A Class Divided - Movie Review

The movie "A Class Divided" was about a teacher in Iowa who performed an experiment on a group of third graders in which she proposed the idea of discrimination not in the common way as we had seen or might have thought but rather since they were still at such a young age she experimented with something they might be able to relate with per say. Throughout history there has always been that minority to which some people might think that they are superior to them. It's not that we naturally think this way but rather what we are taught to act like. We are persuaded to act in certain ways because of how our "superiors" (parents, society, and government) act and show us how to act. Mrs. Elliot was trying to prove this by experimenting with her students.

Before the experiment Mrs. Elliot was the teacher to a class of third graders. The kids all new each other and were good friends some even best friends. People whom they interacted with everyday. On Tuesday morning Mrs. Elliot put in effect the first part of her experiment. She told all the kids to separate themselves between blue eyed children and brown eyed children. She stated to them that blue eyed people were "cleaner, nicer, smarter" than the brown eyed kids. She told all of them that the blue eyed children were allowed to go up for seconds during lunch time, they also had 5 extra minutes of recess while the brown eyed kids were not allowed to have seconds for lunch and they were not allowed to touch any of the equipment at recess. Mrs. Elliot also had the brown eyed students put a ribbon around their necks so that they may be distinguished from far away that they were brown eyed. During a card game the blue eyed children seemed to have done a really good job. They sort of seemed motivated and were very happy unlike the brown eyed children who didn't have no motivation and were really sad because they didn't know why their friends whom they spent so much time which before were now being mean to them and thought they were better them.

The next day Mrs. Elliot switched the papers around and put in effect the second part of her experiment. On the second day she told all the blue eyed kids that they would no longer be able to have seconds at lunch time and they were not allowed to touch the equipment at lunch time. The blue eyed kids didn't understand while the brown eyed kids now had all the priveledges that the blue eyed kids had had the day before. They even participated more and did better in a card game that they had played the day before. The blue eyed kids were told that they were now supposed to wear the ribbons around their necks to distinguish themselves from the brown eyed kids. At the end of the day Mrs. Elliot spoke to the kids and explained to them what had happened in the process of two days. She taught them how she systematically programmed them to discriminate against each other simply because they had different