The documentary “ A Class Divided” is about a teacher who does an experiment with different groups of people to try and figure out the effect of discrimination on society. She uses her own class of third grade students as well as a group of adults to try and see if age has anything to do with how discrimination affects society. How she does the study is by breaking up the groups into blue eyed and brown eyed people and telling them that one is better than the other. What this showed about human behavior is that if someone is told that they are better than someone they believe it. For instance, when she told the class of third graders that blue eyes where better than brown one of the children made fun of another kid for having blue eyes and this started a physical fight between them. …show more content…
During the documentary there were negative and positive labels placed on the two different groups.
The people in the positive groups where able to experience self-fulfilling prophecies because of the label that was given to them. This became a reality for those people because all they did was believe that it was true. Going back to the children in the classroom, it was very easy for the teacher to convince them that one group was better than the other because they were little kids. This was the same case for the adults as well. One group eventually believed that they were better than the other just because they were told so. This shows that it really does not take much to influence a human no matter what their age is. In the prison seminar portion of the documentary one of the women in the experiment says that white people do not know what it is like to experience discrimination every minute of everyday. I do not believe this to be true because I don’t think anyone experiences discrimination every minute of everyday. On the other hand I think at some point everyone experiences some form of discrimination and has to deal with the adversity to be able to overcome
it. A debate over whether or not this exercise should be done in the classroom has come about in recent time. I think that even at a young age this exercise is can be helpful for young children to see that discrimination is not okay in today’s society. Elliot the teacher who performs this experiment thinks that it is harmful for children but I see it to be otherwise. Just think about if this is bad at their age imagine what real life discrimination would due to the children if this experiment is having such a big effect on them. If they are taught at a young age to that it is wrong they will have a better chance of believing that their whole lives.
“A class divided” is a video documentary produced by FRONTLINE which illustrates the story contained in a book originally written in 1971. This book was readapted in 1987 by William Peters with a new title called “A class divided: Then and now.” This video tells the story of a third grade teacher, Jane Elliot, who decided to treat kids with blue eyes as though they were superior to those with brown eyes. It also shows the effect her action had on these students up to date.
E. D. Hirsch and Lisa Delpit are both theorist on teaching diverse students. Both of these theorist believe that when teaching diverse students, teachers need to see their students for who they are. Seeing your students for who they are, means you look past the color of your students’ skin and recognize their culture. According to Stubbs, when teachers look at their students equally, no matter the color of their skin, then the teacher is considered colorblind (2002). Being colorblind is not a great thing because we should not treat all of our students the same, since each student is different. It is important to see our students for who they are because our classes are unique. Instead, our classes represent a rainbow underclass. According to Li, the rainbow underclass is the representation of families who are culturally diverse and economically disadvantaged (2008). In order to meet these student’s needs, teachers need to think about the struggles that each student face.
In the article, “The Myth of Inferiority”, author T. Allen Culpepper writes, “The danger is that the perception of difference between the
I am well aware of the oppression that has faced many people of color in our society. I did learn a great deal about how our government is to blame for the racial segregation in our society. America has a history of placing laws and policies on non-whites, thus making it extremely hard for them to live a well-balanced life. I thought it was interesting that immigrants were far more likely to work in mining and industrial jobs than whites. I feel as though this a trend that continues today in America, thus it is evident that we still exclude certain ethnic groups in our society. Although I did not have any biases going into this documentary, I learned a lot about how our government has been the main contributor to white privilege in our
Racial disparity in the correctional population refers to the difference in the number of minorities versus whites represented inside institutions. “The American Correctional Association acknowledges that racial disparity exists within adult and juvenile detention and correctional systems. This contributes to the perception of unfairness and injustice in the justice system ("ACA Policies and," 2004).” “Blacks comprise 13% of the national population, but 30% of people arrested, 41% of people in jail, and 49% of those in prison. Nationwide, blacks are incarcerated at 8.2 times the rate of whites (Human Rights Watch, 2000).” This difference in proportionality does not necessarily involve direct discrimination; it can be explained by a number of combined factors.
Many of the privileges that white people have are unnoticed as they have become such a daily part of life that not even people of color notice these privileges sometimes. Because of the portrayal of the typical person of color in media, institutional racism continues to exist, and it continues to bring out the hate and the fear of other races in people. In order to fight this injustice, people need to be made aware of these things, and as the studies have shown, awareness to white privilege
The film A Class Divided was designed to show students why it is important not to judge people by how they look but rather who they are inside. This is a very important lesson to learn people spend too much time looking at people not for who they are but for what ETHNITICY they are. One VARIABLE that I liked about the film is that it should the children how it felt to be on both sides of the spectrum. The HYPOTHESIS of the workshop was that if you out a child and let them experience what it is like to be in the group that is not wanted because of how they look and then make the other group the better people group that the child will have a better understanding of not to judge a person because of how they look but instead who they are as people. I liked the workshop because it made everyone that participated in it even the adults that took it later on realize that you can REHABILITAE ones way of thinking. The exercise showed how a child that never had any RASIZM towards them in the exercise they turned against their friends because of the color of their eyes. The children for those two days got the chance to experience both sides of DISCRMINATION. The children once day felt SEGRIGATED and inferior to the children that were placed in the group with more privilege. Then the next day the children that were placed in the privileged group were in the SEGRIGATED group. The theory is if you can teach a child how to DISCRIMINATE against a person that you can just as easily teach them how not to. Sometimes a person needs to feel what another person feels to understand how they treat people.
