A Class Divided Summary + Review

This film follows a teacher Jane Elliot and her third grade class, as she teaches them a memorable lesson on prejudice and discrimination. Ms. Elliot did this in a two day experiment in which she  divided the class into blue eyed vs brown eyed people. On the first day, she favored the blue eyed students. The blue eyed students were given special privileges and praise. The brown eyed students on the other hand had to wear collars for identification and were made to feel inferior to the blue eyed students. You could see that this greatly impacted the brown eyed students self esteem and class performance. Additionally, the once sweet children turned nasty and friends turned into foes, with the dominant group exerting their power over the other group and taunting them. The next day, the roles were reversed and the blue eyed children were the inferior group while the brown eyed children were superior. The same effects were seen as before.

While this film isn't necessarily about LGBT people, it offers insight into how biased based bullying can deeply harm a student and their education. The children were shunned for an aspect of themselves they can't change and it greatly affected their demeanor, feelings of self worth, and test scores. You can see how being made fun of at school for being a member of the LGBT community could have a similar impact on a student. In addition, students with intersectional identities, such as being black and gay, experience this abuse at a higher rate because they can experience discrimination for both of their identities. I think the teacher did a really good job with this lesson and as we see in the film, its message stayed with the children as they grew older and had their own families. I think this would be a valuable class exercise to teach in every school or even every workplace. This lesson can extend to not only racism but homophobia, sexism, transphobia, xenophobia, and any type of intolerance. Overall, this exercise teaches inclusion and acceptance which is a valuable lesson everyone should have and is clearly necessary for some people in the world.

Resources:

http://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/Kimberle-Crenshaw-Instructors_-Guide-1.pdf

http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Intersectionality%20primer%20-%20Women%20of%20Color%20Policy%20Network.pdf

http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Intersectionality%20primer%20-%20African%20American%20Policy%20Forum.pdf

http://www.intergroupresources.com/rc/Intersectionality%20-%20a%20Tool%20for%20Gender%20&%20Economic%20Justice.pdf

https://www.teachingforblacklives.org/

http://briguglio.asgi.it/immigrazione-e-asilo/2015/marzo/toolkit-intersezionalita'.pdf

Lesson plans:
https://p4cintheborderlands.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/lesson-plan-an-introduction-to-intersectionality.pdf

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ynjEt-R2E1kVl2rwgWXTKbeQFKY16-o0

http://bonner.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/119289075/Exploring%20Diversity%20%26%20Intersectionality.pdf

https://www.learningtogive.org/units/challenging-social-boundaries

https://bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/SocialJustice/Issues/Antiracism/RacismInCanadaElem.pdf