Divorce Course

For years, thousands of U.S. high schools have taught "life adjustment" courses to introduce adolescents to the trials and tribulations of marriage. Since 1970, Parkrose High School in Portland, Ore., has been carrying the instruction one step further; its twelve-week course on contemporary family life starts with the students pretending to get married --and ends with them pretending to get divorced.

The Parkrose divorce course was designed by History Teacher Cliff Allen, a former football coach, as a "simulation game" to teach "the reality of marriage--no punches pulled." Allen, 35, who has been married for 16 years, makes the game as real as he can. The class of twelve boys and twelve girls spends the first week or so pairing off as "husbands" and "wives." A computer matches their interests and personality traits; an anonymous student committee makes the final pairings.

Having a Baby. Allen then holds mock weddings complete with flowers, plastic wedding rings, organ music and receptions. Most of the weddings are in the classroom, but last spring one couple decided to get married under the cherry trees on the school's front lawn. Some 300 students attended the ceremony.

The weddings are only the beginning. The couples must search for an apartment and sign a mock lease, read want ads and go through the motions of getting a job (they must persuade an employer to write a note guaranteeing one of them a job at a specified salary). They also prepare a budget and have a baby (simulated by the showing of a movie of a live birth). Later in the course, after they have been "married" for five years, the couples study real estate ads, get a multiple-listing book, choose a house and shop for furniture. "They just don't know what things cost."

The classes are enlivened by guest appearances--an insurance agent, realtor, clergyman, marriage counselor and banker. But the students sometimes have firsthand experience of their own. During one lecture on abortions an 18-year-old girl rose to announce that she had had three abortions herself. She was invited to take over the discussion. The final outside expert is a lawyer who explains how to file for divorce. Last year, as an added touch of realism, Allen brought in a recent--and embittered --divorcee to talk about financial problems. "She really gave the kids a jolt," he says. Toward the end of the course, the couple must spin a "wheel of misfortune" that lists nine possible catastrophes (for example, the breadwinner is fired, the mother-in-law moves in or part of the house burns), all of which lead eventually to divorce.

Contemporary Family Life is an extremely popular course; 360 of Park-rose's class of 450 seniors have signed up for it, and there is a waiting list. About 600 other high schools have written for Allen's 60-page course outline, and the state departments of education in Utah and California have expressed interest in including the course in statewide high school curriculums.

Despite the sometimes disillusioning insights that they received, about 50 couples who were paired in the course during the past four years have since been married. Allen says he does not know if any of them have been divorced.

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