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Originally Posted by Conan
Could somebody summarize it for me? I can't watch the whole thing at the moment.
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From memory: basically the teacher Jane Elliot takes her elementary school class (around 7-8 yrs old? not sure, but young) and splits them into those with brown eyes and those with blue. This is in the 60's in a small, conservative American town, so the parallel is obvious. First, the blue eyed children are given preferential treatment - more time at recess, more praise from the teacher, etc. - and the brown eyed children are treated worse, they are made to wear collars (out of cloth), are given negative attributions by the teacher in front of the class and generally made to feel lesser than the blue eyed children. Next, each group recieves the exact opposite treatment; the blue eyes are treated poorly and the brown eyes well. After all this Elliot asks the children if they learned anything about prejudice/discrimination based on something as arbitrary as eye colour. They did. Everyone is happy and the blue-eyed children make a big deal of ripping off their collars and throwing them in the trash.