a class divided reflection

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

On the first day of the experiment, the blue-eyed children, or the in-group, were told they were superior to the brown eyed children, the out-group. On top of being told they were better and smarter than the brown-eyed children, the out-group was not allowed to drink from the same fountain, play together at recess, or go back for seconds at lunch-time. The brown eyed children received less recess time, had to wait to go to lunch, and wore collars for easy recognition.

I had my appointment on the previous week at the Writing center. I brought my 2nd project for ENGL 160 class. I scheduled tutor to “face to face”, because I think it is the best way to improve all of my mistakes. Before going to Writing center, I was thinking that this tutor doesn’t help me at all, but fortunately my thoughts was wrong and I enjoyed 1 hour of editing my project.

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: 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)

She broke the kids up by brown, and blue eyes giving the kids with blue eyes special treatment over the brown eyes students. This allowed the brown eyed kids to feel how colored kids are treated. The teacher put the blue eyed kids on a pedestal while treating the brown eyed kids with disgust, and unfair treatment.

In the video, “A Class Divided,” the video shows a teacher from Iowa named, Jane Elliot who wants to teach her students the importance of discrimination. During her experimentation, she starts off her lesson by asking questions such as, “What is brotherhood?” “What is discrimination?” and “How are we supposed to treat people who look different than us?” Elliot then proceeds to ask her class if they would like to know what it feels like to be discriminated. Her emphasis in this experiment is to show how it felt to be discriminated. Elliot was inspired to do this experiment when she was listening to the television the night after they assassinated Martin Luther king. She kept hearing the news reporter say things like: “who will look after your people?” and “How will your people manage?” After this she knew she had to explain to her class in a way they will understand. Elliot decided to divide the class into two categories: the brown eyed kids and the blue eyed kids. At first the blue eyed kids were the superior race while, the brown eyed kids were the lower race. Being the inferior race meant that they had to wear blue collars around their necks in order to differentiate their eye color. Of course, the brown eyed kids had restrictions. They could not play in the playground, they could not befriend nor socialize with the blue eyed kids, and etc. The kids had a chance to walk in

The experiment that she conducted was to show her third grade class about discrimation. She conducted an experiment telling her students with blue eyes were smart, better, then the brown eyes. Second day brown eyes were better than blue eyes. It has accomplished that when Elliott told the blue eyes students that they were better, they started making fun of the brown eye students. In a matter of minutes, who the person was before didn’t matter; all that matter was the color of their eyes. It was a surprise because they were all friends at first, then when the teacher told them how blue eyes are better, the blue eyes started making fun of them and they also started becoming more enemies.

In the classroom the blue-eyed students were more attentive, acted orderly and were more energetic during recess, all behavior influenced by the symbolic gesture of superiority based on eye

I remember hearing two of my teachers discussing about their groups and how it is not fair to have all the students who needed the most attention in the same classroom. I completely dismissed the conversation, until the moment I was reading Jeannie Oakes words about equality within classrooms. I realized the tracking practice has existed through my whole academic, as something normal, required by schools. Oakes defines tracking as the “process whereby students are divided into categories so that they can be assigned in groups to various kinds of classes” (Oakes, 1986 pg. 3). Also, it’s explained that many of the tracking methods causes differences bring a great disadvantaged to students both academically and emotionally. In elementary school there were always two or three group of student of the same grade divided into levels of performances. Going forward, in middle school, I was in a math and science specialized school and later on in a vocational school, both of which I was required to pass rigorous selection process. Therefore, tracking was made before enrolling depending completely in standardized test scores, GPA, interview and so on. Considering that tracking was made before enrolling in school, there was still a sense of division between groups depending on their “intelligence”. Even so, classrooms were always balanced with academically ahead and behind students. Overall, tracking did exist in peculiar ways, but it did not make a difference in the education given, still tracking was made when schools didn’t promote educational opportunities with the justification that it such opportunity was not in our best interest or we weren’t

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.

Morrison's story asserts that children, by nature of their diminutive size and inability to contribute economically to the family, are society's weakest members. Children play a prominent role in The Bluest Eye because they are the vulnerable recipients of their parent's psychological manifestations. At some point in early life, every child feels weak and unimportant; ignored, even. But there are gradations of neglect, and these variations are explored in the novel.