Having watched this video series during my undergraduate career, I am familiar with the experiment and the results. Having watched it a second time, a year or so later, I have the same view as I did then.
Based on the results of the experiment I believe there was a valuable lesson to be learned and sometimes children need hands on experiences to understand and learn an abstract concept. This experiment addresses racism and prejudice by allowing the students to experience it first hand in an appropriate and safe setting.
I personally would do something like this in my classroom so the students can learn exactly how it feels to be on the other side of fence. Often in classrooms the issue of bullying needs to be addressed especially in the younger grades. Role playing is an effective way for students to act out and see results that they may not have known otherwise; such as a reaction of tears or retaliation instead of just walking away. Several times during my student teaching experience we used role playing to act out scenarios in which abstract concepts such as respect, or tolerance needed to be addressed and this strategy worked well with the students. The experiement is in the same fashion and it could be used with anything; i.e. shirt color, hair color, or even left handed and right handed. The purpose is to have the students understand another persons point of view.
You might be interested in reading "The Wave" by Todd Strasser, which is about an experiment in which he divides his seventh-grade class by making half of them into a group with power over the other half. (He was teaching the development of Nazi Germany.)
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