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This meeting, along with other clips of the exercises impact on education, is featured in a PBS documentary called A Class Divided. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. How can we teach kids to be more like him? 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. One teacher ended up displaying the same bigotry Elliott had spent the morning trying to fight. 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. The exercise is "an inoculation against racism," she says. All rights reserved. The act of treating students differently was obviously a metaphor for the social decisions made on a larger level. 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 . "I don't think this community was ready for what she did," he said. She then made the blue-eyed students believe that they were better and smarter than their counterparts. Elliott shared the essays with her mother, who showed them to the editor of the weekly Riceville Recorder. "Let me look at you," Elliott said. The students who had blue eyes were told that they were better and smarter than their inferior brown-eyed peers. The test also included violation of consent in which participation of the children was made involuntarily. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle . In explaining the experiment rules to the brown-eyed contestants, she addresses the people of color in the room. They all either smiled or laughed and nodded.". Yet what Elliott did continues to stir controversy. 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. She told her students that she had made a mistake the previous day and that brown-eyed students . Jane Elliott has done a lot of reflection about the consequences of the minimal group experiment. Or alternatively you may decide to keep them in ignorance of what is happening. Days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In the 60th year beyond Brown vs. Board of Education, Frontline is making available their classic 1985 documentary, " A Class Divided ," about the experiment and what happened later. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise received national attention shortly after it ended. She and her husband, Darald Elliott, then a grocer, have four children, and they, too, felt a backlash. What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? "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. Its not surprising to anyone that some social groups discriminate against others due to ethnicity, religion, or culture. 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. Cookie Policy On the first day, the blue-eyed students were informed that they were genetically inferior to the brown-eyed students. They are more civilized than blue-eyed people. In 1970, she demonstrated it for educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth. It makes you proud. Junior high, maybe. That's not true. In the 60s, the United States was in the midst of a social race crisis. They didnt need to engage with a single Black person. Elliott separated her all-white class of students into two groups: blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children. The results are mixed. The Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes Experiment. The students started to internalize, and accept, the characteristics they'd been arbitrarily assigned based on the color of their eyes. 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. Grasping for a scientific explanation, she ended up claiming that melanin makes eyes darker, and makes . 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. At first, she cooperated with me. Watch it online right now! I'm tired of hearing about her and her experiment and how everyone here is a racist. When the exercise ended, some of the kids hugged, some cried. I got to have five minutes extra of recess." This was intentional. In 1970, Elliott would come to national attention when ABC broadcast their Eye of the Storm documentary which filmed the experiment in action. Elliott? Outside, rows of corn stretched to the horizon. To begin with, Jane Elliot's experiment involved deception in which the children were made in believing that change in eye color influence intelligence. 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 roots of racism and why it continues unabated in America and other nations are complicated and gnarled. "On an airplane, it is," Elliott said to appreciative laughter from the studio audience. At the time, she was a third-grade . On the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in April 1968, Jane Elliott's third graders from the small, all-white town of Riceville, Iowa, came to class . This paradigm helps understand the current problems related to discrimination. 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 . Little children don't like uproar in the classroom. Professor Jane Elliott performed a group experiment with her students that they would never forget. Before proceeding with the test, she began with random questions to fully understand the children's perception of Negroes. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. Brian, the Elliotts' oldest son, got beaten up at school, and Jane called the ringleader's, mother. Ms. Elliott, now 87, said she started teaching about racism on April 5, 1968 the day after the Rev. Danko, M. (2013). In present society, psychological experiments are guided by honesty, truthfulness, and accuracy. The 1970s and 1980s were ripe for diversity education in the private and public sectors, and Elliott would try out the experiment at workshops on tens of thousands of participants, not just in the U.S. and Canada, but in Europe, the Middle East and Australia. 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. We use them to divide and destroy people., On Understanding The Different Ways We Treat Other Races, Philip Zimbardo (Biography + Experiments). Issues such as the right to know, the right to privacy, and informed consent. 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. Malinda Whisenhunt? She said she watched and was horrified at what she saw. 