Savana Gill

Describe your initial reaction to this video. What did you learn?

               What I learned from this video was that everybody needs to learn that it is not fun to be discriminated against. When I saw the video, I wasn’t expecting the reactions that the kids did. I was also shocked at how the adults acted toward Elliott.

•What scene or scenes do you think you'll still remember a month from now and why those scenes?

               I think that the scenes that I will remember the most is the scene where she made the students wear the collars and the scene where she done the same thing to the adults that she did with the kids. I think that I will remember the scene when she made the students wear the collars because I never would have guessed the outcome of what happened. I will remember the scene where she made the adults do the same thing the kids had to do because I didn’t think that the adults would have ever acted the way that they did.

•Did any part of the film surprise you? Do you think someone of a different race, ethnicity, or religion would also find it surprising?

               There were a couple of parts that surprised me but the main one was how the kids and the adults acted when the collars were put on them. The good kids turned bad when they had the collars on. When the adults out the collars on they was acting out. They started to say smart remarks to Mrs. Elliott. I think that any race would find it surprising.

•What was the exercise that Elliott designed a response to the children's question, "Why would anyone want to murder Martin Luther King?" Did the film provide an answer to the question? Can you answer the question?

                The exercise that Elliott designed was that she divided her third grade class into blue eyes and brown eyes. The first day she made the brown eyed students wear a cloth collar to know that they was not the inferior group. They were the group that couldn’t do anything and was the not smart group on the first day. Then the blue eyed kids began to pick on the brown eyed students. The next day she made the blue eyed students wear the collar so now they were not the inferior group. Then the brown eyed students began to pick on the blue eyed students. In the end, the whole exercise was designed to show that you don’t need to be mean or to judge someone just because they have a different skin color or “eye color”.

What did the children's body language indicate about the impact of discrimination?

               Their body language showed how they felt when they was not the inferior group. The none inferior group was slouched down in their chairs or had their head down. You could tell that they felt uncomfortable. Then the inferior group was all smiles and trying to be bad because they was on “top”.

•How did the negative and positive labels placed on a group become self-fulfilling prophecies?

               The first day Elliott did the exercise, the brown eyed students had the negative effect. They was the group that day that was not the smartest. She also said that they can’t never do anything right. Soon they started to believe it because Elliott kept telling them that they was and they blue eyed students started to pick on them. Then the next day the same thing happened to the blue eyed students. They was now not the smartest students or can do nothing right.

•In the prison seminar, one of the white women asserts that all people face some kind of discrimination. Another woman challenges her, claiming that whites can't really know what it's like to face discrimination every minute of every day. What do you think?

               I think that at that time when the movie was made that yeah whites didn’t know what it was like to face discrimination because they was the inferior group at that time. But in today’s world I believe that every race knows what it is like.    

•Both Elliott and her former students talk about whether or not this exercise should be done with all children. What do you think? If the exercise could be harmful to children, as Elliott suggests, what do you think actual discrimination might do?

               I think that it should be done to all children. I think this because it could teach them how it feels to be discriminated against. Some kids will never know what it feels like because maybe they are in the inferior group and are never discriminated against because they may be doing most of the discriminating. I think that actually being discriminated will cause a kid or a person to hate themselves. They may start getting depressed and start having suicidal thoughts.

•What features did Elliott ascribe to the superior and inferior groups and how did those characteristics reflect stereotypes about blacks and whites?

               The features that she ascribes was the students with the collars was under the inferior group and that they wasn’t as smart as the inferior group. They couldn’t do nothing right like the inferior group could. These characteristics reflect the stereotypes about blacks and whites because it shows how what they go through. It shows that people judge other people because of the color of their skin.

•How did Elliott's discrimination create no-win situations for those placed in the inferior group? How did she selectively interpret behavior to confirm the stereotypes she had assigned?

               Her discrimination created a no-win situation for the inferior group because each student had a chance to feel what it was like to be in the inferior group and the lower group and neither of the kids like either group. She kept repeating the things that she wanted them to believe in the exercise.

•It's easy to understand why third-graders might not refuse to obey their teacher, but when the exercise is done with the prison guards, why don't any of the adults object?

               I think that the adults didn’t object because maybe wanted to see the results of the exercise. The adults already knew what they believed.

•At recess, two of the boys from different groups get in a fight. Elliott asks the one who was teased if responding with violence made him feel better or made the teasing stop. What does the answer suggest about the use of violence as a political strategy? At the time, who was using violence for political purposes and why?

               Violence as a political strategy is crazy. You will feel no different than you did before because it will not stop the person it will just make them get madder. Fighting doesn’t solve anything. At the time I think that whites was using violence for political purposes. They wanted to be over every race so they would beat the other races or seriously hurt them.      

•How is the blue eyes/brown eyes exercise related to the Sioux prayer, "Help me not judge a person until I have walked in his shoes"

                This exercise is related to the Sioux prayer because it is not right to judge a person based on the color of their skin. If you don’t know what it is like to be the other race then don’t judge them because they could be going through a lot already and they don’t need you to pick on them for what they look like.

 

Summary:

                I learned a lot while doing this lesson. I didn’t know that when Elliott did the exercise on the adults that they would act the way they did. I really liked the way that she did the exercise. She let all the students be in each group. I think that teachers should show their students the video that we watched with this lesson.

Research Question:

                How can teachers help students discriminating against another student because of race?

References:

                http://law.freeadvice.com/government_law/civil_rights_law_ada/race-discrimination-education.htm

https://acluvt.org/pubs/students_rights/equal_protection.php

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/school-discipline-race_n_4952322.html

 

Research Analysis:

                In the research that I found it said that teacher discrimination is not as bad as administrator related discrimination. Many administrators in different schools may treat the minority students worse than the others. The students who are over penalized by administration are normally the students who are suspended or expelled. But the main problem all over most schools is racial discrimination by students toward other students. When students discriminate other students because of race they don’t understand what the outcomes of that will do to the kid.

                Another part of my research stated about the Brown v. Board of Education. This was a court case in which it established that racial discrimination in schools in a violation of the 14th amendment. Every student in a school system should be allowed to join any club, class, and extracurricular activities. Each student can choose what they want no matter what race they are. On another website that I found doing my research, it said the black students were 1.78 time likely to be suspended out of school as white students, Latino students were 2.23 times greater of being suspended than white students. It also said that students with disabilities were suspended twice the amount as non-disabled peers and for a longer time.

 

Research Summary:

                The research that I found was very interesting. Most people don’t know that about the administrators. People just assume that students do all the discriminating but they’re not. I believe that every student should be treated the same. If a student gets in trouble for something they didn’t do just because their race, is not being treated as equal. In the school system need to work on treating each student equally because some of the things may could cause of problems with students in the future.