College-Bound Pupils Learn Ways of the World

La Jolla High School seniors have little trouble getting into four-year colleges: 83% of this year’s class have been accepted at 130 institutions around the country, and two-thirds will attend a college outside San Diego.

But, despite their academic prowess--La Jolla is ranked as the city’s top secondary facility--the principal says many students are not ready for the real world outside the upscale seaside community.

Inability to Adjust

Most will be going away from home for the first time in the face of statistics showing that only 20% or so of college freshmen graduate four years later. In most cases, students drop out not because of academic problems but because of an inability to adjust to a new environment requiring self-direction in their educational and personal lives.

So, for two years, Principal J. M. Tarvin has sponsored a pilot course on “urban survival skills,” with a psychology-based curriculum intended to help students understand social changes they will face after high school, to learn about different life styles and to meet socioeconomic groups seldom encountered in the La Jolla milieu.

The course is the only one of its kind in the county.

Students have flocked to the elective course, officially known as psychology, which includes a rigorous examination of topics such as stress, peer pressure, racial animosity, suicide and family relationships, and a requirement that all students work a minimum of 12 hours with a volunteer social service agency in the county. The course is offered in addition to the high-powered regular curriculum required of all La Jolla students, who must take four courses more than the district requires of students.

“We’re saying that, just like we prepare kids to do well on SAT exams for success in getting into college, we are going to prepare kids for success while in college by giving them an idea of an environment different from the one they grew up in,” Tarvin said last week.

“Kids here grow up with a particular point of view and really only see one type of world until they are ready to go away to college or to get a job,” Tarvin said. The school’s Latino and black students who are bused to La Jolla each day from Southeast San Diego in many cases have a better sense of society than do resident students, he said, because they already have been exposed to two different worlds.

Influence of Cults

A group of students recently was talking about peer pressure with teacher Vickie Eveleth as an introduction to a unit on brainwashing and cults, discussing how they differ from adherence to legitimate authority.

“You know, the highest ratio of adherents to cults comes from first- and second-year college kids,” Eveleth told one of her three urban survival classes. Why? A cacophony of answers from the class underscored the reasons for the class being started: Away from home for the first time, exposure to new ideas, loneliness, lack of clear goals.

The class earlier in the week had viewed a videotape of an interview with convicted mass murderer Charles Manson as a first look at charismatic cult leaders.

“He didn’t look that crazy, he looked like he was acting,” student Mike Huddleston volunteered.

“He’s crazy but smart enough so he can manipulate people,” student Chad Cooper said. “He knows what he wants, but he must be nuts just because of what he does want . . . . Either way, he’s nuts.”

But the students were less certain about what distinguishes an evil cult such as Manson’s from groups such as the Hare Krishna or offbeat religious groups.

“Maybe with (established) religions, you have a chance to be yourself as well,” pupil Melissa Urdanetta said. With cults, she suggested, you either are what they want or you can’t belong.

Instructor Eveleth said the students receive exposure to topics that they otherwise might get only bits and pieces of in other classes.

“We’ve had parents of gay and lesbian children, and ministers from opposing views,” she said of people who have spoken to the students. “We’ve had the gang detail describing why people seem to join, we’ve had recovering drug addicts who are students at La Jolla, we’ve had discussions of bulimia and anorexia, both important topics to boys as well as girls at this age.

“And the kids don’t resist the idea that they need this type of information.”

Last semester, during a unit that included issues of child abuse and molestation, one girl in the class came out and admitted for the first time that she had been molested as a fourth-grader, describing the difficulty of understanding what was going on at the time and what to do afterward.

“That was awfully hard for her, but it was equally challenging for the class,” Eveleth said. “Before, the kids had the attitude of ‘how could anyone let themselves get into that situation?’ just like as to wife beating, they said, ‘why not just leave?’ before they began to study the complexity to such situations.”

Eveleth stressed, however, that the course, although making students more aware of a diverse society, also strengthens their self-esteem and confidence to follow what they believe to be right.

“I believe it helps them understand that they don’t have to be involved in certain things,” she said.

Because of the topics covered, parents must give written permission for their children’s attendance, and all students have the right to leave if a particular subject bothers them. During a topic on the death of a loved one, Eveleth had some students whose mother or father had recently died explain what you can say in such situations that will be comforting.

Students also learn the warning signs for suicide and what they can do to find help for a friend.

“Two girls who were writing a paper on the subject called a drug crisis hot line for information and found the number disconnected,” Eveleth said. She said it provided a good lesson in the shortcomings of the system. “They were angry over how terrible things would have been if they had really been calling” for a friend.

“I think this course is helping us put a good head on our shoulders, common-sense-wise,” Chad Cooper said.

“We’ve found out about a lot of problems that we don’t really see going on, such as mental illness,” Josh Clark said. “There’s more reality going on than we know about, even among friends of ours, such as the effects of divorce.”

“When I go out with friends now, I find that I relate better with them and understand why people act the way they do,” Katie Tribolet said, although classmate Shannon Carpenter said that some friends kid them about “analyzing everyone” as a result of taking the class.