Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed

Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed is a three-part film series produced by Elliott Sales & Service, distributed in the UK by TotalAccess. It was selected to air on Network Six during the Summer 2008 schedule round. It airs Fridays at 6.30pm.

Iowa schoolteacher Jane Elliott, like many Americans, was shocked and saddened by the racially-motivated killing of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. When talking to her third grade students about it and noticing their lack of comprehension of what 'racism' meant, Elliott decided it would take a drastic measure to make them learn.

She developed an exercise which, in the span of 48 hours, would split her class into two, teach them first-hand the viciousness and nastiness of prejudice, and get them to better appreciate each other's differences.

The exercise works like this: on day one, Elliott split her class in half according to eye color. Brown eyed students sat on one side, blue eyed on the other. Varied eye colors would be assigned to the brown or blue side at her discretion. Then she told the kids that statistically and scientifically, people with brown eyes were better people than those with blue eyes. Brown eyed children got more privileges including access to playground equipment, larger helpings at lunch, and priority in queue lines. Blue eyed children, after being told flat out by Elliott of their lower intelligence and troublemaking attitude, were immediately made subjects of ridicule by the other children.

On day two, Elliott tells the kids that she lied. Indeed, it was actually the blue eyed children who were superior. With the roles reversed, blue-eyed children seemed to relish in the chance of making their other halves suffer what they had suffered. At the end of the day, Elliott would tell the class the -real- truth, explaining that this is what racism amounts to in real life, and to appreciate the differences in one another and the people they would meet as their lives went on.

Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed examines more about Elliott and her original experiment; her reunion with one class of her kids and one of her first uses of the exercise on -adults;- and the exercise as accomplished in the UK.

Episodes
Part One: "Wide Eyed." We are introduced to Jane Elliott and her Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed exercise. Her 1970 third grade class, once filmed for a documentary, reunite with their teacher in 1985 to discuss how their lesson in racism has coloured their lives. We also see Elliott's exercise performed on a group of adults who think they are attending a seminar on workplace behaviours. Originally aired in the US under PBS 'Frontline' title A Class Divided.

Part Two: "Blue Eyed." An entire Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed workshop is filmed, from start to finish. This particular exercise was performed on a class of college graduate students.

Part Three: "Eye Opener." The finale finds Elliott in Scotland, performing her exercise on volunteers from across the UK and Ireland who thought they knew the true meaning of racism and discrimination.