A Class Divided

In a Class divided, I learned that if children understand at a young age how it is to be the minority, they will treat people different. Living even one day as a child being picked on because of the color of their eyes would open up their eyes and understand that it's not any different than having a different hair or skin color.

I believe that the scene on the first day, where the little boy hit his best friend because he was calling him names, was my most memorable scene. Watching the kids faces when they were told by the teacher that they were not better than everyone else. That image will never leave my head. It was surprising to me that the children picked on the other children because of the false accusations. I believe that people who are from different race, nationality, or gender, will react as anyone would. Just because they have a different skin color or different gender, doesn't mean that they would react differently.

During the day, she had pointed out several times that the brown eyed students were slow learners, bad listeners, and not very smart. She intentionally degraded the brown eyed children to think they are created less than blue eyed people. During the time that the brown eyed children where discriminated against, they showed that they were less focused on school work. It took more time for them to finish their homework when they were at the bottom compared to when they were on the top of the class. They were too busy worrying about the names that they were called to understand that it wasn't anything true.

The children learned that calling people names out of pleasure is wrong because of the brotherhood day. They learned that they need to treat people the way they want to be treated. Just because they are a different skin color, hair color, or eye color, they are still people inside. Teasing the children while having a certain eye color was wrong, and they knew that it didn't do anything to help. They just made the other children despise them. The children learned that being mean just to laugh isn't worth it. Being on the other side of the discrimination doesn't feel good, and living that lesson first hand gave them a since of recognition. They understood that it wasn't Enjoyable toward them, and they don't want to put anyone through what they did.

I completely agree with the way that the teacher taught the children segregation. The children need to learn firsthand now it is to be made fun of because of something so simple as the color of someone's eyes determining if they are smart. I Think every student should go through some form of segregation at an early age, so they would understand how it feels to be the lower class of their little society. I would bet that they wouldn't make fun of someone by their skin color any longer.