A Class Divided
I've seen this before on television and wanted to watch it all the way through again. A third grade teacher divides her class by eye color and the first day tells the students with blue eyes they're special. Brown eyed kids lose all privileges. On the second day, she reverses it and the brown eyes are on top.
After the two days, the teacher talks about the experience. We get to see them as adults speak of the profound effect it had on them. How they began to understand the idea of prejudice once they had a small taste of it.
The teacher, Jane Elliott, went on to show adults the power of this exercise. Please find a copy somewhere of this outstanding Frontline report.
People think that helping race relations is a complicated difficult task. Elliott shows dramatically how that may not be so. I remember as a child, making a choice to never judge people on the color of their skin. That was the way I was judged and didn't like it. If it was wrong for them to do it to me, it was also wrong to do it myself.
A class divided is at SWOCC.
Since there were no specific pages for this I'll just provide the link to the book on Amazon.
Buy this Book on Amazon
A Class Divided, Then and Now, Expanded Edition
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