The students started to internalize, and accept, the characteristics they'd been arbitrarily assigned based on the color of their eyes. On the other hand, privileged members of the community are treated as in-groups which earn them undue respect and capacity to abuse the less advantaged. Elliott continues, "Just when you think that the fertile soil can sprout no more, another season comes round, and you see another year of bountiful crops, tall and straight. If you had a good German name, but you had brown eyes, they threw you into the gas chamber because they thought you might be a Jewish person who was trying to pass. This was the smaller group. "She could get kids to do anything she wanted them to," he says of Elliott. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features NFL Sunday Ticket Press Copyright . In doing the research for my book with scores of peoples who were participants in the experiment, I reached out to Elliott. 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. Normally, blue-eyes isnt an insult. "On an airplane, it is," Elliott said to appreciative laughter from the studio audience. Brian, the Elliotts' oldest son, got beaten up at school, and Jane called the ringleader's, mother. Would you? And the exercise continued in a similar fashion to how it was executed the day before. Elliott asked. . One even wrote a lipstick message with racial slurs. 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 experiment to demonstrate . The demonstration has since been taught by generations of teachers to millions of kids across the country. Then a picture was taken to remember. Elliott separated her all-white class of students into two groups: blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children. I felt mad. Questioning authority The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. She slumped. 980 Words. ", Elliott says the role of a teacher is to enhance students' moral development. Two education professors in England, Ivor F. Goodson and Pat Sikes, suggest that Elliott's experiment was unethical because the participants weren't informed of its real purpose beforehand. After the local newspaper published a story on Elliott and the experiment, she was flown to New York to appear on May 31, 1968, on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, where she extolled the experiments effectiveness in cluing in her 8-year-old white students on what it was like to be Black in America. How can we teach kids to be more like him? Answer (1 of 3): My guess is that is doesn't really represent racism but classism. Their response is to create dichotomies of inferiority and superiority. The brown-eyed children could take off their armbands and give them to the blue-eyed children, who were now taught that they were inferior to the brown-eyed children. Elliott shared the essays with her mother, who showed them to the editor of the weekly Riceville Recorder. The publication of compositions which the children had written about the experience in the local . Children often fight, argue, and sometimes hit each other, but this time they were motivated by eye color. Fourteen years later, the students featured in The Eye of the Storm reunited and discussed their experiences with Elliott. She learned that the responses from the children were negative and more generalized about what they thought about black people. Scores of others did participate. Amitai Etzioni, a sociologist at George WashingtonUniversity, says the exercise helps develop character and empathy. The brown-eyed people were told to step to the front of the line. In this article, we talk about leadership and female discrimination.. She says that its shocking how children whore normally kind, cooperative, and friendly with each other suddenly become arrogant, discriminatory, and hostile when they belong to a superior group. It is a must . Melanin, she said, is what causes intelligence. The documentary has become a popular teaching tool among teachers, business owners, and even employees at correctional facilities. Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images How can put those little children through that exercise for a day? And they seem unable to relate the sympathy that theyre feeling for these little white children for a day to what happens to children of color in this society for a lifetime or to the fact that they are doing this to children based on skin color every day. What Lies Behind Your Urgent Need to Answer Work E Mails? Then tell them that . In the documentary, she said that she conducted the original blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment to make a positive change. 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. The students who had blue eyes were told that they were better and smarter than their inferior brown-eyed peers. Racism is not genetical. There were more brown-eyed students in the room. 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. Yes, that day was tough. Within a few hours of starting the exercise, Elliott noticed big differences in the childrens behavior and how they treated each other. . View Module 2 Discussion_ Are We Still Divided_ Blue Eyes_Brown Eyes_ A 3rd Grade Lesson for Us All.pdf from HUMN 330 at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Carson asked, grinning. 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. a brown-eyed boy asked. 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. Why was the Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment considered unethical in psychology? Elliot wanted to show that the same thing happens in real life with brown eyed people (minority). It also documents small-town White America's reflex reaction to the . I have brown eyes. The smell of the crops and loam and topsoil and manure wafted though the open door. A second look at the blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment that taught third-graders about racism. This technique allows researchers to show how many different traits are necessary to create defined groups, and then analyze the subjects behavior within their groups. How do you think the world would change if everyone experienced the perils and setbacks that come with prejudice and discrimination? 