AFTER THE RIOTS: THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS : Students Get All-Too-Close Study Session in Civic Affairs : Education: Discussions vary in the South Bay, depending on race, affluence and how close the disturbances came to the young people’s lives.

The lesson plans at South Bay schools had to be rewritten this week as teachers tried to help students cope with the horrifying riots they witnessed. The tone of discussion varied from detached academic analysis to agitated debate, depending on how close students came to the violence.

At Inglewood High School, near the genesis of the unrest, students offered angry justification for last week’s looting and violence. At Palos Verdes Peninsula High School, where the rioting created no more than scary false rumors and a sudden day off Friday, students seemed mostly bewildered by what, for them, had been primarily a television spectacle.

“No justice, no peace,” Inglewood students muttered, shouted and laughed to each other in the hallways.

In Palos Verdes, popular chatter was about this Saturday’s senior prom and what students did on their unexpected day off.

“It was awesome,” freshman Graham Morris, 15, said of the district’s decision to close schools Friday. “I went to the beach.”

Other students were embarrassed by that reaction.

“Up here, it’s kind of secluded from what’s going on down there,” explained Stephen Chen, 18, who joined a small group of Palos Verdes students planning a weekend cleanup trip to the riot areas. “But we’re still part of L.A. County. It’s only 10 or 15 miles away, but it’s like we’ve built an invisible wall around us.”

No such wall hampered Inglewood students from reflecting on what had happened.

Members of a campus Latino club draped yellow ribbons on campus trees and created small lapel pins as a plea for peace. On Wednesday, the school celebrated Stop the Violence Day, with a local radio station sending in a remote van to talk on the air with students.

“We’ve had enough violence here in the last couple of years,” said Raina Silyan, 16, referring to fights between Latino and black students that flared at the school in 1990 and 1991. “This year, the Latinos and the blacks are really getting along, and we want to see that that doesn’t change.”

Teachers set aside regular class topics Monday as their charges returned to campus after a tense long weekend. They encouraged students to talk about what they had seen and felt.

American history teacher Wayne Hester, however, didn’t have to adjust his lesson plan. Last week, his students were studying the word anarchy and reading a textbook chapter titled: “Intolerance and Conflict.”

Displaying a 1965 copy of Life magazine with pictures of the Watts riots, Hester encouraged students to talk about the Rodney G. King trial verdicts and the violence they saw afterward.

Hands shot up and opinions flew. Several eager students could not keep themselves from interrupting others to make their voices heard.

“How can you show your frustration but through violence?” said Jewerl Ross, 16. “The violence was the only way things were accomplished. In every war, there are casualties. . . . Would the President have got on national TV to talk about that verdict being wrong without the violence? No way. No way.”

The tension that exploded last week had been building for months, students said.

“When Latasha Harlins got shot, we tried to let the justice (system) handle it and it failed us,” said Adrienne Johnson, 16, referring to the black teen-ager shot by a Korean-born grocer, who later received probation when sentenced by a judge. “Then we wanted to let justice work with King and it failed us again.”

In Palos Verdes, students learning about civil rights in Joe Kelly’s junior-level American Studies class were more reserved when he steered the conversation toward last week’s riots.

None jumped eagerly into the subject. Few were willing to say much at all. Not one raised a hand to acknowledge knowing much about the King trial before the verdicts came in. And many blamed the broadcast media for inciting the riot by talking nonstop about the violence and absence of police.

“I saw them on TV saying it was really peaceful and quiet at the Del Amo Mall, and there aren’t any police in sight,” Laura Buss said. “It was like, ‘Come on down and loot Del Amo.’ ”

Students interviewed outside class said they hope the riots will force their peers to learn about the causes of the unrest.

“People on the hill think they aren’t affected, like we live in this bubble,” said Tiffany Yu, 18. “What does it take for people to realize what’s going on?”