Wearing rubber gloves and long aprons, four Westlake High School seniors reached inside a plain wooden cabinet in the rear of a classroom Thursday, pulled out a dark blue body bag and lowered it gently onto an old-fashioned, porcelain gurney.

With barely a word among them, the advanced anatomy students unzipped the bag and intently began work on their ongoing project for the school year--dissecting and studying a human cadaver.

The cadaver program is new this year at the Thousand Oaks school. Physiology teacher Nancy Bowman uses the body in instructing four students in the anatomy class, an independent study course, and another 35 students in an honors physiology class.

"I think it's a great experience for those students who are really motivated and have a goal of going into the medical profession," Bowman said. "The students are very excited. Their attitude has been quite respectful. They know it's not something to be taken lightly."

The program is unusual at the high school level and even in college. Medical students often wait until their second year of medical school before working on a cadaver.

In starting the program, Westlake High joins another Ventura County school, Simi Valley High, which began a cadaver program more than five years ago. Simi Valley High has two cadavers, and doctors and teacher Wayne Hollins, not students, perform the dissections, Assistant Principal Dennis Rast said.

The curriculum at both schools is modeled after a program at Agoura High School in Los Angeles County, where science teacher Jerry Lasnik started using cadavers in the classroom nine years ago.

In the Conejo Valley Unified School District, where parents became upset last month after junior high students viewed the graphic caveman movie "Quest for Fire" in a social studies class, the cadaver program at Westlake High has proceeded without protest.

Richard Simpson, district assistant superintendent, said he has received "zero complaints" about the use of a body as a classroom instructional tool.

Westlake PTA President Daryl Reynolds also said she was unaware of any parents who objected to the program. "I think it's a wonderful opportunity," Reynolds said. "I think it's been well received."

Bowman said she sent notices to parents last year advising them that the two courses would involve studying a cadaver.