A class divided

“How are black people, Indians and people who are other colors treated in the U.S.? That is the question that a third-grade teacher in Iowa asked her class one day, and then went on to teach her class a dramatic lesson about the meaning of discrimination.Since 1968, this teacher has been giving the same lesson to her classes each year. She divides the class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed children and for two days, allows one group of students favored treatment and encourages them to discriminate against the other group.This film shows how these eight-year old reacted to this lesson back in 1968 and then, follows-up on these same students fifteen years later, at their calls reunion. There, they discuss the effects this lesson has had on their lives.The film also follows the teacher as she gives her lesson to adults who work in Iowa’s prison system. Their reactions are similar to those of the children.Based on an American commercial network’s original broadcast, A CLASS DIVIDED brings up interesting questions: a follow-up by a public television; does the way to cover information vary from one to the other; how to make use of a so-called “burne4d-out” topic; how to recall to everyone, in a sensitive manner, that when the broadcast ends, the question goes on...