Symbolic Interactionism is the reciprocal relationship between individuals and society among other things. In the film “A Class Divided," Jane Elliott conducted an exercise to teach her third grade students about discrimination. She told her students: “This is a fact, blue eyed people are better than brown eyed people.” as she separated them into two groups, each with rewards and punishments. Once segregated the discrimination between the groups started almost instantaneously and she noted how within minutes she created a microcosm society within the classroom. With race being such a socially important factor within our culture, children learn from a young age how to classify people and those who appear to be different are often stereotyped and discriminated against. (“Shared Meaning As The Basis of Humanness” Page 78) There are many factors that contribute to why this happens and symbolic interactionism offers a way to better understand the painful effects of discrimination. There are three different perspectives to symbolic interactionism according to learning Unit Four’s PowerPoint presentation, slide 3-6”. First, is that meanings arise through social interaction among individuals. Second, people use the meanings they derive from interaction to guide their own behavior. And third, that people may come away from an interaction with a different interpretation of it and act on those interpretations. In the film it was obvious that each child knew how black people were discriminated against which gave them meaning to the situation. Even though they knew how black people were being treated, once they were in the superior group they immediately started harassing the bottom group based of how they observed the teachers interactions. From the symbolic interactionist approach, during this time the children evaluated how the others were being treated and responded within the specific context to their situation. This response changed as the context changed depending on if they were in the top or bottom group, as well as when the exercise was finished. It wasn’t hard to miss how at the end of the exercise the student’s interactions with each other changed as they acted on a dif