A Real-life Experiment: Jane Elliot’s ‘a Class Divided’

Sociological Case Study

“A Class Divided” is a real life experiment where a teacher named Jane Elliot tested on a
group of elementary students about discrimination. In the film, sociology was seen through with
functionalism, symbolic interaction, and conflict perspective. In functionalism the change in the
society was the blue eyed people were smarter and better than the brown eyed people and vice
versa the next day. In symbolic interaction, objects were collars, gestures were pointing at
people/head down, in sound there was a lot of bickering and bullying or just plain silence, in
facial some were flabbergasted at what was happening others were either sad or mad, words
that struck people were blue eyes/brown eyes. In conflict perspective the dominate person had
more power than the other in the classroom society.
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Functionalism is the change that happens in the classroom society and the effects that after
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the change. In A Class Divided, teacher Mrs. Jane Elliot has talked to her class about
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discrimination, about how Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated because of discrimination.
So she put her students to the test on how they would take the situation. On the first day Mrs.
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Elliot talked to the students of what discrimination is and told that blue eyes are better
everything. They are smarter, they are better listeners, etc. That was the change that happened
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in the classroom society. The effects that happened immediately were the brown eyed students
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were flabbergasted and angry that they are being discriminated just like that. The blue eyed
students starting bullying their best friends saying that they are dumb and “punching them in the
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gut”. Students change just in a blink of an eye, to a sweet child to vicious children who had
power. This happened again vice versa when brown eyed people were smarter, brown eyed
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people performed better. The effects of that was when an older figure gives power to a person.
The person becomes more ruling, performs better at various activities. In the end the change
was the person with power became more cocky and better at activities.

Symbolic interaction is symbols that tell what the situation is. In A Class Divided when teacher
Mrs. Elliot gave the new rule that blue eyes were better than brown eyes, students were
shocked with sad and angry facial expressions. The blue eyes had to wear collars to tell
between who was in power and who wasn’t. Many of the blue eyes were making violent
gestures towards the brown eyes like punching and pointing. Once said the rule students
started to bicker or some were just speechless and was in silence. Some words that Mrs. Elliot
used were blue eyes or brown eyes are “smarter”, “better”, etc. When blue eyes were ruling on
the first day their reaction was beyond happy that they were better than the others. Blue eyes

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 were more excited, they were happy and excited, and they were waving their hands in the air,
yelling in excitement and vice versa with brown eyes.

Conflict perspective is who was dominant in the society change, what their behavior was and
the weaker behavior. On the first day the dominant was blue eyes they were dominant because
they were showing signs of happiness and signs of power. Their behavior was being cocky, they
wanted to show that they had the power to the brown eyed students and rub it in their face. The
weaker perspective was that the students were pouting, angry and didn’t have much power.
They were limited on what they could do and not do. The way they could be stronger was to
protest but they were only in elementary school. This was the other way around on the next day
when Mrs. Elliot told the students that she was lying and that the brown eyed people are better.

Overall the lesson that was learned was that students were able to experience what the
colored people were going through when they were discriminated. That colored people were the
brown eyed students when they drank water they could only drink from the cup. It made them
feel useless that they weren’t part of the society anymore. The students learned that the
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colored people aren’t no different than the whites. They have the same features, same values
just different skin tone. The film “A Class Divided” taught 3rd graders that discrimination is bad
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and that all men should be created equal.

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