RIOT AFTERMATH : Civics Lessons That Really Hit Home : Education: Fifth- and sixth-graders discuss the violence and looting. Some say they’re more terrified of gangs that roam their neighborhoods every day.

SILVER LAKE —  “Did you feel like you wanted to loot,” teacher Jeanne Vargas asked her class at Micheltorena Elementary School in Silver Lake on Monday.

“Yes,” answered a 12-year-old girl. “My brother did it. So did my cousin. He said, ‘Hey, you want a VCR?’ ”

The girl shrugged when the teacher questioned such behavior. “If he doesn’t do it, somebody else will,” she said.

The girl’s frankness gave Vargas an opportunity to hammer home a point that was repeated in schools throughout Los Angeles this week, as educators began the slow and difficult process of recovery after the worst U.S. riot of this century.

“If someone doesn’t stop somewhere and take a stand, it’s going to go on forever,” Vargas said. “And I’m telling you, next time it’s going to be your house.”

Her class of fifth- and sixth-graders is predominantly Latino, African-American and Asian-American. Children from different cultural backgrounds had varying opinions about the events, what had sparked them and who was to blame.

Some recounted their experiences with racism.

“I went into a store and a white guy told me, ‘Hurry up and get what you want and get out,’ ” said I-Suun Scott, who is black.

Vargas shook her head in disbelief. “Look around you, not all of L.A. is fighting,” she said, drawing attention to the Filipino, Vietnamese, Salvadoran, Mexican and African-American children who sat clustered around her. “We’re all rainbow colors, and do we get along?”

“Yes,” came a resounding chorus.

The class discussed why blacks resented Korean-American merchants, why Koreans were angered by blacks, why frustration from the Rodney G. King verdicts led people to loot.

“If you got in the same position as Rodney King and they had you handcuffed and on the ground and were still beating you . . . and then to find out they are not guilty, wouldn’t you get mad?” I-Suun wrote in an essay. “Wouldn’t you try to get them back by setting their car on fire or trying to protest?”

In the same essay, however, he also wrote that he could help by cleaning up the ravaged neighborhoods and not looting and rioting.

Indeed, most in the class agreed on one thing: The rioting was horrible and dangerous and something must be done to ensure that it never happens again.

“The Los Angeles riot was a war zone or disaster,” wrote Ronald Gonzalez in an essay that he read aloud Monday. “Lots of buildings and houses nearby got burned. To me this riot is stupid. But we children can help clean up the city’s streets that were littered.”

Vargas realized it would be cathartic for children to share their personal experiences about the violence they had seen in their neighborhoods and on television since April 29, when a jury in Simi Valley returned not guilty verdicts for four police officers in the King beating.

Eleven- and 12-year-olds spoke of people in their neighborhoods carrying guns, of gang members crashing cars into Sunset Boulevard electronics stores so they could loot, of friends who suddenly appeared with stacks of Levi’s and tennis shoes that were still in boxes.

Many children said they were scared and suffered from nightmares fueled by the smell of fires, the sounds of gunshots and the wail of fire engine sirens that blared through the night.

“I had these bad dreams there was a fire and I got stuck and couldn’t get out,” Robert Umbarger said.

For those from war-scarred countries, the riots brought back a sickening sense of deja vu. Alicia Aguilar, who fled with her family from El Salvador, said that in her homeland, soldiers didn’t beat people up, they just killed them.

“What is happening is scary to me,” the girl wrote. “I don’t like it because they are killing the future. This is something we will never forget.”

But others said it had been an exciting weekend.

“It was pure action, like a movie. A guy pulls out a gun and, ‘Boom, boom,!’ ” one boy said, re-enacting a shooting he had seen.

Although many Angelenos were horrified as they watched the riots on TV, some of the Micheltorena schoolchildren appeared unfazed, saying that they were more terrified of the gangs that roamed their neighborhoods each day than the riots.

“How many have gangs in the neighborhood that you’re afraid of?” Vargas asked. Hands of three-quarters of the class went up.

“How many of you have seen a gun go off in a life-threatening situation?” she asked. This time about half the hands went up.

“I don’t believe it,” Vargas said, horrified.

But in the end, despite their braggadocio, the children expressed their vulnerability in simple yet poignant ways.

“I think it’s really terrible that all this is happening, it’s so out of control,” wrote Lena Wong. “I hate crimes. Why can’t people live peacefully with one another?”