This week in Lakeshore the grade 7/8 class had 5 days of anticipation for Halloween, an event scheduled for next week on Tuesday. In other news instead of having a spelling test, we wrote horror stories to share with the class on the following Monday and Tuesday to get in a thematically appropriate mood for Halloween. This week the class also partook in an experiment that our Language teacher, Ms. Singh, used to exemplify the stark inequality induced by black segregation. This comes as a not unprecedented addition to this year’s grade 7/8 novel study unit, Black like Me. Within the activity Ms. Singh separated the class into two groups for half of the Language Arts period by employing a methodology of segregating the class on the basis of eye colour. The basis of separation within this experiment were children with brown eyes being further differentiated from their blue/green eyed peers. Within this new-formed society children with brown irises were treated as second-class citizens and blue/green eyed children were treated better than the browns. The blue/greens were praised more than the browns and the browns were made to clean up everyone’s tables. This had an interesting effect on the browns, making them less willing to answer questions lesser and it actually promoted the performance of the blue-greens. The social trial was inspired by a very similar experiment conducted by a former third grade teacher, Jane Elliott, who first conducted the exercise the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The children who were part of the exercise developed a racist social system within their class, making brown eyed an offensive term and treating the discriminated eye colour badly. The segregated eye colour also performed worse than the praised eye colour. A documentary was made by ABC news detailing the experiment and the effects it had on the children who took part in it 15 years after the experience. They’re available to watch online if you have an hour to spare to learn about how dehumanizing the struggle for superiority is and the psychological effects of discrimination. This week the 7/8 band started to work on the song “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley, the first reggae song that the band has ever worked on.
On a more individual note I recently ordered and received some of Franz Kafka’s most well received novels, “The Castle” and “The Trial”, and a compilation of his short stories, including “The Metamorphosis” and “A Hunger Artist”. I’ve only barely started reading “The Castle”, my older brother seems have taken a liking to “The Trial”, and even though I’ve only just begun to discover K.’s fruitless struggle with the enigmatic Count to gain access to the Castle, and the village’s strange social beliefs and customs which serve to frustrate K., already it seems the thread of bureaucracy is a recumbent in a majority of the author’s work (from what I’ve heard). It finds its place in “The Castle” in the strange decisions of the Count all in service of a purported greater good which seems all the more flawed and moronic as the story progresses.
To conclude, this week at Lakeshore has been one of novelty, writing horror stories, experiencing segregation, on a very small scale, and working on a song in an unfamiliar genre. I also started reading a Kafka novel for the first time, only reading a short story of his, “The Metamorphosis”, online beforehand, and enjoying his pervasive representation of bureaucracy. Overall, this week has been a successful one in exciting everyone for Halloween.

By Megan