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. "Do blue-eyed people remember what they've been taught?" Elliott and I were sitting at her dining room table. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 prompted educator Jane Elliott to create the now-famous "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise.". Shermer and Bloom discuss: "Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes" Jane Elliott famous racism experiment reactions to it (in the classroom, locally, nationally, internationally) whether the "experiment" was really more of a demonstration public interest, from Johnny Carson to Oprah Winfrey the questionable ethics of the experiment what it reveals about tribalism, racism . They are more civilized than blue-eyed people. This paradigm helps understand the current problems related to discrimination. I got to have five minutes extra of recess." The experiment known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. Elliott instructed the blue-eyed kids not to play on the jungle gym or swings. . They don't replace the diagnosis, advice, or treatment of a professional. But Paul, one of eight siblings and the son of a dairy farmer, didnt buy Elliotts mollification. Regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, decision making in psychology should protect individual rights and welfare to eliminate potential biases. Despite the adaptation of the experiment in psychological studies, Jane has been widely criticized for her unethical conduct and promotion of discrimination among children. Many critics that the children were too young to understand the exercise. PracticalPsychology. Below, . Two years later, a BBC documentary captured the experiment in Elliott's classroom. She then made the blue-eyed students believe that they were better and smarter than their counterparts. Cookie Policy "They are cleaner and they are smarter.". She was hesitant to enroll in Elliotts workshop but was told that if she wanted to succeed as a manager, shed have to attend. Grey eyes are also a rare eye color. At the time, she was a third-grade . Jane Elliott is 84 years old, a tiny woman with white hair, wire-rim glasses and little patience. The hate and discrimination that we see in adults have their origin in their upbringing. She chatted about the experiment, and before she knew it was whisked off the stage. "We just want to peek in," I volunteered. One of the blue eyed even went to hit a brown eyed just for the fact that he was brown eyed. 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. The answer, in a word, was nothing. Cookie Settings, Kids Start Forgetting Early Childhood Around Age 7, Archaeologists Discover Wooden Spikes Described by Julius Caesar, Artificial Sweetener Tied to Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke, Study Finds, Rare Jurassic-Era Insect Discovered at Arkansas Walmart. Everyone looked at Mrs. Elliott. She told the kids that blue-eyed children weren't as good as brown-eyed or green-eyed ones. One key assumption is that the sample population represents an actual society. 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. Practical Psychology began as a collection of study material for psychology students in 2016, created by a student in the field. 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. Classroom experiment. Jane Elliott's Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes experiment was a turning point in social psychology. Traditionally, society has always treated leadership as a male issue. Thus, the dominant group, supported by the authorities, will always have the upper hand. The three outcomes are: (1) virtually all of the subjects reported that the experience was Grasping for a scientific explanation, she ended up claiming that melanin makes eyes darker, and makes . It didnt take long for the children to turn on each other. The corn grows so fast in northern Iowafrom seedling to seven-foot-high stalk in 12 weeksthat it crackles. Sorry, but it's not possible to copy the text due to security reasons. Not a day goes by without me thinking about it, Ms. Elliott. Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa. 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. When my grandchildren are old enough, I'd give anything if you'd try the exercise out on them. ", A chorus of "Yeahs" went up, and so began one of the most astonishing exercises ever conducted in an American classroom. You have the right color eyes!. The latter felt discriminated against by the other brown-eyed children. Some people feel we can't move on when you have her out there hawking her 30-year-old experiment. It also shows how arbitrary and subjective things can turn friends, family members, and citizens against each other. ", That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. 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. The effectiveness of a well-known prejudice-reduction simulation activity, "Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes," was assessed as a tool for changing the attitudes of nonblack teacher education students toward blacks. Considering all the stereotypes and prejudices that exist, what kind of damage is being done? In explaining the experiment rules to the brown-eyed contestants, she addresses the people of color in the room. "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. Most Riceville residents seem to have an opinion of Elliott, whether or not they've met her. One scholar asserts that it is "Orwellian" and teaches whites "self-contempt." In this 1998 photograph, former Iowa teacher Jane Elliott, center, speaks with two Augsburg University . What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? She traveled to corporations, banks, prisons, schools and military bases. At this point you may wish to tell the pupils that you are conducting an "experiment" to look at what prejudice is. Open Document. Biddle, B. J. "Maybe the way to sell the exercise would have been to invite the parents in, to talk about what she'd be doing. In 2001, she was still trying to make a change. Ethical & Pedagogical Issues 2. 