Myriad studies concur that public school systems generally begin their focusing of students toward higher education and career goals later than optimal; most often during the high school years. Meanwhile, there is also agreement that the truly formative foundation years for children in terms of learning and development are pre-secondary and even earlier for such factors as sense of belonging, self-regulation, future orientation, decision-making skills, feeling safe and secure, and forming trust relationships toward adult and authority figures. Students without orientation toward long-term goals are at risk for not developing and sticking to a planned path toward success in life. In this increasingly technologically complex world, higher education attainment for a child is becoming more of a necessity than a luxury. Toward a globalizing economy, the world, as well as the local cities and towns, are becoming less homogeneous and more multicultural. Social scientists agree that no one system of education plays out evenly across all cultures. This study examines an in-school curricular program designed to provide orientation for a pre-secondary school population, specifically at fifth and sixth grade levels, which is an urbanized school district of multi-ethnic composition. Examining the program and its various components through a mixed methods approach, including pre- to post-test measurement of effect on student per six learning and development factors noted above, this research also analyzes the variance of effect across the several ethnicities comprising the student population.

Keywords: campus visitation, ethnicity and culture, goal setting, higher education, learning and development, pre-secondary.