Students at the Protestant Killycomaine Junior High School in Portadown frequently get stoned when they pass the Catholic Drumcree High School on public buses.
Students from Drumcree High School can no longer wear their uniforms into town or travel on public buses for fear of being set upon by their Protestant peers.
These young people are learning early the sectarian rituals of life in the majority Protestant Co Armagh town where bitterness between the two communities runs deep and opposition to the Belfast Agreement is vociferous.
The vice-principal of Killy comaine, Mr Kenny Twyble, says his 600 pupils, aged between 12 and 14, have been "conditioned" into believing they are "different" to students at Drumcree High School. Yet they have also been on EU-funded joint environmental projects with the very pupils they look upon as enemies.
"There's been a lot of activity that by its nature is better done quietly and unobtrusively . . . things like the cross-community projects chipping away at the old problem. But then you get the Garvaghy Road-Drumcree situation each summer and that puts things back a lot," Mr Twyble says.
Killycomaine is a well-maintained state school set in mature landscaped grounds in a whitecollar residential area on the outskirts of Portadown. A large photograph of Queen Elizabeth presenting an art award to one of its students in 1990 is proudly displayed in the foyer.
On lamp-posts and telegraph poles in the streets around the school, crude cardboard placards have been erected which read: "Vote No". The late LVF leader, Billy Wright, used to live in Killycomain estate nearby.
Mr Twyble says he tries to teach tolerance and understanding in the school, but is careful to keep politics out of the classroom, particularly as he is the UUP mayor of Craigavon council.
He says there is a groundswell of support among his constituents in favour of the Belfast Agreement, which he believes is the only way forward. "I don't like the agreement being referred to as a peace agreement because it doesn't guarantee peace," he says. "It can't. Even if there is 1 or 2 or 3 per cent of people opposed to it and not advocating a ceasefire, there won't be peace. But as long as the vast majority of people are for it, those against it will be more and more marginalised."
Mr Twyble is familiar with the actions of such marginalised groups - republican and loyalist dissidents who have not called ceasefires. He was elected mayor three days before two RUC officers were shot dead in Lurgan last June. Attending the murder scene of was one of his first mayoral duties.
His latest funeral was that of Mr Adrian Lamph (29), the Catholic council worker from Portadown who was shot dead last month.
His views clearly put him on the moderate wing of his party, a position which makes him unpopular with Portadown's hard-liners.
Mr Ivor Young, chairman of the town's Concerned Protestants' Group, says Mr Twyble's party leader, Mr David Trimble, "has sold us down the road". He is predicting violence and even a civil war if the Belfast Agreement is accepted, as he believes it will be.
He says: "If Mr Blair pushes us too far, every Ulster person is going to have to unite and fight for his country . . . I foresee a lot of violence, and unfortunately Mr Blair and Mr Trimble have created this situation . . . I'm 60 years of age and if it comes to taking up weapons in a civil war situation, I'll do it."
Mr Young, a former British soldier and an Orangeman, has a painting of Drumcree church hanging on the wall of his small terraced house near Mahon Road army barracks. He says he voted for Mr Trimble after his stance at Drumcree because he thought he was someone who could "speak out for the ordinary Protestant people. He failed the ordinary Protestant people by sitting down to talk with Sinn Fein-IRA which has shot and bombed its way to the talks. They have now got a foothold into a united Ireland."
Mr Young, who says his group has no connections with paramilitary organisations, is organising "Vote No" meetings around the North. His group plans to field an independent candidate in the June elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly. About a mile down the road from Mr Young lives Anne, a Protestant factory worker who would not allow her real name to be printed because "you'd end up getting your windows put in".
She predicted there would never be peace in Northern Ireland and said she would vote No to the Belfast Agreement because she was opposed to a united Ireland and the release of prisoners who had murdered people.
Asked what she feared from a united Ireland, she said: "I would be afraid to be a Protestant in a Catholic State. It's the Catholic Church. There was another priest put away last week for what he did to young children. I think that's disgusting. I've nothing against the Catholic people, it's the Catholic faith."
Anne works in a factory whose workforce is 85 per cent Catholic. She has Catholic friends from the neighbouring town of Lurgan whom she can only socialise with in "neutral" pubs.
On the streets of Portadown, no one approached by The Irish Times would give their names and all appeared deeply suspicious of the media. When this reporter entered Jamesons pub on Thomas Street and spoke to a group of four young Protestant men at the bar, a bartender gestured as if he were firing a gun.
The men were evenly divided on the Belfast Agreement and estimated that about 70 per cent of voters in Portadown were opposed to it. The two who said they would vote No, both Orangemen, were opposed to Sinn Fein having a seat at any future assembly.
"They are murderers and they are going to give people like that a position of power to run the country that they swore to ruin," said one. "We all count ourselves as British people, but at the end of the day Gerry Adams isn't going to be happy until we're not here."
"They are making Protestant people feel guilty about throwing away peace," said the other. "I want peace, but not at any price."
Tomorrow: How Catholics in Lurgan view the Belfast Agreement