Eye Of The Storm

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorCollege, Undergraduate February 2008

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The eye of the Storm A Lesson in life Individuals in American, and around the world have experienced outward and subtle discrimination on the basis of race, colour, national origin, gender, and disabilities since colonization began. As our world becomes a global society, and cultures merge, importance on cultural education becomes more and more important. The face our society as that of an ever-changing one, one's ability to live in that society has never been more essential.

Everyday in North American grade school classrooms, our children are being taught to read, and to write, and basic cognitive knowledge, but is that enough? Are there lessons in life that are too valuable for our children not to learn? Are our children learning the life lessons, that they need to operate as well rounded, tolerant adults in our society? As future educators is it our job to teach our children communication skills, and how to live in our society? Or are we there to regurgitate the information supplied to us by textbooks? In 1962, one third grade teacher from a small Anglo Saxon community in Iowa thought so.

With a bit of creativity and motivation from the brutal death of a National hero Martin Luther King, she put into action a lesson in discrimination, the eye colour experiment that the children would never forget.

The children from this Iowa third grade class entered the classroom one morning unprepared for the lesson they would leave with. The children were segregated into a brown-eyed group and a blue-eyed group, immediately creating a microcosm of American society and the discrimination that exists there. This experiment allowed each child to experience discrimination first hand, in a very real way. The life lesson they learnt that day was a harsh one, but maybe that's why it was...