Jane Elliott, a teacher and anti-racism activist, performed a direct experiment with the students in her classroom. Would you? "That's what I tried to teach, and that's what drove the other teachers crazy. 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. Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? Blue Eye/Brown Eye is an experiment performed by Jane Elliot in 1968 on the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated to demonstrate what prejudice was to her third grade class. At this point you may wish to tell the pupils that you are conducting an "experiment" to look at what prejudice is. She continued to conduct the exercise with her third graders. Tears formed in the corners of Elliott's eyes. On April 4 1968, King was killed by the single . "We'll just be a couple of minutes. On the first day of the experiment, she declared the brown-eyed group superior and gave them extra privileges like seconds at lunch, extra recess time, and access to the new school playground. Proceeding with the experiment, Elliot divided the children into two groups each with nine pupils. 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 . They killed hundreds of thousands of people based on eye color alone, thats the reason I used eye color for my determining factor that day., Elliott divided the class into children with blue eyes and children with brown eyes. Blue eyes, brown eyes: What Jane Elliott's famous experiment says about race 50 years on. The exercise is "an inoculation against racism," she says. She has appeared on the "Oprah Winfrey Show" five times. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle . On Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, and the brown-eyed kids were told how shifty, dumb and lazy theywere. This procedure is sometimes so subtle that no one notices it happening. Separate the class into two halves - those with blue eyes and those with brown. I want to know why youre so willing to accept it or to allow it to happen for others., The first reaction I get from teachers, who see this film or from hearing, hear me discuss what I do say to me How can you do that to these little children? There are risks to those inoculations, too, but we determine that those risks are worth taking. "No person of any age [was] going to leave my presence with those attitudes unchallenged," Elliott said. 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. One even wrote a lipstick message with racial slurs. Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes offers an intimate portrait of the insular community where Elliott grew up and conducted the experiment on the town's children for more than a decade. The ethical concerns arising from the experiment are consent and deception. 10," Elliott said. The video . Words are the most powerful weapon devised by humankind. But not Elliott. Her class, I often think about Paul Bodensteiner. In the case of any doubt, it's best to consult a trusted specialist. She then told them that the children with blue eyes were inherently inferior to the children with brown . "Blue-eyed people sit around and do nothing. Fourteen years later, the students featured in The Eye of the Storm reunited and discussed their experiences with Elliott. "We give our children shots to inoculate them against polio and smallpox, to protect them against the realities in the future. The kids in the bottom group became timider and kept to themselves. They were forced to sit on the back rows and had to use a . Additionally, the brown-eyed students got to sit in the front of the class, while the blue-eyed kids . The blue-eyed participants faced discrimination for two and a half hours. She left teaching in the mid-80s to speak publicly about the experience and the impact of prejudice and racism. ", "I've never forgotten the exercise," Whisenhunt volunteered. With over 2 million YouTube subscribers, over 500 articles, and an annual reach of almost 12 million students, it has become one of the most popular sources of psychological information. And what she did caused an uproar. The episode features with new footage of the students, who are now adults. Before proceeding with the test, she began with random questions to fully understand the children's perception of Negroes. From Elliot's highly controversial experiment it is clear that prejudice and discrimination can only be understood through experience. The experiment, known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. Jane Elliot's 'The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment' was unethical in that she created a segregated environment in a third grade classroom. She asked the other teachers what they were doing to bring news of the King assassination into their classrooms. "People of other color groups seem to understand," she said. (In later versions of the exercise, children in the inferior group were given collars to wear.). Jane Elliott is 84 years old, a tiny woman with white hair, wire-rim glasses and little patience. Though Jane's actions were justifiable because she was not a psychologist, her experiment cannot be replicated in the present society. In doing the research for my book with scores of peoples who were participants in the experiment, I reached out to Elliott. They are cleaner than blue-eyed people. Biddle, B. J. She also made the brown-eyed students put construction paper armbands on the blue-eyed students. The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. . . The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise received national attention shortly after it ended. Blue Eyes vs. Brown Eyes Experiment. The blue-eyed brown-eyed experiment was conducted by Jane Elliott, a school teacher from Iowa, in which she separated blue eyed children from brown eyed children and took turns making one of the "superior" to the other. In Jane Elliott's experiment she made the third graders believe that the blue eyed people were better,than the brown eyed people. We use them to divide and destroy people., White peoples number one freedom, in the United States of America, is the freedom to be totally ignorant of those who are other than white. Mental Floss, 4. 