The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. occurred on April 4, 1968. Many were stunned by this. The video “A Class Divided” shows what happened the next day. Third graders from Riceville, an all-white Iowa town, became confused as many people around the globe. Jane Elliott, a teacher to these children, is determined to help them understand the tragic effects of discrimination on their lives and show them what it could do to individuals.
“Discrimination is any negative behavior or action towards an individual/group of people, especially on sex/race/social classification, etc.” She first divides her students according to their eyes color. She divides students with blue eyes into two groups, with students with brown eyes going in the other. She then told students with blue eyes that they were smarter, nicer and more intelligent than those with brown eyes. They were allowed to take longer breaks and get in line first throughout the day. She asked students with brown eyes to wear collars around their necks and began to ridicule them. She reversed the roles and told students with brown eyes that they were the best. Then she criticized and mocked students with blue eyes. What happened over the next two days was a surprise to Elliott and students. Students who were labeled as unskillful were treated like inferior students while those who were rated intelligent and nice were treated like discriminating students. The strong influence of “social facilitator” on these students can be clearly seen in Elliott’s analysis of the practice result. Social facilitation can sometimes be beneficial to students, but it can also have a negative impact on their lives, depending on what the students are living in. Elliott encourages her students to be clever. They do their best, but they were ridiculed by Elliott.
Racism is believing in one race’s superiority over another. Jane Elliott’s experiment shows that it’s possible to easily create racism by teaching our children wrong values such as vanity and race. This video demonstrates how racism can be created. It all begins when someone tells us we are unique because of our culture or race. It began as a child and will progress to become a daily affliction.
Elliott wanted to confirm the result of her amazing experiment so she repeated the practice with her new students. She also did stapes on Iowa jail employees to see if they behave differently. The adults’ reactions were identical and the results are corresponding.
Elliott was able to show her students the negative effects of mockery and vanity, and helped them to respect one another. She describes the love these young children have for one another. She explained that the children were a kind of family now. They worked out how to cause harm to each other. Jane Elliott’s example of real life is a powerful message for those who don’t believe in equality or judge others based on race and color. She reminds them that all people are human, even those who have had bad experiences with others. We should not make generalizations.
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