On the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in April 1968, Jane Elliott's third graders from the small, all-white town of Riceville, Iowa, came to class confused and upset. They recently had made King their "Hero of the Month," and they couldn't understand why someone would kill him. So Elliott decided to teach her class a daring lesson in the meaning of discrimination. She wanted to show her pupils what discrimination feels like, and what it can do to people.
I had heard of this class but knew nothing of the details. This information pack, including film of a repeat of the lesson in 1970 and much other material is now available online from PBS in the USA. The value of it, in demonstrating the essential stupidity of racial prejudice, is unquestionable. I wonder however what the chances would be of a teacher taking such a challenging lesson today - in the US there would no doubt be fear of law suits for 'mental distress' while in the UK the demands of the National Curriculum would prevent any such response to current events.
[via Rebecca's Pocket]
