Jane Elliot’s Experiment

A split up Class From the moment our country was created, peerless of the main liberties we asked for was the idea of equality, that wholly men will be created equal. Although this has been a part of the American ideal since 1776, Americans have non fulfilled this liberty. Individuals do non admit it, but many be still prejudice against minorities, particularly African Americans. In the 1960s, around the fourth dimension when Martin Luther King Jr. as fighting for civil rights for hoi polloi of color, a 3rd grade school teacher, Jane Elliot, from Riceville, Iowa was busy at work in an attempt to recreate the damaging emotional and physical effects of racism within her classroom. She created an experiment in which she divided her savants into unequal companys as a way of creating artificial stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination. Jane Elliot eventually expanded her experiments into the adult population. She has enduree these experiments on corrections workers in pri sons, as well as college students.Through all these experiments, Jane Elliot has do many conclusions and generalizations that can directly relate back to the real world, and hopefully aid in solving the problem of racism. Jane Elliots experimentation with stereotypes archetypal began within the walls of her 3rd grade classroom. Before the experiment began she asked the students for their opinions on nonage groups. Many of the students answered with statements regarding black muckle as being dumb and diametric than etiolateds. They also discussed how African Americans do not have the same opportunities as white flock do because of the color of their sputter.Jane Elliot continued by efficaciously dividing the students into unequal groups based on midsection color. From the initial division, Jane Elliot cut throughed the students in the brown opticd group as if they were inferior to those in the drear eyed group. She set a vast amount of boundaries limiting what those in th e bottom could do, and in contrast expanding what those in the top could do. This document had a lot of great points that stood out as I viewed the film. The fact that these tierce grades actually understood this exercises was one point that just touched my heart.If low babies can understand that racism is not the way to go and so adults should be to a greater extent or less to let it go as well and treat e realone equal. An separate thing that stood out is when Jane Elliot was doing the study with the adults in her and another white lady were going back in forward with one another. That caught my eye since the white lady felt like she could talk to Jane Elliot any large-minded of way. In the real world a lot of white people do belief that they are above everyone and can say and do as they please. In that incident just goes to show the truth to that.Three hearty psychology name I remember from the film A Divided Class were stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination. These thr ee terms stuck with me because they are basically the base terms when it scrapes to social psychology. Stereotype is the generalization about a group of people in which certain traits are assigned to virtually all members of the group, no matter of actual variation among the members. This goes hand to hand with the film since the kids were made to count that everyone with brown eyes was less than the kids with gamy eyes.That is stereotyping since they did not try to mother to know one another for who they really are but for what they were told about them. Prejudice is a hostile or negative attitude toward a distinguishable group of people, based solely on their membership of that group. For example, Jane Elliot told the blue eye kids to be mean and not listen to the brown eye kids. This was done to show the meaning of prejudice. Since the kids gave the brown eye kids a very negative attitude just because they had brown eyes. Discrimination is unjustified negative or harmful act ion toward a member of a group simply because his or her membership in that group.The kids in class did not allow the brown eye kids to play on the big run that was an act of discrimination. They were being negative since the kids had brown eyes and not blue. In closing, when I meet people who seem racist or come from families where parents have told them that black does more bad stuff consequently us white folks, I endlessly ask what if we all had the same skin color? Who would be the bad guy? I believe it is the fear, it is always easier to point fingers telling, hey its because he is black, hey its because he got a kind illness, however people would be in shock soon as someone say he is a normally family guy then you cant point fingers. I some time feel victimize, and its hard to accept and realized how evil some people can be and how judgmental they are as well. On the other hand, this film has really help open my eyes to the real world. In you should never judge a book by i ts cover because you dont know where and what it has been through. This experiment should be express through all school, starting at a young age because that will be the back bone on rather or not the student will grow up being prejudice towards others. show more