A Class Divided

1. Where, when and with whom did this experiment take place?

USA, with Ms. Jane Elliott's, in 1970.

2. Why is the year 1968 important in the history of Civil Rights/Racial Discrimination?

It was the year when the black people got their freedom after all the revolutions.

2. Describe the experiment.

Ms. Jane chose the brother hood week to apply her Class Divided experiment on her students, which was dividing the, into two groups based on the color of their eyes. At the first day blue eye people are the better and smarter people who get so many advantages and special treatment for being blue eye people. While brown eye people are the low class ones who are slow and don’t get any benefits and the rest treat them badly. A lot of interesting action happens during the break time. At the second day the teacher swap the standers, so the brown eye people get to be the better ones, so they get all excited and of course the blue eye people get shocked and depressed because from the day before they already know how they will be treated. During the two days you can see how the experiment affects the students in so many ways, the way they act, their studies and the way the treat each other. How when they’re the special ones they start showing off, act more confident and be rude to the low class ones.

3. Choose a child … What did he/she say on Day 1 and Day 2? And act?

Russell, I noticed Russell because once he was classified as the better ones at day one he already was mean to one of the boys during the break and start calling him names. He admits he did it in purpose to tease him in a mean way. And in the second day Russell came to school without his glasses, because he was so proud that he’s a blue eye and wanted to show off just like any macho man show off his muscles

5. Give some examples of the ‘rules’.

The blue eye people get to stay 5 extra minutes of break, brown eye people have to stay in, brown eye people don’t get to play with blue eye people, brown eye people get to wear collars to differentiate between them and blue eyes people, brown eye people have to use the paper cup to drink water unlike the blue eye people.

6. What were the results?

Finally the kids get to understand by going through all this that they shouldn’t discriminate people who have different features than them, skin color, religion or accent. They understood how hard and difficult it is to be judge and they promised their teacher to treat everyone equally just the way they would like to be treated.

7. Your observations

Watching the students faces while the teacher differentiate between them was very interesting, they couldn’t hide it or act that they’re fine with it. In such an age you can only get the truth and honest opinion on how would a person feel if he will be judged by others. This makes this experiment more interesting. While if we tried it in older people, some will be honest some will be in denial and at the end we wouldn’t come out with the same amazing results and conclusion.