For Discussion #5, you will be reading a brief article about a famous experiment called the “Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes” experiment and then you will be watching a documentary about it. This was a social experiment about discrimination that was conducted by elementary teacher Jane Elliott in Riceville, Iowa in 1968. You will be applying your study of this experiment to our study of children’s literature, specifically children’s literature expressing diverse perspectives.
Please read the article titled “My Grandfather and the Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes’ Lesson” (available in the Module 3 folder). Then you will view the documentary titled “A Class Divided.” (You can find the link by opening the Week 3 attachment titled “A Class Divided.”) You can view the documentary by going to either of the following links:
A Class Divided (full film) | FRONTLINE (Links to an external site.)
A Class Divided (full film) | FRONTLINE
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/class-divided/ (Links to an external site.)
After you watch the documentary and read the article, please provide a reflection of at least 250 words. Please point to specific details to support all assertions you make. What was your response to watching this documentary? What interested you about this project? What questions do you have about this project? Had you heard of this experiment before? (You may have seen Jane Elliott recently on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.”) Did you find this experiment to be effective, and why or why not? Jane Elliott’s study emphasized the importance of trying to understand the effects of bigotry and the importance of empathy. Why might this lesson be important when we study children’s literature and the importance of representing a variety of cultures and perspectives? Feel free to further share your thoughts on this topic and the importance of broad representation in children’s literature.
2. Please find an example of either multicultural children’s literature or international children’s literature and provide a short analysis of that book. A variety of multicultural children’s ebooks can be borrowed through the AHC Library’s OverDrive subscription. On OverDrive, you can browse by collection, choose “Children’s Fiction,” and select a title. (You can also request curbside pick-up of hard copy books from the library, too.) If you choose to select an example of international literature, you can find titles of international children’s books that have been recognized and awarded through the USBBY (at https://www.usbby.org/outstanding-international-books-list.html (Links to an external site.)).
For your analysis, please provide the title of the book, its author, a brief summary, and your thoughts on the book. Do you feel it was a strong example of multicultural literature or international literature, and why? If it was an example of multicultural literature, which culture was the book presenting? Did you feel the portrayal was accurate, and if so, what details made it feel more true-to-life and accurate? If you did not feel the portrayal was realistic and accurate, describe why you felt that. Feel free to share more of your thoughts about your selected book.
This is a shorter posting (since Discussion #5 is a longer posting), so you only need to write (minimum) 100 words
