"Frontline: A Class Divided" video response.

I really enjoyed A Class Divided, not only because I found it interesting, but also because I had read previously about Mrs. Elliott's experiment, and was eager to see the actual video footage of what occurred. While I think that the experiment was carried out flawlessly, I couldn't help but feel bad for the third graders while I watched the footage of Mrs. Elliott's classroom. Although I understand that the message of the experiment would not have been properly conveyed without the example of hands-on prejudice and discrimination, some of the children's faces showed such hurt and confusion that it was at times difficult to watch. You could clearly tell that some of these children didn't understand why their friends were suddenly worth more or less based on something as silly as eye color, and yet they still blindly followed the teacher's example. The fact that Mrs. Elliott's students were so quick to take her prejudiced words as gospel just goes to show that, per our textbook, prejudice is easily picked up in childhood because we are more likely to take everything we hear at face value, and believe it. (Bucher, 73)

The thing that shocked me the most about the video was how freely third graders were to toss out racial slurs when discussing with their teacher members of other races. When Mrs. Elliott asked her class how members of minority races were treated, the children were ready with a handful of accurate examples. Many people assume that children are blind to the problems of the world, or that they don't notice certain things because they are too busy "being kids", but the Riceville students proved just how astute children can be. Several students freely tossed out the N-word without a second thought because they likely had heard it spoken by their parents or somewhere in the media. These kids knew it was a "bad word", but they didn't understand what exactly the impact of such a slur was.

Another aspect of the experiment that I found related with our reading for this module was the concept of coping fatigue. (Bucher, 76) When brown-eyed children were the lower class on the first day of the experiment, it took them significantly longer to complete a learning exercise than it did on the second day of the experiment, where they were considered the superior group in class. As the minority group on the first day, the brown-eyed children were too busy shouldering the burden of being discriminated against, called names and treated with disdain from their blue-eyed classmates. This burden distracted them and exhausted them, making it so that they could not focus as easily on classroom tasks; therefore, they suffered from a degree of coping fatigue. However, when the brown-eyed children believed that they were the superior group, they didn't have to worry about name-calling and mistreatment, and they were able to focus 100% of their attention and energy on schoolwork.

 Peters, W. (Producer). (1985). A Class Divided [Video file]. USA: Frontline. Retrieved September 30, 2016, from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/class-divided/

 Bucher, R. D. (2015). Diversity Consciousness: Opening Our Minds to People, Cultures, and Opportunities (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.