Summary and Interpretation of "The School"

Published in 1974, "The School" is narrated by the teacher of a classroom that has lost numerous people and things in the course of a school year.  The reader is first introduced to a classroom that has planted trees that have died.  The narrator notes that it wouldn't have been so bad if the snakes hadn't died just a few weeks prior.  The reader can relate to things that may have happened while he or she was in school and found out that a class pet had died.  "These details are realistic and relatable" (Brock).  The narrator takes it to extremes when he mentions that everything that is living that comes in contact with the children ends up dying.  There is the loss of the plants and animals and also a loss of parents, grandparents, and even a few of the children themselves.  The final paragraphs of the story are of the children looking for answers to questions that as young children, shouldn't know or think to ask.  " And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? and I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life.  Then they said, but isn't death, considered as a fundamental datum, the mean by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of -" (Barthelme).  These questions are obviously too advanced for children that wouldn't know that death is a part of life and therefore absurd.