High Schools: Pacific Paradise

In a 40-acre valley surrounded by mountains of the Pacific Coastal Range, 40 long-robed youths were introduced last week to the mysteries of Zen. Under the direction of a roshi (teacher), they spent long hours in meditation on black zazen cushions, chanted incantations through meals of miso (soybean soup), carrots, onions, bokchoy salad and Tibetan barley bread, practiced Zen breathing exercises.

The two-day trial at Buddhist living was the latest experiment in learning at California’s far-out, freedom-loving Pacific High School. A private school ten miles south of Palo Alto (tuition is scaled to income, averages $900 a term), Pacific High tries to stimulate youths who found conventional education too restrictive or boring with the tempting lure of total freedom. Students choose their own hours, classes and teachers and even sit on the board of trustees. At the end of a course, they get gentle advisory evaluations rather than grades —and are encouraged to tell their teachers precisely what they think of them.

Hobbit Holes. The loosely structured curriculum centers around month-long seminars on subjects that are selected as much by the students as by the staff. Youthful imagination is given free reign. In a seminar on sex and psychology, students thought it would be fitting to attend one session in the nude, although only one girl felt emancipated enough to do so. To study “aggression,” the kids took to the woods, pounced from trees, acted out the roles of belligerent animals. After reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, they dug Hobbit holes, then crawled into them.

Pacific students have held seminars on parapsychology and Viet Nam, traveled into the Mojave to study desert ecology. A comparative religion course came alive through visits to Catholic Masses, Seventh-Day Adventist services, even a Satanic Church in San Francisco. They can study anything they choose on their own, and no one cares whether they attend class. “I just go down there and holler at nine in the morning,” says Math Teacher Ray Ditman, “and if nobody shows up, I goback home.”

That does not seem to bother School Director Peter Marin, 32, who has a B.A. in English from Swarthmore and an M.A. in English from Columbia but was fired from Los Angeles State College because of his “eccentric” teaching ways. A quondam poet who once played poker for a living in Manhattan, he contends that “it doesn’t matter what goes on at this school as long as the kids are learning.”

Off with the Dress. The surprising thing is that the students do seem to be learning far more than at their previous schools, and Pacific High graduates have done well on college board exams, a big aid in university admission since the school is not accredited. “If you are insecure, you will really fall apart here,” says Betsy Hammer, 16, who quitSan Jose’s big Lincoln High School, now finds that she actually works harder and enjoys it more. Tom Pillsbury, 16, who was twice suspended from Ignacio Valley High for long hair, is now absorbed in Pacific’s touring drama group, which has had its share of troubles. At one Palo Alto performance, a high school principal rushed onstage to object when an actress shed her dress, as required in Edward Albee’s The American Dream.

Parents of Pacific students—most of them affluent Palo Alto professionals-are generally enthusiastic about the school. Educators acquainted with its program are cautiously willing to concede that in some ways it represents a healthy experiment. Berkeley Psychologist Norma Haan thinks Pacific is “realistic about the problems that today’s teen-agers and their parents face.” Children who merge from such a free school tend to be behind in factual knowledge, she notes, but they catch up quickly because “they are better able to interpret what they read.” They also get a lot of adolescent rebelliousness out of their system, seem ready for the kind of independent study increasingly required by U.S. colleges.