4 Pages. This paradigm helps understand the current problems related to discrimination. The Blue Eyes & Brown Eyes Exercise. "We are repeating the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise on a daily basis.". The nonstop parade of sickening events such as the murder of George Floyd surely is not going to be abated by a quickie experiment led by a white person for the alleged benefit of other whites as was the case with the blue-eyed, brown eyed experiment. January 1, 2003. Society made them believe they were better than other people for arbitrary reasons such as skin color or gender. Want a quality guarantee? The blue eyes and brown eyes experiment According to supporters of Elliott's approach, the goal is to reach people's sense of empathy and morality. It has since evolved into an online blog and YouTube channel providing mental health advice, tools, and academic support to individuals from all backgrounds. One student answers, since the day I was born. Throughout the entire experiment, Elliott leads frank conversations about race and discrimination. Regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, decision making in psychology should protect individual rights and welfare to eliminate potential biases. The students who had blue eyes were told that they were better and smarter than their inferior brown-eyed peers. ( 1985-03-26) " A Class Divided " is a 1985 episode of the PBS series Frontline. Role Theory: Expectations, Identities, and Behaviors. Some people feel we can't move on when you have her out there hawking her 30-year-old experiment. Looking back, I think part of the problem was that, like the residents of other small midwestern towns I've covered, many in Riceville felt that calling attention to oneself was poor manners, and that Elliott had shone a bright light not just on herself but on Riceville; people all over the United States would think Riceville was full of bigots. Problems with this research were that it went against a lot of ethical issues. Kors writes that Elliott's exercise taught "blood-guilt and self-contempt to whites," adding that "in her view, nothing has changed in America since the collapse of Reconstruction." Professor Jane Elliott performed a group experiment with her students that they would never forget. Not only were they fewer in numbers, but the authority figure was against them. . 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. The smell of the crops and loam and topsoil and manure wafted though the open door. She also made the brown-eyed students put construction paper armbands on the blue-eyed students. As a journalism professor and author of a book on race that spans more than 50 years, Ive watched these developments with great concern. Ms. Elliott, now 87, said she started teaching about racism on April 5, 1968 the day after the Rev. Brown-eyed people. Alan Charles Kors, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, says Elliott's diversity training is "Orwellian" and singled her out as "the Torquemada of thought reform." They embraced the experiments reductive message, as well as its promised potential, thereby keeping the implausible rationale of Elliotts crusade alive and well for decades, however flawed and racist it really was. Issues such as the right to know, the right to privacy, and informed consent. They don't replace the diagnosis, advice, or treatment of a professional. This way, she successfully created two distinct groups in her classroom: The consequences of the minimal group became evident very quickly. When Elliott conducted the exercise the next year, she added something extra to collect data. However, the study shows some bias in the sample size and race of participants. . Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue . Jane Elliott (ne Jennison; born on November 30, 1933) is an American diversity educator.As a schoolteacher, she became known for her "Blue eyes/Brown eyes" exercise, which she first conducted with her third-grade class on April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Thats just the way blue-eyed kids were, Elliott told the students. This bibliography was generated on Cite This For Me on Monday, March 7, 2016. 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. The brown-eyed people were told to step to the front of the line. ", Steve Harnack, 62, served as the elementary school principal beginning in 1977. Blue Eyed versus Brown Eyed Students Jane Elliott was not a psychologist, but she developed one of the most famously controversial exercises in 1968 by dividing students into a blue-eyed group and . 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. Sorry, but it's not possible to copy the text due to security reasons. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? You have the right color eyes!. ", Others have praised Elliott's exercise. March 26, 1985. The results showed a reversal effect in which the blue-eyed students showed signs of inferiority and low self-esteem. Elliott started to see her own white privilege, even her own ignorance. And our number two freedom is the freedom to deny that were ignorant., I want every white person in this room who would be happy to be treated as this society in general treats our citizens, our black citizens, if you, as a white person, would be happy to receive the same treatment that our black citizens do in this society, please stand. The musical is about romance, but it integrates issues of race and discrimination (Norris, 2014), and the song is about how discrimination is taught carefully, in long term. Is it even possible today? She asked her students, who were all white, whether or not they knew what it felt like to be judged by the color of their skin. She knew that the children weren't going to buy her pitch unless she came up with a reason, and the more scientific to these Space Age children of the 1960s, the better. 