We have been looking at powerful speeches which changed the world. After watching Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech, we discussed what life must have been like for different races during that time.
We could appreciate it must have been incredibly difficult, but to give us a better understanding of what it would have felt like, Miss Halton set up a social experiment.
X
Year 6 were asked to stand. One by one, Miss Halton looked into pairs of eyes and either gave us a sticker with a X on it or asked us to sit down. All children branded with a X were then asked to stack their chairs and sit on the floor.
Throughout the day, the discrimination based on eye colour continued! Non-crosses were allowed to sit on benches in assembly, eat their lunch in the classroom, write in pen and play wherever they liked. Our 'crosses' had a very different experience. They sat on the floor during assembly, lined up last, wrote in pencil, and were restricted to the bottom playground at break. At first, we all thought it was quite funny, but as the day went on, we really began to understand the unfairness of being judged on our appearance alone.
Peace at last! Once our stickers were removed, we were very relieved! There were lots of smiles as crosses and non-crosses were reunited at last. After a day full of lots of ups and downs, we discussed how different people felt.
"I felt awkward being a non-cross, because I saw how unfairly the crosses were being treated."
"I liked it at first, but then I saw how annoyed the crosses were getting and I felt sorry for them."
"I thought it was incredibly unfair! I couldn't understand why I was being treated differently to others just based on my eye-colour."
"I can really understand how awful it must have felt to be treated so unfairly. It definitely isn't a good feeling!"
We learnt an important lesson about social and racial equality, and it isn't one we are going to forget quickly!
If you are interested in where we got the inspiration for this experiment, you can watch the original here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeK759FF84s
Jane Elliot carried out a similar experiment with children in an American school over 40 years ago. It is quite old-fashioned, but parents and children might find it interesting!
This was a very interesting day for you Year 6. I think many of us in school could see and feel the pain and confusion you were feeling and the comments in your blog are full of insight now you have experienced this inequality.
ReplyDeleteMrs Andrews