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. The searing story is a cautionary tale that examines power and privilege in and out of the classroom. Much like the Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment where students were divided by either being the jailer or the jailed. From Elliot's highly controversial experiment it is clear that prejudice and discrimination can only be understood through experience. ", Steve Harnack, 62, served as the elementary school principal beginning in 1977. The blue-eyed girl apologized. They needed not acknowledge their privilege or reflect on it. She was a standing-room-only speaker at hundreds of colleges and universities. "You better apologize to us for getting in our way because we're better than you are," one of the brownies said. This bibliography was generated on Cite This For Me on Monday, March 7, 2016. Jane Elliott at Riceville, Iowa, Elementary School in 1968. You should be happy! In the most uncomfortable moments, Elliott reminds the students of violent acts caused by racism or homophobia. She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. 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. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. The results showed a . The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. I felt like hitting them if I wanted to. Locals say that drivers don't signal when they turn because everyone knows where everyone else is going. And what she did caused an uproar. In the brown eyed/blue eyed experiment Jane Elliot told her third graders with blue eyes that they were better than the brown-eyed children. It makes you proud. I felt like quitting school. 5/21/2020 Topic: Module 2 Discussion: "She taught in this school for 18 years." Knowing that her experiment would have consequences, Jane remained committed to her course. Zimbardocreator of the also controversial 1971 Stanford Prisoner Experiment, which was stopped after college student volunteers acting as "guards" humiliated students acting as "prisoners"says Elliott's exercise is "more compelling than many done by professional psychologists. Ms. Elliott, now 87, said she started teaching about racism on April 5, 1968 the day after the Rev. The contents of Exploring Your Mind are for informational and educational purposes only. Blue eyes, brown eyes: What Jane Elliott's famous experiment says about race 50 years on. Elliott began the exercise by dividing her students by eye color. Withdrawn brown-eyed kids were suddenly outgoing, some beaming with the widest smiles she had ever seen on them. From the moment the experiment begins, Jane Elliott uses a mean tone to speak to the participants. She described to her colleagues what she'd done, remarking how several of her slower kids with brown eyes had transformed themselves into confident leaders of the class. She split the class in two categories, according to eye color, and told the children that one group was superior to the others. The episode features with new footage of the students, who are now adults. Some residents were furious. Her bold experiment to teach Iowa third graders about racial prejudice divided townspeople and thrust her onto the national stage. One student answers, since the day I was born. Throughout the entire experiment, Elliott leads frank conversations about race and discrimination. Elliott's friends and family say she's tenacious, and has always had a reformer's zeal. ", When I met Elliott in 2003, she hadn't been back to Riceville in 12 years. In this scenario, students are told brown-eyed people . Jane Elliott, Creator of the "Blue/Brown Eyes" Experiment, Says Racism Is Easy To Fix. But the protests happening now have given her hope. In the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Elliott developed a simple exercise that explored the nature of racism and prejudice.. Elliott's method for exploring racism in the context of an all-white classroom consisted of dividing her students into two groups on the basis of eye color, blue or brown (those with other eye colors were assigned to the group . On the second day of the experiment, Elliott switched the childrens roles. Throughout the investigation, the classroom represented a real-life scenario in which the unprivileged and minority members of the society are treated as out-groups making them susceptible to discrimination. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. They are cleaner than blue-eyed people. Elliott asked her students to write about their experiences for the local newspaper. SpeedyPaper website, please click below to request its removal: Liked this essay sample but need an original one? Little children don't like uproar in the classroom. "If this ugly change, if this negative change can happen this quickly, why can't positive change happen that quickly? Initial Reaction to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Exercise. They all either smiled or laughed and nodded.". Danko, M. (2013). [White people] on the other hand, don't have to understand them. 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. 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? "How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" 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 . 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. 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. To this day, at the age of 86, Jane Elliott continues this work. 4. "Not one of them reprimanded her for that or even corrected her. "This here is Jane Elliott," I said. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise continues to be relevant. Jane Elliott, an educator and anti-racism activist, first conducted her blue eyes/brown eyes exercise in her third-grade classroom in Iowa in 1968. That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. At recess, three brown-eyed girls ganged up on her. 