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 . That's not true. The minimal group paradigm has shaped an entire methodology in social psychology. They didnt need to engage with a single Black person. Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. "The browneyed people are the better people in this room," Elliott began. "On an airplane, it is," Elliott said to appreciative laughter from the studio audience. Elliot's approach to the experiment involved creativity in which the pupils' age and ability to comprehend discrimination was taken into account. It's the Jane Elliott machine. (She prefers the term "exercise.") The people and cultures already present in a place often feel threatened by new immigrants. It seemed to evince that all white people had to do to learn about racism was restrain themselves from an impulse to engage in made-up cruelty. Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa. Hundreds of viewers wrote letters saying Elliott's work appalled them. When Elliott first conducted the exercise in 1968, brown-eyed students were given special privileges. . 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 . She was a standing-room-only speaker at hundreds of colleges and universities. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 prompted educator Jane Elliott to create the now-famous "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise ." As a school teacher in the small town of Riceville, Iowa, Elliott first conducted the anti-racism experiment on her all-white third-grade classroom, the day after the civil rights leader was killed. 4. In fact, most of the initial response was negative. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. With this experiment she wanted to let the blue-eyed people (white people) feel how it is to be in low power position. She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of colors shoes. Let's just move on. She has led training sessions at General Electric, Exxon, AT&T, IBM and other corporations, and has lectured to the IRS, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Department of Education and the Postal Service. Exploring your mind Blog about psychology and philosophy. We dont have to learn about those who are other than white. In her article, Peggy McIntosh compares the "white privilege" to an invisible set of unearned rewards and . ", A chorus of "Yeahs" went up, and so began one of the most astonishing exercises ever conducted in an American classroom. Subsequent research designed to gauge the efficacy of Elliotts attempt at reducing prejudice showed that many participants were shocked by the experiment, but it did nothing to address or explain the root causes of racism. The fourth of five children, Elliott was born on her family's farm in Riceville in 1933, and was delivered by her Irish-American father himself. The secretary said the south side of the building was closed, something about waxing the hallways. Jane Elliott's Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes experiment was a turning point in social psychology. Theyd have to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain. But Elliotts experiment had a more sinister impact. Thats what it feels like when youre discriminated against., -A child participant in the Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes experiment-. "Malinda? SYNOPSIS OF BLUE EYED. "You can see the look on their faces. Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? One of the most famous experiments in education Jane Elliott's "blue eyes, brown eyes" separation of her third grade students to teach them about prejudice was very different from what the public was told, as revealed in this excerpt from the in-depth story about what really happened in that classroom. he asked. The study also violates the American Principles of Psychologist codes of conduct making its replication or further investigation unethical. Elliott turned into Americas mother of diversity training. "We just want to peek in," I volunteered. The hate and discrimination that we see in adults have their origin in their upbringing. She gave the blue-eyed students an armband so other students could more easily identify them, and then she told her class that it was a scientific fact that people with brown eyes are smarter than those with blue because their bodies had more . How can we teach kids to be more like him? Little children don't like uproar in the classroom. The tallest structure in Riceville is the water tower. From the University of California Press website: The never-before-told true story of Jane Elliott and the "Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes Experiment" she made world-famous, using eye color to simulate racism. If you are the original author of this essay and no longer wish to have it published on the Jane Elliott's brown eye/blue eye experiment starts at 03:10 of A Class Divided. Today, increased migration means more opportunities for people from different backgrounds to interact with each other, which is often a source of conflict. American Psychological Association, 4. "It changed my life. Blue-eyed students slumped in their chairs, as though . She and her husband, Darald Elliott, then a grocer, have four children, and they, too, felt a backlash. At the time, she was a third-grade . Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. Jane would get invited to go to Timbuktu to give a speech. 