''The Eye of the Storm'' is a 1970 American

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

documentary featuring schoolteacher

Jane Elliott Jane Elliott (' Jennison; born on November 30, 1933) is an American diversity educator. As a schoolteacher, she became known for her "Blue eyes/Brown eyes" exercise, which she first conducted with her third-grade class on April 5, 1968, the da ...

conducting her "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise in

discrimination Discrimination is the act of making unjustified distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong. People may be discriminated on the basis of race, gender, age, relig ...

, in her third-grade classroom at Riceville Elementary School in Riceville, Iowa. Riceville, a small town near the Minnesota border, is almost entirely white; in that context, young children had little understanding of the concept of discrimination. The documentary is narrated by Bill Beutel and directed by William Peters.

Premise

William Peters follows Jane Elliott's schoolroom exercise, conducted over two consecutive days, during which an otherwise homogenous group of elementary school kids was divided by their

eye color Eye color is a polygenic phenotypic character determined by two distinct factors: the pigmentation of the eye's iris and the frequency-dependence of the scattering of light by the turbid medium in the stroma of the iris. In humans, the pi ...

. On the first day, members of one group were favored and thus received deferential, even preferential, treatment all day. Meanwhile, the members of the other group were disfavored; their treatment was a reflection of that. On the second day, the roles were reversed.

Follow-up

This documentary was followed up with "

A Class Divided "A Class Divided" is a 1985 episode of the PBS series ''Frontline''. Directed by William Peters, the episode profiles the Iowa schoolteacher Jane Elliott and her class of third graders, who took part in a class exercise about discrimination and pr ...

", a 1985 ''

Frontline Front line refers to the forward-most forces on a battlefield. Front line, front lines or variants may also refer to: Books and publications * ''Front Lines'' (novel), young adult historical novel by American author Michael Grant * ''Frontlines ...

'' episode in which ''The Eye of the Storm'' is shown to the original participating students—now adults 15 years later—and Elliott is given a chance to find out how much of the lesson her students retained.

References

External links

* 1970 films American documentary television films 1970s short documentary films Documentary films about racism Peabody Award-winning broadcasts Documentary films about psychology 1970s English-language films 1970s American films {{documentary-tv-film-stub