A class divided.

[morningstar2651]

Read the background story.

One day in 1968, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring lesson in discrimination. This is the story of that lesson, its lasting impact on the children, and its enduring power thirty years later.

Winner of The 1985 National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational, Cultural, or Historical Programming and the Sidney Hillman Prize Award (1985).

Thanks to PBS, you can watch it online for free!

Interview with Jane Elliot

FAQ

Transcript

 

[cavymom]

I just watched "Indecently Exposed", the one she did in Canada. It was following the same format (I think) and teaching blue/brown eyes about racism. The only thing I did not like was that some people did not seem to want to learn or educate themselves because they knew better, and hate to say it they were in the blue camp. Very compelling, I cried. Have to watch this one, but not until I get the tissues. Thank you for the link.

 

[I_are_sceptical]

Thank you for the link to the transcript. I heard about the experiment when it was first done, but I did not know until now that there had been a follow-up study.

 

[morningstar2651]

A very interesting thing I heard:

Jane Elliot sent the scores the students got in class from right before the exercise, duing the exercise, and after the exercise to a University.

During the test, the ones who were told they were the superior people excelled in class and those who were inferior did worse in class. After the exercise, almost every child's scores had improved an unusually large amount from where they were before the exercise.