Today in my diversity class, we watched a movie about a teacher named Jane Elliot that divided her class by blue eyes and brown eyes to help teach them about racism. It was the day after Martin Luther King was shot, she wanted to teach her 3rd graders about what had happened and why. She divided the class by eye color, saying that blue-eyed people were better, and that brown-eyed people were dumb. She made brown-eyed people wear collars, and they weren't allowed the same privelages as the blue-eyed students. She was amazed at how fast these kids changed. That day, the blue-eyed people did better on their tests, and were teasing the brown-eyed kids. The brown-eyed kids had bad test scores, and one kid even punched his best friend since he called him "Brown Eyes."
The next day, she switched roles. She had brown-eyed kids be superior, and the blue-eyed kids lost their privelages. Same result. That day the kids that were treated like they were higher did better in everything, and the kids that were being put down tested badly.
The message of the whole thing was that it is unfair to treat people differently just because they look different. After it was all over, the students all felt closer, and all tested better for the rest of the year. The movie also had a reunion with all the students 14 years later. They all reflected on that lesson and how it had changed thier lives. They also said that there children would never learn racism from them becuase of what they went through in those two days.
The next section was the same woman doing it again as a seminar for a group of adults. In a lot of ways, it was even worse than with the kids. The people bought into it a lot faster, etc... Luckily, they said that they learned the same sorts of things.
It was really an interesting class. We had a little discussion afterwards about using generalizations to sum up an entire group. People were really careful not to attack the different genders, or even the different races, but when he asked a Mormon to say a generalization about non-Mormons the girl said that non-Mormons have a hard time understanding things. That really upset me. My teacher said that religion was going to be a different discussion because it caused some other people tp speak up too. He said that because the most common diversity locally is religion we are going to bring it up later in the class. We will see how it goes.
2 comments:
Religion is such a hard thing to debate. I do hope that the Mormons and the non-Mormons alike in your class will just decide that we're all just people trying to do the best that we can in this life. If it helps some of us to have certain beliefs about God, and others to not believe in God at all... I say GOOD FOR YOU. Whatever makes you happy. I hope you know that that's what I want for you, Chelsee. Your big sisters just wants you to do whatever makes you happy.
I had a teacher who did that same class demonstration with eye color. I remember that she let the people in class with blue eyes go to recess 5 minutes before everyone else, and I was FUMING. This class sounds like a lot of fun and worth your time. I'd love to hear about all you learn
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