Filmed 15 years after The Eye of the Storm, this sequel explores what the children in Jane Elliott's daring classroom exercise learned about discrimination and how it still affects them today. Ms. Elliott meets with some of her former students to analyze the exercise in prejudice and its impact on their lives.
FRONTLINE's A Class Divided chronicled a mini-reunion of the 1970 third-grade class in The Eye of the Storm. As young adults, Elliott's former students watch themselves on film and talk about the impact Elliott's lesson in bigotry has had on their lives and attitudes. It is Jane Elliott's first chance to find out how much of her lesson her students had retained.
"Nobody likes to be looked down upon. Nobody likes to be hated, teased or discriminated against," says Verla, one of the former students.
Another, Sandra, tells Elliott: "You hear these people talking about different people and how they'd like to have them out of the country. And sometimes I just wish I had that collar in my pocket. I could whip it out and put it on and say 'Wear this, and put yourself in their place.' I wish they would go through what I went through, you know."
In the last part of A Class Divided, FRONTLINE's cameras follow Jane Elliott as she takes her exercise to employees of the Iowa prison system. During a daylong workshop in human relations she teaches the same lesson to the adults. Their reactions to the blue-eye, brown-eye exercise are similar to those of the children.
