of death that humans can understand, “Since the 1970s it has been generally accepted that the concept of death is not a single, unidimensional concept. Instead it is composed of several relatively distinct subconcepts, referred to as components. Investigators have varied considerably in the exact number of components they have recognized and in how they have defined them.” (Speece) He then explains how there are four components of understanding death and then explains what they are. The first component, Universality, is the acceptance that all living things will eventually die. The second, Irreversibility refers to the understanding that once the physical body dies it cannot be made alive again. The third, Nonfunctionality, refers to the understanding that once a living thing dies off, all of the typical life-defining capabilities that living people have that define the living physical body (like walking, eating, hearing, seeing, thinking, and learning) are gone forever. The last component, Causality, differs from the other three because there is no one definition however, it is well accepted that it involves an abstract and realistic understanding of the external and internal events that could possibly cause somebody or something’s death. This is shown in The School when the student’s trees die and they have no understanding of what caused their tree’s death. Edgar has to try to explain the different reasons why their trees might not have survived which helps the students understand slightly better, but not fully. This then makes the kids wonder about the different causes of death for other things than just their projects. This results in Edgar having to try to explain the different causes of death for various things in the story. The children are ignorant to the concept before-hand which is why it has such an effect on the children’s emotions. While neither the students nor the teacher ever fully reach a conclusion about what happens to things when they die, the concept of happiness plays a huge role in further explaining how the concept of death effects the children in the class and how happiness differs in children and adults.  

Happiness is a complicated word to define because nobody really has an exact definition of what happiness really is and how it affects us. Donald Barthelme talks heavily throughout the short story about various topics that cause the students to become less happy. Due to this the reader is able to see that serious topics cause the students to become curious in a way that leaves them very vulnerable to become confused and upset. When the topic of death is brought up to the students in Edgar’s class they are very unsure about what death even means. This makes the students very curious and causes them to wonder how something dies and what happens to the after they die. The student’s level of curiosity spikes and this causes many of them to become less happy than before being faced with the concept of death. This shows how important ignorance is when it comes to playing a role in our happiness. The students are care free before the concept of death is brought up, but the knowledge that death is there makes the students lose some of the ignorance that was responsible for their feelings of happiness.

 Dr. Michelle De Haan wrote a journal article about happiness and the various causes of what makes one person happier than another. The article begins by talking about people’s typical perception of what makes people happy throughout history and how it is not necessarily correct,  “While it is true that living under very deprived circumstances is related to being unhappy, once people’s income exceeds the poverty level further increases in wealth do not lead to corresponding increases in happiness.” (Haan) This is very important to know to be able to further understand happiness. Wealth, while it still plays a role, does not have nearly as big of an impact on our happiness as much as we as a society presume it to be. Dr. Michelle De Haan brings up two reasons she believes people with a lot of wealth and material things are not happier than someone who has an average amount of wealth and possessions. The first reason being because people change aspirations once they obtain something they have been working for or desired to have in their life. For example, a man who has been working to be able to buy his own Ferrari all of his life that eventually obtains it will quickly have new aspirations replace the previous once the Ferrari is obtained. This is so important to understand in life whether someone is an adult or a child. Dr. Michelle De Haan actually says that the second reason was first pointed out by Karl Marx, The author of the Communist Manifesto. She quotes him saying “A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small, it satisfies social demands for a dwelling.” (Haan) This is important because it shows us that a lot of happiness is simply based on comparison. Students in this short story who had their gardening projects fail and die were less upset when they saw other student’s projects fail and die as well. This can be seen in almost any aspect in society. For example, someone who grows up in a poor country but is the wealthiest person in that country, is considered rich. While on the other hand if someone is raised in a wealthy country and is the poorest person in that country, they are considered poor. Even if the poorest person in the wealthy country has more than the richest man in the poor country, the man in the poor country is still considered to be better off. This shows how what Karl Marx is saying has truth to it. The relative happiness of the children in Edgar’s class when participating in the gardening project was largely based upon how their projects compared to the other students in the class. 

In today’s society the importance of wealth is stressed so much to the point that young adults pursuing a career actually determine what they will do based on salary rather than what they love to do. This is a big problem for the modern man because most men feel as if it is their obligation to provide for their family when they grow up even more so than women. While providing for your family is still very important, it is now more equally important for women to provide the wealth just as men do with all of the progression in women’s rights in the work place. This suggests that men especially need to focus less on just providing income and focus more on their own values and other variables that cause happiness. “Professor Richard Davidson, an expert in the brain bases of emotion, has shown that people whose brains are more active in the left frontal area tend to be more positive, outgoing, and smile more; by contrast people who show the opposite pattern of more activity in the right tend to report more negative thoughts, be more shy, and smile less.” (Haan) This is important because it shows the side of happiness that people are not able to control. A lot of people are genetically predisposed to having happier lives than others simply due to how the makeup of an individual’s brain. This is important to understand because recognizing that there are factors we are not capable of controlling help explain why some people have a harder time achieving happiness than other. This also helps people understand that some people are not able to be happy because of actual issues in their brain that require medical treatment. Many People do not realize that this actually affects our physical health as well.

Sara Rimer wrote an article that goes into depth about happiness and how it correlates with our overall health. This article suggests that our happiness plays a role in a lot more than just keeping us from being depressed, “A vast scientific literature has detailed how negative emotions harm the body. Serious, sustained stress or fear can alter biological systems in a way that, over time, adds up to “wear and tear” and, eventually, illnesses such as heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.” (Rimer) This is important to The School because the kids are completely unsure about how to react to the concept of death and what it meant, so they became more stressed causing them to be less happy. As the story progresses and Edgar talks more to the children about the concept of death, they begin to understand that death is something that can be avoided. That knowledge gives them hope which supports the article’s idea of the importance of hope for people to have. While hope is certainly still valuable in adults, it is even more important that children have hope than adults mainly due to how fragile their young minds are. This article stresses the importance of having an optimistic outlook on life and stay positive about yourself. Laura Kubanksy, HSPH associate professor of society, human development, and health said “It looks like there is a benefit of positive mental health that goes beyond the fact that you’re not depressed. What that is is still a mystery. But when we understand the set of processes involved, we will have much more insight into how health works.” (Rimer) Donald Barthelme did not stress being positive heavily throughout the story, however, the importance of it is shows in The School when Edgar does not bash the children for not doing as well as he would have liked them to do on their gardening projects that they were all assigned. The children then do not get so down on themselves and the knowledge that they can do better on the next one gives the children hope which then helps them maintain happiness. 

The School is a great story to highlight the importance of happiness because the reader gets to see how happiness can change in people’s everyday life. The short story also shows us various ways that cause children and adults to differentiate in what makes them happy. The sources discussed provide background information that help explain the main concepts in Donald Barthelme’s short story as broad as they are. Death and happiness go hand and hand in this short story because when the concept of death is brought up to the students in Edgar’s class each of their individual levels of happiness differed and many examples are given so that the reader can better understand different causes and results of happiness and how it affects our lives. 