In 1995, the Carnegie Corporation commissioned a number of papers to summarize research that could be used to improve race relations in schools and youth organizations. One way to fight against racism is to “start teaching the importance of and strategies for positive intergroup relations when children are young”(Teaching Tolerance,). Bias is learned at an early age, often at home, so schools should offer lessons of tolerance and
The film presents scientific and biological evidence that people of different races are not genetically distinct from each other; the comparison of DNA sequences was able to clearly show that this idea of races being biologically different from each other is false. This was able to show that the belief of distinct differences between races is the effect society has had on us, because of the inequality and social injustice present. This shift will be difficult, because people are so used to seeing people being treated differently due to their race and have been exposed to people of different races being represented
In this world we are constantly being categorized by our race and ethnicity, and for many people it’s hard to look beyond that. Even though in the past many stood up for equality and to stop racism and discrimination, it still occurs. In this nation of freedom and equality, there are still many people who believe that their race is superior to others. These beliefs are the ones that destroy our nation and affect the lives of many. The people affected are not limited by their age group, sex, social status, or by their education level.
Stereotypes are implanted into the brains of the youth. As they grow up and live by stereotypes which controls people are seen as a whole and how they act towards one another. Stereotypes such as minorities stealing, killing and participating in violent activities allows society to view these types of groups by comparing their behavior to that of animals.The five young man went from being seen as the innocent boys that they were to being seen as monsters or as a wolf pack as some called them .The documentary provides the ugly truth about how people of colored are viewed in the eyes of the public . A thin line between reporting news and interpreting facts was drawn when this case was going on.These five young colored males were striped of their 5th Amendment which prohibits individuals from being a witness against themselves. They were used against each other and their humanity was taken along with them . No person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property when it 's a given right to all men because we are all equal.As we could clearly see racism was around and establish legally through the criminal justice system ,Michelle Alexander would agree with this statement. Her ideas and the films weren 't so
For example, African-American girls are affected by the lack of power and privilege. It says in the article “Unlocking opportunity”, “Historically, the graduation rates for African-American girls have been lower than the national average.”, and, “Overall, African-American students disproportionately attend high-poverty schools and 39 percent of African Americans under the age of 18 live in poverty.” These statistics show that the lack of privilege of attending well-educated and well-resourced schools affect people that are often not the focal point of educational equity. The lack of knowledge affects how these individuals relate with other individuals that gained a better education than them, and not in a positive way. It also says in the article that, “...African-American girls experience both race and gender discrimination before they even enroll in school, and that persuasive stereotypes affect how some teachers perceive and treat their African-American female students.” Even before their education, these girls experience prejudice and segregation even before going to school! As a result, the stereotypes perceived are that African-Americans have poor educational performance and scores, and are hard to discipline. It says in the article, “Such discrimination and stereotyping often lead to low self-esteem…” Not only does power and privilege affect
We have no control as to what we are born into, including our social status in the U.S and the color of our faces. Even though we do not have control over this we are automatically put into these social roles, “... a pattern of behavior that is expected of a person in a given setting or group.” (Spielman et al., 2014, p. 411) These social roles lead to “ingroups-outgroups”, “[a]n ingroup is a group that we identify with or see ourselves as belonging to. A group that we don’t belong to, or an out-group, is a group that we view as fundamentally different from us.” (Spielman et al., 2014, p. 434) Because we identify more with our ingroup we tend to be automatically biased against the outgroup.(Spielman et al., 2014) This can lead to conformity,
Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, “The only thing that is constant is change.” Throughout the span of our lives, we constantly see change occur in the world around us. As human beings, we tend to reject the idea of change; we disfavor the idea of someone or something coming into our lives and disrupting our way of living. Because of this, we create boundaries that separate ourselves from those that we deem to be “different.” This process of thinking often leads to situations where we create a type of “us versus them” ordeal, where one group of people sees themselves as superior to the other. Creating boundaries between different groups of people is not a concept we are unfamiliar with, there have been countless examples of it throughout history, such as the Holocaust or the battle over slavery; we can also see ethnic boundaries forming today within education systems and things like the Black Lives Matter movement. The
There were no educated inferences being made to support the views and they were confident in their statements without having any understanding why they held the views that they did. As stated in Key Questions for Educators, “Any talk about the development of moral reasoning and personal autonomy can only come after the child has learnt moral principles and virtues in a non-rational manner” (Tan 2005, 51). Judith’s students are approximately eleven years old in age therefore, is understandable that they have only begun to develop their own moral principles and have yet to see the flaws in what they have been taught to believe in their personal lives. Therefore, Judith could have used this as a learning opportunity by regaining the class’s attention and explaining to them how racism and discrimination are never justified and complete the lesson with how the world has come to that educated conclusion.