Problems And Characteristics Of Kohlberg's A Class Divided

2. I think that the "brown-eyed/blue-eyed experiment" teaches us quite a few messages about racism. First off, the experiment is a proof that racism is simply a learned behavior. Children are very impressionable and usually learned about racism from their parents or peers at a very early age. As the video shows children are easily influenced and quite convincible. This proves that if our families taught us tolerance and acceptance from a young age, racism could be non-existent. Another fact that the video proves is that violence does not solve problems. As we see in the film, some of the boys hit the other boys to relieve their anger and

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

Racial discrimination has a great impact on people of various races. Throughout the past generations, many people have faced discrimination because of the way that they look. People have been hated, beaten, killed and made fun of. Many people have been put down because of the way that they look. Adults, teens and even children began thinking less of themselves after the incidents. Many African Americans started considering themselves inferior to whites, which lead them to perform worse in school and daily activities. Looking at the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the video experiment Brown Eyes and Blue Eyes performed by Jane Elliott, it is evident that African Americans faced discrimination for hundreds of years, which lead them to consider themselves inferior amongst all other people.

During the second day of the experiment, the roles were reversed. The brown-eyed children being told and treated like they were the superior group (1985). The results of this experiment proved interesting as it revealed how quick and easily groups can be discriminated against based on differences alone. Not only did the in-groups and the out-groups start treating each other terribly, but the kids who were in the out-group developed low self-esteem which caused them to do worse on their class assignments, get temperamental, defensive and fought with the other group. The results during role reversal were the same. Jane Elliot later commented during the experiment she "… watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating, little third-graders in a space of fifteen minutes” (1985). The children’s academic performance greatly

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

B.2.a. Within this video, the teacher took her students on a field trip to observe citizens and gauge how the rights showed individualism in America. It made them aware of stereotyping. This supports students learning about cultural diversity by showing how others were treated in history. In student reflection forms, students wrote about how color should not matter when interacting with others. People can be a good person even if they aren’t religious or believe the same way as themselves. The teacher taught the students that everyone is different and that we need to look for and identify the good qualities of others. This was an effective way to teach the students because they became more aware of the way they acted toward others.

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”.

In a powerful experiment we were able to see through the eyes of a kindergarten children prejudice dynamics. In a famous experience by Jane Elliot she separated her class between blue-eyed and brown-eyed students. Professor Elliot had separated her students by making one eye group inferior to the other making them have certain benefits and better treatment than the other group of students. Eventually, the students were switched the following day. This experiment have showed this group of kindergarten students how colors and discrimination affected the minority population. After this successful experiment with the kindergarten student’s professor Jane Elliot had done many other experiments using adults using the a similar technique blue-eyed

The statement relates to how the adults in The Bluest Eye communicate with the children, especially among the black adults and children, because they are taught to loathe their blackness and envy and adore the whiteness of their white neighbors. The adults, instead of “expressing love” for their skins and appearance, shame their color which they pass on to their children who, inheriting this self-hatred, continue to use language to destroy themselves. For example, in the scene when Claudia, Frieda, and Maureen are walking home, they come across Pecola who is bullied by a group of boys. She is called “black e mo” repeatedly and other offensive language not because she specifically committed a crime against them but because of their “contempt for their own blackness (Morrison 65).” Their detestation against their own skins was bred and cultivated; it was “learned self-hatred (Morrison 65).”

“A Class Divided”: When asked the question, “do you think you know how it feels to be judged by the color of your skin”, a few felt that they did. Initially the children were excited to participate in the blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment, until they realized they would be the people being judged. Once the teacher announced that the blue-eyed people are the “better people” than the brown-eyed children, immediately voiced their disagreement. One blue-eyed boy stated, “My dad has brown eyes and he’s not stupid.”

Elliott gave an excellent example of prejudice and discrimination to her 3rd grade pupils. She split her class in two groups according to their eye color. She set up the rules since the beginning, where the blue eyes group was superior to the brown eyes group and uses a color collar to make the inferior team more visible. It is heartbreaking to see little kids discriminating against each other within that little time and being mean to their friends. Also we see that the kids who were appraised performed better on their tests and work in general. Elliott repeated the exercise to the employees of the Iowa prison system. The reaction to the employees was similar to the 3rd grade kids. They started to prejudice and discriminate

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

To begin with, Hazel, a white teenage girl, caught screaming to the back of another teenage girl’s head, black teenage girl named Elizabeth, claims that in the act she wasn’t feeling any towards of hatred or disapproval towards Elizabeth making her way into school. However, in the heat of the moment this photograph captured her at the wrong moment in time, a moment in which appeared full of hatred. Story is though that Hazel tagged along into the mixt of the crowd, not knowing exactly what she was thinking or doing but just wanted to do what everyone else was doing. This very act touches upon one aspect of racism, how your society influences your thoughts and actions. Growing up in the south, this was just a custom, to Hazel just like to everyone else. Individuals come as a whole to torment someone who they were taught was inferior to them.

The first reversal where the brown-eyed students were the bottom group and the blue-eyed students were the top group really accentuated the differences between the groups. The brown-eyed students were violent in the sense that a brown-eyed father kicked his son and another brown-eyed student punched a blue-eyed student in the gut. Jane Elliot focused on singular instances to stereotype brown-eyed people as a whole. It only took a single example of negativity for the blue-eyed students to adopt and apply that example to brown-eyed people as a whole. Brown-eyed students were liable to steal, violent, stupid, selfish, and were deserving of punishment.

She pointed out flaws of the brown-eyed group and seemingly better traits of the blue-eyed group that made her statement seem correct leading to a generalized prejudice. Elliot then made rules for the groups, including that of recess time, drinking fountain privileges, lunch privileges, and segregation on the playground, giving advantages to the superior blue-eyed group and disadvantages to the inferior brown-eyed group which is a small-scale simulation of societal and governmental oppression of minorities. The kids laughed at the “other 's” misfortune, two kids of each group got into a fight, and hateful things were said by the “good” group while a look and feel of disappointment, shame, and exclusion was shown by the “bad” group. The roles were effectively reversed on the second day by using the same methods. The brown-eyed group were more than happy to give their collars to the blue-eyed group. The situated identities of the children were changed by Jane Elliot, an authority figure, by declaring that people of one eye color were better than people of another. She pointed out flaws and supposed shortcomings that made the one group seem inferior and the other group adopted this generalized view. This turned into discriminatory rules and acts in the class and on the playground.