This best-selling program, produced by ABC News, was the first video to document Jane Elliott's courageous undertaking to help her third grade class understand the meaning of prejudice. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., her, all-white, all-Christian third grade class hungered to understand the significance Dr. King's mission. Living in the homogenous farming community of Riceville, Iowa, many of Ms. Elliott's students harbored subtle and not so subtle prejudices despite the fact that many of them had never even seen a black man before. So where did these prejudices come from? And, more importantly, how could she make them understand how arbitrary and unfair they were?
This video chronicles her, now famous, exercise where she divides her class based upon the color of their eyes and bestows upon one group privileges and on the other group impediments. Needless to say, her eye color exercise created quite a storm at the time. But her work endures to this day and this ABC video, nearly 35 years later, still has a great deal to teach us.
