Essay On A Class Divided

1. For this paper, I watched the Frontline episode “A Class Divided.” In the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, one schoolteacher, Jane Elliot opted to perform a descriptive experiment in order to see if a particular set of stimuli would bring about discriminatory activities in her students. She separated students into blue eyed and brown eyed groups, the blue eyed groups being given superior social status. She began to demean the intelligence, punctuality and other aspects of brown eyed people.
Soon, the children took to this opinion of blue eyes and brown eyes, the blue eyes quickly turning on the brown eyes, leading to interclass violence. The next day, the brown eyed people were placed higher on the social pedestal, being given longer recess times and better privileges. She equated the actions of brown eyed students in the classroom higher than those of blue eyed students.
Later in the film, the students from the 1968 study (now adults) came back to comment on what they had learned from that study, showcasing that they had become aware of the effects of discrimination, and the same experiment was run on a group of adult educators in order to show them how the students are to feel throughout the experiment.
2. In the end, each group of students behaved in discriminatory ways – teasing, bullying, punching – towards the lower group. It was concluded that, when certain societal and disciplinary measures were levied against one group, even classmates who knew and befriended each other before the experiment became nasty towards each other. Discrimination and stereotyping are two things that I learned more about as a result of this video, and how it can happen due to societal pressures, as well as the influence of peers and authority figures.
3. The results of this experiment revealed an incredible amount of insight into the behavior of people toward others when one group is marginalized. Learned behavior and indoctrination are some attributes that were commonly observed within the experiment, as children were led to believe by an authority figure (Ms. Elliot) that one group was better than the other, and were given societal advantages as a result. The resentment that stemmed from these advantages came from this indoctrination. There was also an extent of learned behavior, in that much of the aggression and hostility is similar to what the students had heard of or experienced based on instances of racism.
4. I believe that the video teaches a very poignant lesson about discrimination that I can apply to my life. It cements for me the importance of tolerance, as well as how people can act when they are indoctrinated into believing one group is better than another. I can definitely understand the minority group’s feelings of helplessness and despair against an uncontrollable situation, and understand that it is what someone (unfairly) feels when they are discriminated against.