An elementary school teacher created an activity for Black History Month where she told students with blue eyes they were smarter and better, giving them special treatment, while making students with brown eyes feel unimportant. The next day she reversed it, praising brown eyes over blue. This allowed students to experience discrimination firsthand and better understand its impact, making them less likely to discriminate against others in the future based on attributes like skin color or religion. The teacher helped the students grasp discrimination through direct experience of being on both sides.

1. Brown Eyes Video Discussion
The video, “Brown Eyes,” was made possible by an elementary school teacher who
developed an activity in hopes of explaining the purpose of black history month. This video was
made so that the children could look at black history month in a different viewpoint, allowing
them to be put in somewhat of the same situation and experience what the African Americans
experienced once before. The teacher of the class started by explaining to the children that
everyone in the classroom with blue eyes was smarter and better than the other children with
brown eyes. She then begin to give special treatment all day to those with blue eyes, making
the children with brown eyes feel unimportant and less of themselves. The next day of class she
then told the students that everyone with brown eyes was smarter and better than the
students with blue or green eyes. And giving all the brown eyed students the treatment that
the students with blue eyes, just the day before, had received.
I feel as if this teacher did a great job at exploring the different kinds of discrimination
and really allowed the students of her class to experience it first hand, making them lesser off
to discriminate someone down the line because they had once experienced it first-hand. As an
elementary student, it is hard to grasp the full concept of discrimination and its effect on
others. By experiencing it first-hand, these students are less likely to be those discriminators
and more likely to show empathy towards the one who is being treated differently because of
their skin color, religion, or even eye color in this situation.