Multiple Choice

At one school, students lie on the floor listening to Beethoven and Wagner, learn math by playing with dice and cards, and stroll the halls in jeans and T shirts. At another, there are spelling bees, reading drills, a strict dress code--and paddlings. The two schools seem so different they could be on opposite sides of the planet. But both are located in Pasadena, Calif, (pop. 113,000), a Los Angeles suburb, and are part of a school system that offers one of the nation's most diversified educational programs.

In recent years, Pasadena has had an increasing need for variety in education. An influx of low-income minorities into the once largely white and conservative community has resulted in a student population that is officially classified as 43% white, 41% black, 12% Spanish surnames and 4% Oriental and others. The pupils come from families all over the social and economic scales. To cope with the widely varying needs of the students, the city began diversifying its schools and courses during the late 1960s. But most of the impetus came from a 1970 court-ordered integration plan that forced Pasadena to re-evaluate many traditional teaching practices.

Today Pasadena parents can choose to send their children to any of the city's seven special schools and 32 elementary, junior high and high schools. There are special schools for dropouts and academic misfits ("We've stopped thinking of them as all dummies," says an administrator), and others for the mentally and physically handicapped. One school, operated jointly with the Pasadena police department and the California youth authority, offers special tutoring and job training for students who have been expelled from regular classrooms. Still another has high school classes at night for 300 teen-agers who work during the day. Explains Frank Welch, administrator of the special schools: "We're trying to take care of every youngster in this community."

The latest innovation is the John Marshall Fundamental School, which was opened last fall at the direction of a newly elected school board, dominated 4 to 1 by conservatives. A deliberate throwback to the past, John Marshall offers its 1,100 pupils a no-nonsense curriculum grounded in the three Rs. The school runs through the eighth grade, and even in kindergarten the emphasis is on reading. Principal Mike Kellner also stresses patriotism: each morning, as the flag is raised, student trumpeters sound the call to the colors through the school's loudspeaker system.

Strict discipline is enforced by the paddle--often administered by Kellner--and every day from five to 20 children may be held after school in a detention room for "character training," designed to curb unruly behavior. Neatly dressed students move about only on passes and line up single file for recess. Says Board Member Henry Myers, a chemical engineer: "This is my idea of the way basic education should be carried out. Parents are fed up with violence, vandalism, poor teaching and permissiveness. They want their kids to be disciplined and to learn the basics--how to count, spell, read and write."

Need for Love. Over at the Pasadena Alternative School (enrollment: 300), which runs from kindergarten through high school, the students are also learning--but in a vastly different fashion. Kids do handsprings and cartwheels in the halls, and odors of French toast waft from the Early Learning Center, where kindergarten youngsters are cooking breakfast. "Our structure is primarily open, and our children make a lot of choices," says Director Greta Pruitt. "But that doesn't mean we don't teach basic skills. We just take what they want to do and in the process teach them what they need to have." Traditional schools, she adds, fail to meet the needs of most lower-income children: "Rest, food, warmth, attaining self-confidence, love. From that everything can be taught."

Youngsters love Pasadena Alternative; they come to school early, sometimes even between terms and after hours. "The teachers make it seem like it's not just plain old work," says Troy Tolley, an eleven-year-old who has developed a taste for Shakespeare. "They're always trying a fun way to learn but still to do it." Reading scores at the school were the highest in the district last year.

The school board conservatives are not quite sure what to make of all this. But so far they have gone along. "I'm not sure about the Alternative School," confesses Myers. "But along with the Fundamental School it is bringing competition into public schools in the U.S." Indeed, there is a long waiting list at both institutions, and many parents now would like to see a broader range of options extended to Pasadena's regular schools.

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