As part of the companies training and development program, its now sending all of its staff on 'Equality & Diversity' training - basically a half day course instructing people not to be sexist, racialist, homophobic e.t.c e.t.c e.t.c, and if you are subject to such abuse, what you can do about it. All very noble and worthwhile, if a little obvious, but hey, the company needs to tick its boxes and I don't mind a few soft-skills courses now and again.
The one thing I did enjoy though was a short DVD around segregation and the effects of treating people differently entitled 'A Class Divided'. Filmed for PBS in 1968, and reworked in 1985, it shows a primary school teacher dividing her class into the blue-eyes and the brown-eyes, and discriminated against one group on the first day, another on the second day, and watched what happened to the social dynamic. I would recommend anyone who has not had E&D training or seen this video as part of that course should watch it @ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/ and really consider what they see. Its certainly an eye opener (pun intended).
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