5/21/2020 Topic: Module 2 Discussion: The documentary has become a popular teaching tool among teachers, business owners, and even employees at correctional facilities. On the second day of the experiment, Elliott switched the childrens roles. On the first day, she told the children with blue eyes they were superior: smarter and more well-behaved than the children with brown eyes. Elliott championed the experiment as an inoculation against racism., [The Conversations Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. These initial criticisms didnt stop Elliott. She asks them if they have ever faced treatment like the type that blue-eyed people would experience in the following two and a half hours. But Paul, one of eight siblings and the son of a dairy farmer, didnt buy Elliotts mollification. To get her points across, Elliott hurled insults at workshop participants, particularly those who were white and had blue eyes. The selection was based on the color of the eye for each group. And StanfordUniversity psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo writes in his 1979 textbook, Psychology and Life, that Elliott's "remarkable" experiment tried to show "how easily prejudiced attitudes may be formed and how arbitrary and illogical they can be." Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. Sign up for Politics Weekly.]. Basically, you establish differences between a set of subjects in order to divide them into separate groups. The killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, was a seismic event, a turning point that compelled many Americans to do something and do it with urgency. "I understand this is the first time you've flown?" Within a few hours of starting the exercise, Elliott noticed big differences in the childrens behavior and how they treated each other. And you'll always have it. To most people, it seemed to suggest that racism could be reduced, even eliminated, by a one- or two-day exercise. Its not surprising to anyone that some social groups discriminate against others due to ethnicity, religion, or culture. Malinda Whisenhunt? 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." Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER! We walked into the principal's office at RicevilleElementary School, Elliott's old haunt. All 28 children found their desks, and Elliott said she had something special for them to do, to begin to understand the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. the day before. (Byrnes & Kiger, 1992). Thus, the dominant group, supported by the authorities, will always have the upper hand. She appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show five times. The results are mixed. Children with brown eyes were forced to wear armbands that made it easy for people to see that they had brown eyes. Why was the Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment considered unethical in psychology? Would you like to find out? "You better apologize to us for getting in our way because we're better than you are," one of the brownies said. Blue Eyed vs Brown Eyed Study Conducted by Jane Elliott Presentation by Bree Elliott Ethics Background The Results In 1968, when Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated, Jane Elliott was the teacher of a third grade class in the town of Riceville, Iowa. I'm tired of hearing about her and her experiment and how everyone here is a racist. The nearest traffic light is 20 miles away. If you have ever heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy, these results may not come as a surprise. Order original essays online. "They can't forget me," she said, "and because of who they are, they can't forgive me. Why are we still talking about this experiment over 50 years later? "They shot that King yesterday. PracticalPsychology. Essay Example, Essay Example on Racism Towards Black People, Essay Sample about Developing a Campaign for School Intimidation, Essay Example on Therapist-Client Relationship Boundaries, Islamic Perspective on Euthanasia, Free Essay Sample. Website. Perhaps because the outcome seemed so optimistic and comforting, coverage of Elliott and the experiments alleged curative powers cropped up everywhere. One example that has been in place for many years is the blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment. "It would be hard to know, wouldn't it, unless we actually experienced discrimination ourselves. Ethical & Pedagogical Issues 2. Elliott went after Ken and Barbie all day long, drilling, accusing, ridiculing them, to make the point that whites make baseless judgments about Blacks all the time, Pasicznyk said. 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 . In Zimbardo's experiment the conditions were much more controlled for later study but the r. hide caption. He printed them under the headline "How Discrimination Feels." Typical of their responses was that of Debbie Hughes, who reported that "the people in Mrs. Elliott's room who had brown eyes got to discriminate against the people who had blue eyes. What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? Researchers later concluded that there was evidence that the students became less prejudiced after the study and that it was inconclusive as to whether or not the potential harm outweighed the benefits of the exercise. Even though some of the children said yes, Elliott pushed back. Not everyone appreciated Elliotts exercise. Not a day goes by without me thinking about it, Ms. Elliott. She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. Jane Elliot's experiment involves cheating and intentional misinterpretation of facts. Although actions from the experiment show lack of respect towards subjects it has widely been recognized in the study of human behavior in social and cultural context.
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