Lessons on War Give Pupils Facts to Balance Fears : Education: Rancho Palos Verdes eighth-graders learn that history is now--and the Gulf War is part of it.

The eighth-grader’s question was to the point.

“What punishment can Saddam Hussein receive as a war criminal?” the youngster wanted to know.

Good question, history teacher John Barraza said before enlisting the help of other students to try to answer the boy.

“When are we going to get the POWs back?” asked another student, a red-haired boy sitting toward the back of the classroom.

The students briefly discussed the provisions of the Geneva Convention governing treatment of prisoners of war. Then Barraza, who spent 20 years in the Navy before becoming a teacher, delivered a point he repeated several times during the class.

“War is an ugly thing,” he told his U.S. history class at Dodson Junior High School. “I can’t think of a more wasteful human activity than war.”

So it went Tuesday morning as Barraza and his 35 students once again postponed their usual lessons to talk about the Persian Gulf conflict.

Every day since December, Barraza has devoted a good part of the class to discussing the crisis with the students, about a third of whom have a parent, relative or friend serving in the conflict.

“You are living through a traumatic part of American history,” Barraza told the students Tuesday. “It is better to accept what is happening than to go hide somewhere. You are not young enough where you can be shielded from it.”

Classroom routines at many campuses have been disrupted by the Middle East conflict, but Dodson has been especially affected because many of the students at the Rancho Palos Verdes school hail from military families and live several blocks away in a 245-unit Navy housing complex.

Dodson officials estimate that more than 100 of the school’s 1,700 students are children of military families and live in the complex. About 80 students have a parent actually serving in the gulf. One student’s mother and father are both there.

To help those children as well as others cope with the crisis, Barraza and other teachers have been setting aside normal lesson plans and devoting portions of their classroom time to talking about the conflict, according to Principal Nancy Carlson.

Additionally, Carlson said a classroom has been opened to students during the lunch period so they have a place to talk with a counselor about the war and whatever is on their minds. The room will remain open indefinitely.

Carlson said a spring music program is being planned that will feature young people performing patriotic and peace songs. Also, a few yellow ribbons will be hung on a back fence.

Since hostilities erupted, Carlson said, she has noticed that some children and faculty members appeared less tense. “I believe once the war broke out that the high tension was less,” she said. “We’re just as concerned, but the starting of the war really released some of our stress.”

Barraza said that by devoting so much classroom time to the war, he is attempting to teach his students not only about the Middle East and its peoples, but about the harsh realities of war itself. There will be casualties, prisoners of war and disruptions at home, he tells them.

Barraza said he aims for his students “to be educated, to understand the complexity of what is going on and not to shy away from it.”

Barraza also tries to dispel war-related rumors that circulate on campus, such as the one that 16-year-olds will be drafted, or that local areas have been targeted for enemy bombs.

“Is it true they have already poisoned our water?” he challenged the students this week. “We have to be careful not to get into hysteria.”

Judging from a show of hands, a clear majority of Barraza’s students believe the gulf conflict will not be concluded within a matter of weeks. And, based on a handful of comments, many of them feel America was right to go to war.

“Nobody else would have,” said a student named Todd. “We had to make the first move because we are one of the strongest countries.”

The students appeared to have mixed emotions about anti-war protests. When pressed, several agreed with Barraza that people have the right to speak out against the war, although one girl, Janet, said many protesters are wrongheaded.

“Most of the protesters are saying, ‘No blood for oil,’ ” she said. “We are not in this war for oil.”

Most students with parents, friends or relatives serving overseas were reluctant to talk to a visitor about their feelings. However, a boy named Chris, who has a cousin fighting in the gulf, said he felt scared when he learned that war had broken out.

“But I also felt happy because we finally got a shot at him,” he said, referring to Hussein.

Another student, Rochelle, who has a brother serving aboard an aircraft carrier, said she, too, was scared when she heard the news.

“I’ve written him many times before, but I haven’t heard back,” she said. “I know it has something to do with the war.”

To help the students sort out their feelings and chronicle the war’s events, Barraza has had each of his students keep a diary. One girl wrote that she had just blown out the candles on her birthday cake when she learned that war had broken out.

“I often wonder why the United States and Iraq can’t get along without war,” she said, reading aloud from her diary.

Another girl said she was in her car with her mother when she heard a news report that women giving birth in the region had been given gas masks to wear.

“I thought they should bring all the people not involved in the war to another country,” she wrote.