BY MEG LAUGHLIN

 Here's what Elian Gonzalez, 6, will learn at the private school he now attends in
 Little Havana: He lives in a Christian society and should support prayer in public
 and private schools. He should oppose abortion, homosexuality and racism. He
 should love the American flag and realize that ``the influence of The United States
 in the world has been beneficial to all.''

 The child has completed two weeks of kindergarten at the Lincoln-Marti School. If
 he stays in Miami and his great-aunt and great-uncle continue to use the
 $3,000-a-year full tuition scholarship offered by school owner Demetrio Perez,
 Elian will graduate from the school in Little Havana when he is 18.

 This means that the boy will more than likely be influenced by the school's main
 textbook, Citizens Training Handbook, subtitled Discipline, Moral, Civism,
 Urbanity, which students use from kindergarten through 12th grade. Perez, the
 author, who also serves on the Miami-Dade County School Board, says he wrote
 the 315-page guide for parents, teachers and students at the private school to
 ``produce the worthy citizens our society so badly needs.''

 The $25 book is divided into 57 chapters ranging from ``Foreign Policy'' to
 ``Serving a Formal Dinner'' to ``Friendship.'' Elian, like his classmates, will study
 the book and be tested on its contents every nine weeks during his 12 years at
 the school.

 ``The book and the practice of it is a very important part of the Lincoln-Marti
 education,'' says Amelia Estrada, 22, a former student.

 While at the school, Elian will learn from the main textbook that Cuba, where he
 came from and where his father and grandparents still live, ``has not been able to
 provide for people's most basic needs such as food, clothing and housing.''

 ``We want Elian to know that in this country, we in no way support Cuba or
 people in Cuba who believe in that system,'' Perez says.

 At Lincoln-Marti, the book will teach Elian that, according to immigration laws,
 certain undesirables are not allowed to come to this country: ``habitual drunks,
 adulterers and sexually immoral people.'' Elian will read that Richard Nixon got a
 raw deal when he was forced to resign as President, and that Americans now
 regret this and honor him.

 John Krutulis, associate director of The Gulliver Schools and a board member of
 the Dade Association of Academic Nonpublic Schools, to which Lincoln-Marti
 belongs, says that what is taught at any private school is up to the school. The
 state can monitor the facility, the teacher-student ratio and the general
 curriculum, Krutulis says, but not what goes on in the classroom.

 ``Parents choose a private school,'' Krutulis says. ``Besides the school itself, they
 are the only ones with any say about what their children learn.''

 FORMER STUDENT

 Letrease Clark, a Lincoln-Marti graduate who now sends her 5-year-old son to the
 school, said that her parents wanted her to go there because the school taught
 conservative family values and diversity.

 ``I graduated from the school. I know what is taught there,'' Clark says. ``I know
 what's in the citizens guide, and I wanted the same thing for my child.''

 Elian will learn that he should try to be happy and remember to smile in an
 interested way when people talk to him. He should not be dogmatic, and he
 should never invite enemies to the same party.

 The book will also teach Elian that, when he is an adult, he can miss a dinner
 party but never a funeral. He can send flowers to women but never to men. He can
 serve cocktails at his parties and should serve wine with dinner. His wife should
 make sure the dinner plates do not clash with the tablecloth, and should quickly
 respond to written invitations.

 The small children at the school will put on skits to learn from the guide, the book
 says.

 At the Lincoln-Marti School, Elian Gonzalez will never be spanked. If he
 misbehaves, he will be separated from his classmates and told to sit in silence for
 a short time, as the book advises. He will pray every day before lunch. He will
 stand when an adult enters the room.

 STUDY AND PLAY

 He will mix outdoor play with serious study by going to the school's playground --
 a small, fenced, mulched playground, wedged between two busy streets. As an
 older student, he will play on a fenced, concrete lot, which has two basketball
 hoops with torn nets and electrical transformers on a platform over it.