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. Elliott was not. When Elliott first conducted the exercise in 1968, brown-eyed students were given special privileges. ", Others have praised Elliott's exercise. American Psychological Association, 4. Days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle . Elliott, who is white, separated the students into two groupsthose with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. She has spoken at more than 350 colleges and universities. She wanted to show her students that an arbitrarily established difference could separate them and pit them against each other. The Blue Eye/Brown Eye was an experiment performed by Jane Elliot in 1968 on the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. "The browneyed people are the better people in this room," Elliott began. At first, she cooperated with me. Therefore when she gave the blue eyed people more freedom than the brown eyed people, the blue eyed people started feeling like kings because they thought they were better, and were treated better. When you read about this experiment, its hard not to question labels. The roots of racism and why it continues unabated in America and other nations are complicated and gnarled. Many educators responded by holding mandatory workshops on institutional racism and implicit bias, reforming teaching methods and lesson plans and searching for ways to amplify undersung voices. The idea of white privilege is closely tied to Elliotts initial question to her students. ", A former teacher, Ruth Setka, 79, said she was perhaps the only teacher who would still talk to Elliott. The people and cultures already present in a place often feel threatened by new immigrants. In Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues That Teach Kids to Do the Right Things, educational psychologist Michele Borda says it "teaches our children to counter stereotypes before they become full-fledged, lasting prejudices and to recognize that every human being has the right to be treated with respect." In her article, Peggy McIntosh compares the "white privilege" to an invisible set of unearned rewards and . 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. These are the sources and citations used to research Jane Elliott's blue eye brown eye case study is/isn't more ethical than Zimbardo's Stanford prison experiment. In a grassy front yard down the block is a hand-lettered sign: "Glads for Sale, 3 for $1." Ethical issues were 1/3 of the participants refused to take the head off the rat . She would conduct the exercise for the nine more years she taught the third grade, and the next eight years she taught seventh and eighth graders before giving up teaching in Riceville, in 1985, largely to conduct the eye-color exercise for groups outside the school. Blue-eyed students slumped in their chairs, as though . The Brown Eyed / Blue Eyed Experiment. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue-eyed kids to wear one. Elliott rattled off the rules for the day, saying blue-eyed kids had to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain. The May 25 killing of George Floyd set off weeks of nationwide protests over the police abuse and racism against black people, plunging the U.S. into a reckoning of racial inequality. Thats what it feels like when youre discriminated against., -A child participant in the Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes experiment-. The results showed a reversal effect in which the blue-eyed students showed signs of inferiority and low self-esteem. That's not true. "I think these children walked in a colored child's moccasins for a day," she was quoted as saying. She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of colors shoes. (2010). Separate the class into two halves - those with blue eyes and those with brown. "Your son got what he deserved," the woman said. ", Elliott replied, "Why are we so worried about the fragile egos of white children who experience a couple of hours of made-up racism one day when blacks experience real racism every day of their lives?". Jane Elliot's 'The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment' was unethical in that she created a segregated environment in a third grade classroom. To back up my statement Bloom (2005) says Jane Elliott's blue-eyes brown-eyes exercise encouraged children to mistrust authority figures. The brown-eyed children began to act aggressive and mean towards the blue-eyed children. Part of the problem is that the blue-eyed group is exclusively white, while the brown-eyed group is predominantly non-white, so that eye colour is no longer an analogue or metaphor for race but a . The goal of the minimal group paradigm is to establish subjective differences and create a climate of favoritism. "It's Riceville 30 years ago. More than 50 years after her famous exercise, Elliott is still fighting. The brown-eyed students also exercised a certain level of power over the blue-eyed students when they put the armbands on them. When some of the . "No person of any age [was] going to leave my presence with those attitudes unchallenged," Elliott said. While Jane Elliot's experiment makes several assumptions, it also has some ethical concerns. Thats just the way blue-eyed kids were, Elliott told the students. You've still got that same sweet smile. "Mention two wordsJane Elliottand you get a flood of emotions from people," says Jim Cross, the Riceville Recorder's editor these days. These initial criticisms didnt stop Elliott. Thousands of educators across the United States folded the experiment into their curriculums. ", Vision and tenacity may get results, but they don't always endear a person to her neighbors. In 1970, Elliott would come to national attention when ABC broadcast their Eye of the Storm documentary which filmed the experiment in action. They gossiped about her in the hallway. Or alternatively you may decide to keep them in ignorance of what is happening. Jane divided the class into 9 brown eyes and 9 blue eyes. On the second day, the roles were reversed, and those with brown eyes received special treatment, and the blue-eyed children were made to feel inferior (A Class, 2003). Elliotts coworkers avoided her after her appearance on The Tonight Show. According to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, 2010 the experiment also violates the principle of Integrity. 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. 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. They felt superior and had the support of the authority figure (the teacher). 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.
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