A Class Divided

During the experiment Jane noticed that whilst doing an excerise called a ‘card pack’ it took the brown-eyed children on the day they wore the ribbons 5 and a half minutes to get through the card pack. On the day they were the superior ones it took them only 2 and a half minutes to get through the pack. The blue-eyed children on the first day of the experiment got through the pack in 3 minutes on the second day, the day they wore the ribbon around the neck it took them 4:18 seconds.

At the end of the day she sat the children around and discussed with the students what it felt like to wear the ribbon and how it felt to be discriminated against. Of course they didn’t like it at all. She than asked her students to removed the neck ribbons and ask what they would like to do with them they all said they wanted to throw them away. The experiment help the children understand what the meaning of discrimination and racism meant. The experiment seemed have worked extremely well and helped the 3rd grade student understand.

It didn’t take long for word of this experiment to get out and it was published in associated press and she was then invited to appear on the Johnny Carson’s Today show were during the break the switchboard run wild with people wanting to have their say about Jane’s little experiment most of the feedback was negative. The following day would seem horrible, her work mates walked out, her own children were bullied and teased, her parents store was boycotted which soon made her father go bankrupt, her neighbours no looking spoke to her. Although all the bad publicity went around she remained employed at school and still had the full support of her superiors. She began getting invitations to appear on different television show and newspapers. She even began to do the experiment on adults. On December 15, 1970, she did the experiment on educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth.

Due to the higher demand in Jane Elliots experiment training workshops she left teaching in the mid 1980’s to carry out the workshops around for companies and government institutions paying a up to $6,000 per day.

In 1971 the ABC (American Broadcasting Company) broad casted a documentary called “The eye of the storm” after this broadcast 2 books were written about her. One book called ’A class divided than and now’ written by William Peters an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, which was later made into a PBS  documentary in 1985,that included a reunion of the students who  featured in “The Eye of the Storm”. By the end of 1994 they were 5000 diversity trainers around America.

Below are videos of the documentary.

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