The film “A Class Divided,” uses an experiment on third-grade children to highlight ALIENATION in the society. A third-grade teacher, Jane Elliot, conducted the EXPERIMENT in Iowa. The experiment follows the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., which sparked the interest of the teacher in teaching about ETHNOCENTRISM between races since the shooting could not be explained to third-graders blatantly. During the national brotherhood week, the teacher asks the students what brotherhood means and which people in the United States the people do not treat as brothers. The students answer the black people and the Indians. The teacher then asks what the people say about the blacks and Indians, to which one of the students answers, “Dumb people.”
Mrs. Elliot then asks her third-graders if they think they could understand how it felt to be discriminated to which they reply no. She then proceeds to conduct her experiment by separating the classroom based on eye-color, which would help better understand what people of color experience. In the first day of the experiment, she tells the students that those who are blue-eyed are better than the ones who have brown eyes. She uses a few examples of the students in the class to make her point. She then makes the blue-eyed students wear collars so that everyone would identify who had brown eyes. She tells her students that the brown-eyed are inherently slower, dumb and worse listeners. The brown-eyed were told they would not drink out of the water fountain and must drink out of the paper cups to not infect the blue-eyed with whatever they had, and also that they had five minutes less of the recess and would not play with the superior blue-eyed COHORT.
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Mrs. Elliot was surprised how quickly her students turned. She states, “I watched wonderful and thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, and discriminating third graders.” She observed bullying from the blue-eyed children along with a violent punch to the gut to a blue-eyed by one brown-eyed for being teased about his eyes. The next day, the roles were reversed making the brown-eyed cohort superior to the blue-eyed. One blue-eyed boy forgot his glasses at home perhaps due to CONFORMITY of being superior of the brown-eyed that he probably thought he did not need them. On both days of the experiments, phonics cards were shown to both groups. On the first day, the superior blue-eyed students went through the cards in faster than the brown-eyed children did. The second day the opposite effect occurred.
At the end of the experiment, the children took off their collars and shared what they had learned. They unanimously agreed STEREOTYPING of people based on their skin or eye color or any other physical appearance was wrong. The children also took away from the IDEAL VALUES that it is not possible to understand how it is to be someone else until they walk in their shoes.
The experiment was recorded, made into a feature documentary and later shown to a group of prisoners who were learning for a degree. Mrs. Elliot experimented with a group of correction department employees. In the group, the brown-eyed people were given superiority whereas the blue-eyed adults faced a hard time. The bathrooms were labeled for the Browns only. The brown-eyed discriminated against the blue-eyed citing their characteristics as incompetent, slow, rude and arrogant.
Sociological Theories
CONFLICT THEORY
Coined by Karl Marx, the conflict theory asserts that society is in a state of constant conflict because of competition for limited resources (Craib, 2015). The theory posits that social order is maintained by domination and power, instead of consensus and conformity. Those with wealth and power try to hold on to it by any means possible while suppressing the power and powerless. The conflict theory is used to explain discrimination by focusing on the conflict that exists between classes. From the film “A Class Divided,” we can see the STIGMATIZATION that ensues between the third-grade students when their teacher assigns one STATUS GROUP prestige.
The depiction of Marx’s conflict theory through the bourgeoisie and proletariat can be ascribed to the blue-eyed children on the first day oppressing and discriminating the brown-eyed. The blue-eyed in this case make the bourgeoisie whereas the brown-eyed make up the proletariat. Marx believed that, as the poor or proletariat are subjected to worsening conditions, a revolt might arise. In light of this, the punching in the gut of a blue-eyed by a brown-eyed can be explained as the revolt that ensues when the conditions surrounding the powerless deteriorate. Similarly to the case of the correctional facility employees, the giving privilege to the brown-eyed creates a STRATIFICATION between the different groups as one suffers under the oppression of the superiors.
FUNCTIONALISM THEORY
The functionalist perspective interprets how each part of society contributes to the stability of the whole society. It advocates for VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION of groups. Society is a sum of its parts where each part is functional for the stability of the whole. When a system of society fails, the other parts adapt to produce new forms of order and stability (Parsons, 2017). From the case of Mrs. Elliot and her third-graders, the social system, which is their classroom, was initially functioning towards achieving quality education for the children. However, once Mrs. Elliot introduces the experiment, the results cause disorganization and development of DEVIANT BEHAVIOR. The social system now divided, adjusts to achieve its stability. The functionalist perspective explains how society has maintained its course over the years by forcing past BELIEFS and decisions on newer generations.
Emile Durkheim who was the founding sociologist on structuralism and functionalism believed that socialization is important to keep society functioning and therefore we should pass our rules, norms, and values through generations to maintain stability. Mrs. Elliot through the SOCIAL INEQUALITY experiment where brown-eyed children are denied rewards tries to maintain future social stability by educating the third-graders on the need for social equality. According to Durkheim, the individual was less important compared to the group as a whole. Functionalism treats all as the same without comparing differences. In the first day of the experiment, the brown-eyed students are all considered inferior even if one of them was the top student in the class. The functionalist perspective puts one in a collective group disregarding their importance.
INTERACTIONISM THEORY
The interactionism perspective posits that individuals shape and are shaped by society through the meaning that arises in interactions. Society develops because of the SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE. Interactionism focuses on how we interpret situations by the way we act or make conscious choices (Maines, 2017). Social context determines how we interpret the behavior of those around us as well as how we choose to behave at any given moment. In the case of Mrs. Elliot and her students, the social context enables the children to participate in the experiment given that an adult figure has authorized it. They choose to behave as instructed because it is more of a command than a request.
The interactions between the blue-eyed and brown-eyed students are influenced by the interpretation of the conscious idea that blue-eyed are supposedly superior to the brown-eyed on the first day. The interactions derived from their associations can be described as conflict. The meaning that arises through their interactions ascribes conflict. Therefore, the reasons that bring about the discord that is, Mrs. Elliot, making one group superior to the other shape how individuals behave. The oppression felt by the inferior group makes them rebel against the superior group. This is how individuals shape society.
From the experiment with the correctional facility employees, the interactions and mutual adaptations between them facilitates the results of discrimination that ensues when one group is made superior. The blue-eyed are termed incompetent from the observations of the brown-eyed which only come to light when they are made superior.
References
Craib Ian (2015). Modern social theory Routledge Print.
Parsons Talcott (2017) The present status of “structural-functional” theory in sociology. The idea of social structure (pp. 67-84). Routledge Print
Maines David (2017) The fault line of consciousness: A view of interactionism in sociology . Routledge Print.
