A Class Divided Analysis

My first awareness of racial identity and diversity occurred when I was in Year 3. Having being raised acknowledging acceptance of people of racial or cultural difference my thoughts of children of colour were positive and impartial. However, one day a boy in my class of Sri Lankan descent got into trouble with another student, but only the Sri Lankan boy was asked to go to the principal’s office. During our lunch break he came over to a group of us and told us that he thought he was the one that got into trouble ‘because he was ‘black’’. I remember thinking to myself, ‘why would he get into trouble just because he was black?’ It was in fact that both boys

A CLASS DIVIDED Thirty years ago Jane Elliott taught the third grade in the white, Christian community of Riceville, Iowa. The day Martin Luther King Jr. was killed she planned an exercise that wouldn't just show her students what racism is - rather, it would give them first-hand experience of what it felt like to be oppressed for something out of their control. Elliott divided her class by the color of their eyes, marked them with armbands and proceeded to treat one group as if superior in capabilities to the other. The superior students performed better than they ever had before, while the inferior students' performance dropped. The next day, the third graders traded ranks and their performance reversed in accordance to their

When in the classroom learning is something that is like a seesaw. The ups and downs come with some classes more than others. The classes that I have found my most ups and downs are English, math, and science. When learning you can not just keep failing by not seeking help. These are the most challenging classes stem from one of these subjects, but there is always a way to make it through with these three steps; finding the situation, assessing it, and seeking help.

Everyone is likely to experience some form of discrimination or prejudice; as is anyone capable of acting prejudiced towards others. On April 5th, 1968, a teacher in Riceville, Iowa named Jane Elliot conducted an experiment with her third grade class that dealt with the concept of discrimination; and was documented in Peters’ 1985 ‘A Class Divided’. The exercise originally took place the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated. The documentary is an eye opener to the world of racism and discrimination. Bucher (2010) describes racism as “discrimination based on the belief that one race is superior to another” (97). According to Bucher (2010) “discrimination is defined as the

On April 5 1968 Jane Elliot preformed the historical experiment in her 3rd grade classroom separating blue-eyed and brown-eyed children. After the death of Martin Luther King her students raised quiestions and she wanted to think of a way to make her students understand what minorities in the U.S feel like. Jane believed that her students would understand what it felt like to be discriminated against by separating them by their eye color. She asked her students if they wanted to be treated like a person of color for a day, judging their peers by the color of their eyes. The students went along with it and that coined the experiment that would later be known as “A Class Divided”.

A Class Divided: The students did recognize that in these United States, “black/nigger and Indian” people are not treated as their brothers. One little boy responded to the question of, “How are people who are of a different color treated” with “They don’t get everything of this world because they are a different color.”(“A Class Divided”, 1968)

Jane’s special project sparked when she told her young class of eight and nine year olds that blue-eyed people were smarter and were better than brown-eyed people. Blue-eyed children were allowed an extra five minutes at recess, could have extras at lunch, got to sit in the front of the classroom, and were greatly applauded for their successes. On the opposite spectrum, brown-eyed students were forced to wear navy fabric collars in order to be easily identified. The groups were forced into segregation and were not allowed to play with one another out on the playground. Even when a brown-eyed student is tormented, the exercise continues; it is all a part of the experiment. The next day, the children switched roles, allowing them to all comprehend the degrading and humiliating emotional aspects of being an “outsider”.

In watching the video Jane Elliot specifically separated the class by eye color Blue eyed meaning that you were better smarter and appreciated more in society and brown eyed meaning you were less than, not a good person, and not as smart as a blue-eyed person. And one of students was subjective to that because one his parents was brown eyed and he didn't quite understand why was his dad being labeled as less because of his eye color. The kids quickly recognized that brown eyed people were labeled as bad people and people who are flat out bad. One of the students who was labeled as brown eye immediately felt the treatment of not be treated equally and being put down based upon his eye color.

