A Class Divided

Video A Class Divided (15 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeK759FF84s
The longer version is here (55 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWXB1S1jHKo


      When discussing racism and discrimination in class, I thought of this clip I had watched in past years called, "A Class Divided". Elementary teacher, Jane Elliot, conducted an experiment with her third-graders during Brotherhood week at her school. In the beginning of the week she simply explained to them that first, blue-eyed people were better than brown-eyed people. And so, the blue-graders would receive more time at recess, access to the playground, etc. I watched as the students turned on each other, dividing themselves simply because of the way they looked. Mrs. Elliot then gave the students collars to wear, so the brown-eyed kids could be spotted more easily. The class began to associate negative actions/traits with the brown-eyed kids and positive actions/traits with the blue-eyed kids, all because their teacher had presented this statement as a fact: blue-eyed people are better than brown-eyed people. The following day, Mrs. Elliot told her students she had lied to them: brown-eyed people are superior to the blue-eyed people. The students who had been inferior yesterday were now at the top and easily and happily, transitioned to this new trend. The students wearing the collars - both the brown-eyed and blue-eyed- felt lower of themselves and lesser than the other students. They both experienced the discrimination from their classmates, of not being good enough to play with them, or being blue/ brown-eyed  hence, stupid. One of the students engaged in violent action, because of teasing and name-calling. The other kid called him "brown-eyed". "Brown-eyed" had become offensive and a mark of their inferiority. Their collars were a stigma. Their eye colors defined who they were as people, the lesser people. The color of their physical trait had limited them to who they were. They had even began to believe the negative traits/actions were true for all the blue/brown-eyed people and were ashamed of themselves.
       I thought this video was really interesting because it was real. It was an experiment with third-graders whom you'd believe would be immune to negative thoughts and discrimination but it shows that we all can be easily influenced by what we see and hear, if we accept false statements as reality. Mrs. Elliott has instigated the divide within the class, but all the students chose to accept the statement she had given to them and the sentiment behind it as well. I think the students really learned from this experiment, because through they were able to experience discrimination first-hand and the injustice of it on a level that they were able to understand (as third-graders). The color of your eyes, nose, hair, or skin should not matter in how you treat people, and it is not a mark of lower value. This activity had taught the students the wrongness of racism - one they did not forget as adults.