Outspoken Educator Enlarged St. Albans School Curriculum

John C. Davis, 93, a retired teacher and administrator at the private St. Albans School in Washington who helped create programs that offered students a greater understanding of international affairs and the cultures of the developing world, died of a heart ailment Aug. 20 at a nephew's home in Holmdel, N.J.

Mr. Davis arrived on the St. Albans campus in 1942 as an expert in romance languages and soon broadened his portfolio in the classroom and in administration. He taught courses in history and Episcopal Church doctrine and served for many years as head of the upper school, which is made up of grades 9 to 12.

He had spent much of his career trying to expand the traditional approach to instruction and curriculum, and the school credited him with introducing environmental studies, law and penology classes and a wilderness program.

In the 1950s, he challenged what he called the "prevailing opinion of American educators" that history courses need only focus on the United States and Europe. Such a foundation "may have been valid 60 years ago," he wrote, but the Cold War made evident a need to understand Russian and Chinese civilizations.

"Perhaps some St. Albans graduate, some day, may be a better ambassador to Indonesia because he had heard of the Borobudur," he said, referring to the magnificent ancient Buddhist temple.

Mr. Davis's interests in international affairs and history led to the creation of a seminar program at the school that focused on Africa and brought together high school, college and seminary students in the Washington area to hear African dignitaries and related speakers.

In 1967, during a period of race riots in the United States, he led a group of student participants to South Africa under apartheid. On their return to Washington, he told them: "One impression that I brought away was that our attempt to convince South Africa to change its racial policies is both ineffectual and hypocritical. . . . We are frequently willing for others to make those sacrifices which we are not so eager to make ourselves."

At a liberal school, Mr. Davis was also notable for his political conservatism. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, a member of the St. Albans Class of 1968, said Mr. Davis made a practice of giving some of his favorite graduates a dollar bill each year and instructing them to give it to someone needy. His point was that "giving" and "needing" were more complicated concepts than idealistic St. Albans boys might imagine.

John Claiborne Davis was born May 20, 1916, near Troy, N.Y. He was a 1937 graduate of Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., and received a master's degree in romance languages from Princeton University in 1940. He said he was exempt from military service during World War II because of poor eyesight.

At St. Albans, Mr. Davis moved into administrative work in the 1950s while maintaining a full schedule of teaching. He was admissions director and then head of the upper school from 1967 to 1981. He retired not long after and began publishing collections of short stories, essays and a novel.

His 1996 story collection, "Demon-Queller's Journey," an exploration of various forms of demons, reportedly took its title from a Yuan Dynasty scroll in the Freer Gallery of Art. Author Gore Vidal, a friend, wrote a flattering introduction.

Mr. Davis, who leaves no immediate survivors, was recalled by students as gentlemanly but demanding. As the years passed, he was viewed as a gray eminence of the school and an unreserved defender of its Episcopal traditions.

In a long profile of St. Albans in 1991, The Washington Post called him a "self-described Machiavellian devoid of illusions about politics and institutions." The article said he spoke ruefully about the "dreadful social climbers" on the school's board and those "with a parvenu mentality for whom education was a consumer commodity, on the order of a social club." The school will endure, he said, because "people in government will always want an elitist school for their kids."