According to the Foundation for Advanced Social Research (
http://blog.isdfundacion.org/2012/09/09/experimentos-psicosociales-n%C2%BA3-una-clase-dividida-jane-elliot-1968/). This documentary is a psychosocial experiment dealing intolerance. In 1968 a primary school teacher, Jane Elliot decided to carry out an exercise with her students and teaching students following the death of Martin Luther King. It was an experiment based on social categorization and aimed to educate the students of the effects of discrimination, who practices both as the sufferer.
Was to divide the class into two groups based on eye color. Thus, the children who had blue eyes the teacher would say that they are superior and more intelligent than brown eyes and therefore had the right to go to recess or they might repeat the food. Meanwhile, the brown -eyed children would say that they are slower, less intelligent and more awkward, so that they could enjoy the privileges of the first . Furthermore, every girl and boy with brown eyes class were asked to wear a neckerchief that served to identify them quickly as the discriminated group. This separation in the classroom quickly gained consequences and fighting began between the two groups and class discussions. Lifelong friends were now confronted simply by the fact that they had been told they were different.
The next day, the teacher roles reversed. The funny thing is that at that time the group performed the tasks and classroom exercises significantly faster than they had the previous day and much faster than the blue-eyed group. Each group had adopted fully the role of dominant and subordinate with corresponding moods of joy and sorrow in each of them. Upon completion of this exercise, the teacher explained that it was an exercise for them to realize how racist act in his country and that if did not seem right to feel discriminated by the color of their eyes , it is not just perpetuate prejudice based social categories such as skin color .
Later, Elliot developed a similar experiment with officials from a maximum security prison in New York and received results surprisingly very similar to those of children.