Not sure if this qualifies as a movie. I guess as soon as find a logo for a DVD, I should break them out that way or possibly a logo for a documentary. Ah, what the heck - I will stick with the movie tickets for now.

Anyway, I watched a DVD that I checked out from the library while I worked yesterday called A Class Divided. It was the true story of a very controversial experiment carried out by a third grade teacher in the sixties and a follow-up with them as adults. A teach in a midwestern town, Jane Elliott told the third graders that there are biological differences between people with blue eyes and people with brown eyes. She told them that blue eyed people were smarter, listened better etc. while brown-eyes were more prone to violence, do worse on tests and were generally unclean and smelly. She drove it into these children's head throughout the day and took note of how the kids reacted. Brown eyes scored worse during testing than they had before they had the knowledge that they were dumb, blue eyes scored better. Brown eyes started fights, interrupted in class and generally caused trouble, while the blue eyes turned into good students.

The next day, she told the class, "I lied to you because I am blue eyed and didn't want you to know the truth." She explained that the exact opposite was true and then drove the new point of view into them all day. The exact same thing occured - blue eyes started fights, did poorly and were unruly, while brown eyes became good students.

The next day, she told them in fact that both days were a lie and that she was just seeing how they reacted to the information. She then had a discussion with the children about how they felt each day. The kids who were the "bad" kids each day said they felt powerless, they felt the need to fight back for being called stupid or smelly or whatever. The "good" kids said they felt like they were kings and felt like they shouldn't like the other kids.

The DVD also covers a reunion with the teacher and her 3rd grade class after they reached adulthood. They sat and discussed the ramifications of the experiment and told how they became sensitive to racism after that date and have continued to see people as people regardless of race, religion or other differences.

Some people have called it a "sick, twisted experiment" while others have called her work groundbreaking as she has moved forward in life to teach the same lessons to adults. Agree or disagree, it is an interesting social experiment and worth watching.
RATING 7 out of 10

- posted by Chris @ 9:13 AM