This article was one of the most if not the most shocking of all. I have never even considered the differences that African Americans must experience every day in an environment designed to grow and feed their self-image but this article proves that this may be destructing what was intended to flourish a child. It changed the way I think of fairness in discipline, as it does make perfect sense to consider the person’s race, culture, socioeconomic status, gender and ethnicity when applying any type of intervention with them, in any type of service. This would include educating yourself on their history as well. You must seek out understanding when engaging with someone whose background will be quite a different shade than what yours is painted. It has really made me curious about school policies and if they were constructed out of a historical root of racism and applied to transform the unaccepted into either a more acceptable, white American behavior or facilitate their path to their thought of place in society overall, such as prison or a homeless shelter. There is obviously a crisis in modern times and the impact it has may be one of the most of influential as the power of the educational institution on a child must be largely one holding the most

HSC 3550 is one of the most important upper division classes for the students of Health Science major. I learned a lot from this class like legal and ethical issues that come along with U.S health system. I was totally unaware of the many facts of our health system and now I have enough knowledge to talk about. I have started reading online news and blogs about our health system and its legal and ethical matters. Two-class presentation was very helpful as well, that helped me to master at least those two chapters for sure. Some of the instructions or I can say our prompts were very complicated and nuanced for our individual paper, it was hard to understand and no proper instructions were given from where to begin. Journals totally messed

The day after Martin King Jr. was shot a woman named Jane Elliot, a third grade teacher in Iowa, wanted to conduct a class experiment about racism. PBS did a documentary of this experiment and fourteen years reunited with the students to talk about their experience all on camera called, A Class Divided. Instead of lecturing these young kids about racism, Mrs. Elliot wanted her students to understand how it truly felt to be discriminated. She split the class between blue and brown eyed, students. The first day, students who were blue eye were superior and the brown eye students were worn collars and treated lesser than the blue eyes. The next day the roles were reversed so both sides could understand the importance of the experiment. Jane Elliot used her students as an example as to how empathy can be used to fight racial

Jane Elliott, international famous teachers, lecturers, diversity coach, as well as the national mental health association outstanding awards winner, exposed the bias and prejudice, it is an irrational class system based on pure random factors. If you think that doesn't apply to you. ... You're in a rude awakening. In response to the assassination of Martin Luther King jr., 30 years ago, Jane Elliott designed the controversial blue eyes/brown eyes campaign. This is now famous, according to the participants' eye color, to refer to participants as inferior or outstanding, and to expose them to the experience of a few. Every person who touches on Jane Elliott's work, whether through lectures, seminars or video, has been dramatically affected.

On April 5, 1968 Jane Elliott changed the lives of her third grade class. She was attempting to simply teach the children about racial prejudice, however a much greater impact was made. In her exercise called the Brown Eye Blue Eye experiment, the children in her classroom with blue eyes were given armbands to wear to signify their eye color while the brown-eyed children remained normal. Then the children were told that everyone with brown eyes was better, and that “they were cleaner and smarter.” Soon enough, the children with brown eyes were degrading the blue-eyed children for no other reason than they were told since they have brown eyes they were better.

Another study on an approach similar to the one time presentation strategy mentioned above is examined and explained in the article “Measuring the Impact of an Alternative Approach to School Bullying” by Meg Domino. This time instead of a one-time presentation students participate in sixteen different lessons throughout the year. This study took two different groups of seventh graders, one group participating in the sixteen different lessons, and the other not. Both groups were presented with a set of questions after the sixteen lesson period in order to evaluate whether or not there was a significant difference in those who participated in the lessons or not. The results were a little better for this strategy compared to the one time presentation

A class divided is a documentary about a teacher named Jane Elliot who teaches her students about racism first hand. She divides the students into two groups, the blue eyes, and the brown eyes. For the first day, the “brown eyed” children are not able to go to recess, or lunch at the same time as the rest of the children. They wear a blue collar around their necks so that they are obviously different at a distance from the other students. They are not allowed to drink from the same water fountains, use the playground equipment, or even play with the blue eyed children. The next day, the roles are reversed. During these two days Jane Elliot would make comments about the children wearing the collars to degrade them. She would point out if