 The school was founded by Perez's father, the late Demetrio Perez Sr., who was
 an educator in Matanzas, Cuba, where he and Demetrio Jr. grew up. In 1968, the
 father started the first Lincoln-Marti School in Miami, named after Abraham
 Lincoln and Jose Marti, two Perez family heroes. The school now has 15
 branches in Miami-Dade County.

 Over the past decade, students from the school have marched in yearly Calle
 Ocho parades to commemorate the Bay of Pigs invasion. They also have
 marched to honor the memory of Jose Marti and in support of the trade embargo
 against Cuba. Several times, they marched in front of Brigade 2506, a Cuban
 exile paramilitary group, and chanted in Spanish: ``Down with Fidel'' and ``Liberty
 for Cuba.''

 Estrada, the former student, says that her views ``broadened'' after she went to
 public school, college and graduate school, after attending the private school.
 But, she says, certain teachings remained with her: ``Lincoln-Marti taught me to
 participate in the community,'' she says.

 Two other former students, a sister and brother who asked not to be named, gave
 the school mixed reviews. The young woman liked it; her brother didn't. Their
 mother summarized their experiences: ``My daughter was very well-behaved and
 dutiful and did well at Lincoln-Marti. But my son, who was a bit restless and
 questioning, did not.''

 DIFFERENT OUTCOMES

 The mother says the daughter graduated. The son was asked to leave the school.

 ``We want children who think in a healthy way,'' Perez says. ``We would not want
 a child who leans toward the communist way of thinking.''

 A few years ago, Lincoln-Marti was cited by Florida's Department of Health and
 Rehabilitative Services because of problems at a couple of its branches. Parents
 complained that there was no milk for small children and no air conditioning in the
 summer, and that they were not allowed inside the classrooms.

 A 1994 HRS report says the Hialeah Lincoln-Marti School (not the Little Havana
 branch where Elian is) had to be closed because it was ``run down'' and
 ``dilapidated'' and ``unsafe for children.'' It was reopened, the report says, when
 improvements were made.

 In 1997, the Hialeah school again received a critical evaluation, along with another
 branch of the school in North Miami: ``No toys, books or puzzles, only a few
 broken crayons. Broken plumbing. Children left unsupervised.'' At another branch,
 a parent filed a complaint saying there was rotten garbage, with maggots in it, in
 the lunchroom.

 Perez calls the problems ``minor'' and says they were all quickly corrected.
 Indeed, a few months after the first critical reports, subsequent reports said:
 ``Schools meet minimal standards.''

 The branch in Little Havana, which Elian Gonzalez attends, has received
 satisfactory ratings from the state for the past two years.

 ``All of our schools are in full compliance with state standards,'' Perez says.

 CHILD PROMOTED

 Recently, Elian's first-grade class learned about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in
 anticipation of the holiday honoring King. Perez says the child was put ahead to
 first grade, even though it is the middle of the school year and he just turned 6,
 because he is such a good reader of Spanish. But he read about King in English.

 ``Dr. King tells people to love, not to hate,'' a picture caption said.

 ``We want the children to love as long as they understand they must love the
 liberty in this country, and not a communist system,'' Perez says.

 The school guide gives advice about how children learn to love: ``From birth,
 children desire and need their parents' attention. They need their parents to speak
 to them, hold them and caress them.'' The book also says: ``Children need their
 parents to choose the kind of education they should be given.''

 But this advice is not meant to suggest that Elian should be with his only living
 parent, his father in Cuba, Perez says.

 ``The father is not really the father,'' Perez says. ``In Cuba, Castro thinks for
 everyone. He is the father, and the child does not need Castro to care for him or
 make decisions.''

 In two weeks, Lincoln-Marti students will march in a parade to honor Jose Marti
 and will again sing and chant slogans with Brigade 2506. Perez hopes Elian will
 participate.

 ``It is a way for him to fight indoctrination,'' Perez says.
 

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald