"A Class Divided"

[Indelible]

Has anyone else seen ? (The link is the first one of a set of video clips of a longer documentary.)

It's documentary about an "experiment" (the woman who designed it, Jane Elliott, prefers to call it an "exercise") that examines privilege and otherness. Jane Elliott was an elementary school teacher in the US in the 1960s and did this exercise with the children in her class to get them to think about racism.

The teacher segregates the children according to whether they have brown eyes or blue eyes, giving (at first) the blue-eyed children special, arbitrary, privileges. The blue-eyed children are very quick to defend their privilege, and the brown-eyed children very quickly become demoralised. (Later, she reverses the situation so the children can experience the opposite situation.)

The relevance to racism is obvious, but I think it's really interesting to look at it from the perspective of sex discrimination as well. What I thought was interesting was the way in which the blue-eyed children tried to justify their privilege - they seemed to need to justify it in terms of the inferiority of the brown-eyed children, in order to be able to live with and enjoy it.

Also it was interesting to watch how the teacher normalised the arbitrary distinction she'd made - picking up on the fact that one brown-eyed pupil was slower than the others in opening her book, and then generalising from that in order to denigrate the whole group.

I remember seeing this in sociology (or was it psychology?) A level years ago. It's really interesting when looking at prejudice and how people respond when told something negative about a particular group. I've never thought about it in the way of sex discrimination though, you could have a point.

Thanks for the link. I'll watch it tomorrow. Sounds really interesting.

Blimey, I have TONS of links etc to catch up on from this board. Isn't it great?

I'm doing a presentation about social influences on monday and she is a large part of it. I found her exercise very interesting

This is one that had to be called off iirc as it worked too well? And wasn't one of the really interesting things that 'brown eyes' became an insult that kids were using even to people whose eyes weren't brown?

What, like people using 'don't be such a girl' or 'man up/grow a pair' as an insult for men and boys as well as women and girls?

Fascinating stuff, thanks for that...

So if you picked a class of boys and girls, equal numbers.
From the same social class, with equal parental support and involvement.
And with similar financial circumstances.

How different do people think their lives would be?

Would the boys male privilege make a huge difference?

I'm interested as I have a boy and a girl, and at the moment it all seems pretty equal, I think it's when their children come along is the big factor for change.

But interested to hear what people think.

That class would have to exist in a total social and religious vacuum wouldn't it.

Do you reckon?
Both my DCs classes are a pretty close demographic.

I suppose both my children fit that criteria so I'm trying to be aware when my DS wil benefit more from male privilege and my DD be held back by it.

ooh ooh hereforlife that has just reminded me - I think that male privilege would make a massive difference - I went to a classroom observation last week (am a school governor) and observed a philosophy class in action (year 2's, so 6 and 7 year olds). The boys absolutely dominated the discussion, girls much more tentative about putting their POV forward, scared to be shot down, disagreed with etc.

Apparantly the same thing happens in maths. Girls unwilling to guess, etc. in case they get it wrong. Already at the age of 6.

So they are planning some segregated lessons for philosophy, as they already have some for maths.

That doesn't happen at my DDs school. The girls in her class wipe the floor with the boys. They are miles ahead academically and in maturity, the boys don't get a look in.

This is last year of primary and the girls compete,and are seemingly self-motivated, to get the best academic marks.

Give it two decades then do another equality assessment?

I don't know why it's happening at this school - this is a really excellent school with a very clued up, intelligent HT who is totally aware of what a big issue it is and is taking active steps to address it. Maybe different cohort at your DC's school?

'That doesn't happen at my DDs school. The girls in her class wipe the floor with the boys. They are miles ahead academically and in maturity, the boys don't get a look in. '

I agree at my school it was always seen as boys are thick and unacademic and girls are clever. It is very hard to break out of that way of thinking even as an adult. I know my friends have said about their own children. He wont be as good at reading/writing cause hes a boy, he is behind buts he is only a boy etc.

When I watched Gareth Malones school for boys that related well to my own experiences at school. It was always seen as girls would do well and boys struggle. It was interesting to see the boys opinions in that programme on how that affected their self esteem. A boy in it said girls are clever. boys dont read'. I think its a very prevelant opinion.

The educational achievement of boys and girls is very unequally distributed up until after A levels - girls wipe the floor with boys. I have heard anecdotally that this is not the case at undergraduate level. Does anyone know if that's the case?

Well woman in their twenties now out earn men according to these statistics

www.totallymoney.com/news/index.php/2010/12/gender-pay-gap-narrows

Yes but I should imagine that over a lifetime they'll still earn LSD because of the uterus-tax applied postnatally.

They'll earn less. They won't earn LSD. That would be stupid.

I think I saw this lady doing for a TV program fairly recently. My problem was that she very aggressive in such a way that it over rode the point she was making. I can't quite describe it, but I think over the years her method had got more extreme.

I can't believe how long it took for me to realise that LSD was an iPad autocorrect. I was thinking it can't be lysergic blah blah, it's an acronym for some sort of monetary thing. But what? Now I realise my range for Wasting Time Missing Obvious Things is absolutely limitless.

I'm assuming iPad because I've seen other iPad autocorrects in your posts. And I'm not stalking you, the sun rising is one of my favourite ever poems so yours is one of the few usernames I notice on here.

Isn't it wonderful Mitchy?

'She's all states, and all princes I.
Nothing else is'

Must read more Donne. :)

And it's an I-phone - well spotted :)

I didn't mean specifically with regard to school children, I meant society generally. The documentary I linked to looked at school children, but what I thought was interesting were the mechanisms the teacher used to give one group privilege and marginalise the other group, and then how that played out. I think similar mechanisms operate within society in general with regard to men and women.