The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment. In this documentary, Jane Elliott, a third grade teacher divided her class into two groups based on their eye color; one group had blue eyes and the other had brown eyes. Elliott began the exercise by dividing her students by eye color. Carson asked, grinning. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. Undeterred, Elliott tried to appeal to Pauls self-interest. "On an airplane, it is," Elliott said to appreciative laughter from the studio audience. More than 50 years after she first tried that exercise in her classroom, Elliott, now 87, said she sees much more work left to do to change racist attitudes. Children with brown eyes were forced to wear armbands that made it easy for people to see that they had brown eyes. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? Multi-Problem Adolescents: An Increasing Problem, Professor Jane Elliott performed a group experiment, the current problems related to discrimination. In Zimbardo's experiment the conditions were much more controlled for later study but the r. Blue eyes, brown eyes: What Jane Elliott's famous experiment says about race 50 years on. She then made the blue-eyed students believe that they were better and smarter than their counterparts. Elliott was even brought on The Tonight Show to talk about her experiences. Jane Elliot's experiment involves cheating and intentional misinterpretation of facts. Little children don't like uproar in the classroom. The blue-eyed students, when told they were superior and offered privileges such as extra recess time, changed their behavior dramatically and their attitudes toward the children with brown eyes. She has spoken at more than 350 colleges and universities. Sign up for Politics Weekly.]. ", A former teacher, Ruth Setka, 79, said she was perhaps the only teacher who would still talk to Elliott. ", Elliott defends her work as a mother defends her child. The searing story is a cautionary tale that examines power and privilege in and out of the classroom. The subjects were 164 students enrolled in eight sections of an introductory elementary education course at a state university. Elliott, who is white, separated the students into two groupsthose with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. Elliott was not. That phrase came to my mind when I watched the video, A Class Divided, about education experiment to teach stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination (Frontline, 1985 . But when she discovered that I was asking pointed questions of scores of her former students, as well as others subjected to the experiment, she made an about-face and said she no longer would cooperate with me. Immediately after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Professor Jane Elliott used the minimal group paradigm to perform an experiment that would teach her students about race discrimination. Yes, the children felt angry, hurt, betrayed. She gave all of the students simple spelling and math tests two weeks before the exercise, on the days of the exercise, and after the exercise. One group consisted pupils with brown eye while the other group consisted of those with blue eyes. Today, increased migration means more opportunities for people from different backgrounds to interact with each other, which is often a source of conflict. This procedure is sometimes so subtle that no one notices it happening. ", Jane shielded her eyes from the morning sun. Melanin, she said, is what causes intelligence. Everyone looked at Mrs. Elliott. Now, almost four decades later, Elliott's experiment still mattersto the grown children with whom she experimented, to the people of Riceville, population 840, who all but ran her out of town, and to thousands of people around the world who have also participated in an exercise based on the experiment. Blue-eyed people would get 5 extra minutes on the playground and blue-eyed people could not talk to brown-eyed people. ", For years scholars have evaluated Elliott's exercise, seeking to determine if it reduces racial prejudice in participants or poses a psychological risk to them. In this article, we talk about leadership and female discrimination.. Elliott was featured on nearly every national news show in America for decades. "She was an excellent school teacher, but she has a way about her," says 90-year-old Riceville native Patricia Bodenham, who has known Elliott since Jane was a baby. The blue eyes/brown eyes experiment, which could last one to three days, was at a glance similar to other human-potential-movement workshops of the era, including Werner Erhard's est training . I often think about Paul Bodensteiner. Ethics + Religion; Health; Politics + Society; . Then a picture was taken to remember. The demonstration has since been taught by generations of teachers to millions of kids across the country. The corn grows so fast in northern Iowafrom seedling to seven-foot-high stalk in 12 weeksthat it crackles. SYNOPSIS OF BLUE EYED. When Sarah, the Elliotts' oldest daughter, went to the girls' bathroom in junior high, she came out of a stall to see a message scrawled in red lipstick on the mirror: "Nigger lover.". Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. (She prefers the term "exercise.") Danko, M. (2013). One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle the exercise and would be seriously damaged by the exercise. Elliott created the blue-eyes/brown-eyes classroom exercise in 1968 to teach students about racism. The secretary on duty looked up, startled, as if she had just seen a ghost. New York: Elsevier Science. Withdrawn brown-eyed kids were suddenly outgoing, some beaming with the widest smiles she had ever seen on them. "That's what I tried to teach, and that's what drove the other teachers crazy. The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. And what she did caused an uproar. one girl asked. Cookie Policy That might have been the end of it, but a month later, Elliott says, Johnny Carson called her. Jane Elliott on The Tonight Show on May 31, 1968. We walked into the principal's office at RicevilleElementary School, Elliott's old haunt. They all either smiled or laughed and nodded.". ", The two hugged, and Whisenhunt had tears streaming down her cheeks. In 1968, schoolteacher Jane Elliott decided to divide her classroom into students with blue eyes and students with brown eyes. Your Privacy Rights Professor Jane Elliott performed a group experiment with her students that they would never forget. One key assumption is that the sample population represents an actual society. SpeedyPaper.com 2023 All rights reserved. The same experiment was also used a couple of years later with adults. Elliot's approach to the experiment involved creativity in which the pupils' age and ability to comprehend discrimination was taken into account. Scores of others did participate. Jane Elliott, one of the most controversial figures in U.S. education and diversity training, began her journey to international acclaim in Riceville, Iowa. . Even family members can turn against each other if some authority suddenly decides that those differences are a problem. The kids in the bottom group became timider and kept to themselves. Problems with this research were that it went against a lot of ethical issues. Privacy Statement In 2001, she was still trying to make a change. 4. The day after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in 1968, Jane Elliott, a schoolteacher in rural Iowa, introduced to her all-white third-grade class a shocking . Elliott shared the essays with her mother, who showed them to the editor of the weekly Riceville Recorder. Given the long-term results of the experiment, the controversial study could not have taken place in today's society despite its significant insights on matters racism. Elliott had hoped that this experiment would help the children to better understand the feelings of discrimination that certain groups feel on a daily basis, but what she didn . This paradigm helps understand the current problems related to discrimination. The experiment, known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. The basic idea was to separate the class into two halves, students with blue eyes and those with brown. Did they know what it was like to be discriminated against? Jane Elliott and Dr. On April 5 1968 the day after the death of Martin Luther King Jr Elliott decided to show her students how easy it was to be influenced by racism. "I understand this is the first time you've flown?" Issues such as the right to know, the right to privacy, and informed consent. It makes you proud. It's cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage. Almost immediately, it was apparent that she had created segregation and prejudice given that the blue-eyed students began exhibiting signs of dominion and superiority. To most people, it seemed to suggest that racism could be reduced, even eliminated, by a one- or two-day exercise. There are risks to those inoculations, too, but we determine that those risks are worth taking. At first, she cooperated with me. I felt like hitting them if I wanted to. These initial criticisms didnt stop Elliott. They needed not acknowledge their privilege or reflect on it. Biddle, B. J. She continued to conduct the exercise with her third graders. Basically, you establish differences between a set of subjects in order to divide them into separate groups. But they returned to a better placeunlike a child of color, who gets abused every day, and never has the ability to find him or herself in a nurturing classroom environment." Blue Eyes vs. Brown Eyes Experiment. You can start from that point in Activity 2, or you can play the video from the beginning (00:00) so that your students can see civil rights era footage following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as Elliott's students returning to Iowa . Outside, rows of corn stretched to the horizon. Once indoors, the brown-eyed group was then treated to coffee and doughnuts, while the blue-eyed group could only stand around and wait. One of the main ones was the fact that their right to withdraw was taken away from them. I'm tired of hearing about her and her experiment and how everyone here is a racist. The American Psychologists Principles and code of conduct state that in cases of deception, experimenters should take into consideration the potential harmful effects to participants.
How Do I Contact The Social Security Commissioner, Troubadours Band Perth, Debit Card Alert Text Message, Largest Landowners In New Mexico, Thomas Horn, Author, Articles B