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. Two years later, a BBC documentary captured the experiment in Elliott's classroom. Kellen Castineiras PSY Dr. Gail C. Flanagan February 6, 2022. . APA principles acknowledge that individuals rights to privacy, self-determination, and confidentiality is paramount to all psychological activities. Hire a professional with VAST experience! SYNOPSIS OF BLUE EYED. 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. If you have ever heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy, these results may not come as a surprise. It is a must . Multi-Problem Adolescents: An Increasing Problem, Professor Jane Elliott performed a group experiment, the current problems related to discrimination. Jane Elliott at Riceville, Iowa, Elementary School in 1968. The people of riceville did not exactly welcome Elliott home from New York with a hayride. She says its because racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and ethnocentrism are mean and nasty. The empathy she works to inspire in students with the experiment, which has been modified over the years, is necessary, she said. Things even got violent at recess. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. ", "I've never forgotten the exercise," Whisenhunt volunteered. The latter felt discriminated against by the other brown-eyed children. Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? ", 2023 Smithsonian Magazine . 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. In 1968, schoolteacher Jane Elliott decided to divide her classroom into students with blue eyes and students with brown eyes. You must get the parents first. She appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show five times. Jane Elliott's experiment of dividing an otherwise homogenous group of school kids by their eye color. [online] Today I Found Out. I was stunned. The video . The story was then picked up by the Associated Press. Keep me from judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins. This is a Sioux saying. Why was the Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment considered unethical in psychology? ISBN 9780520382268. ABC broadcast a documentary about her work. "No person of any age [was] going to leave my presence with those attitudes unchallenged," Elliott said. PracticalPie.com is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue-eyed kids to wear one. 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 . Order from one of our vetted writers instead. The children were not aware of the experiment, and therefore they could not give their permission of involvement. 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." The experiment, known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. "That you, Ms. 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. Elliott rattled off the rules for the day, saying blue-eyed kids had to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain. If this arbitrary division that Elliott enforced for a few hours created so many problems in this classroom, whats happening on a larger scale? . ", Elliott says the role of a teacher is to enhance students' moral development. 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. There is a way to avoid editing or writing from scratch! . It occurs to me that for a teacher, the arrival of new students at the start of each school year has a lot in common with the return of crops each summer. "There's a sense of renewal here that I've never seen anywhere else," Elliott says. Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER! She decided to continue the exercise with her students after lunch. However, the study shows some bias in the sample size and race of participants. 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. But in reality, I found in researching for my book Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes that the experiment was a sadistic exhibition of power and authority levers controlled by Elliott. Delivery in 6+ hours! The idea was simple but profound. Ethical & Pedagogical Issues 2. The first thing that Jane Elliott did was divide the children into groups: those with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. In her article, Peggy McIntosh compares the "white privilege" to an invisible set of unearned rewards and . Still, Elliott said the last few years have brought out America's worst racist tendencies. The searing story is a cautionary tale that examines power and privilege in and out of the classroom. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? But not Elliott. In the documentary, she said that she conducted the original blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment to make a positive change. "We are repeating the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise on a daily basis.". Questioning authority The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. One even wrote a lipstick message with racial slurs. The kids in the bottom group became timider and kept to themselves. ( 1985-03-26) " A Class Divided " is a 1985 episode of the PBS series Frontline. In this 1998 photograph, former Iowa teacher Jane Elliott, center, speaks with two Augsburg University . The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 prompted educator Jane Elliott to create the now-famous "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise.". "Your son got what he deserved," the woman 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 . Elliott was shocked by the results and decided to switch the roles the following day. Many critics that the children were too young to understand the exercise. I felt like quitting school. The blue-eyed children were told not to do their homework because, even if they answered all the questions, theyd probably forget to bring the assignment back to class. She believed that experience was the only way her students could understand how it felt like to be discriminated. Elliott was not. 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 students were surprised, but they didnt argue. The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment. SpeedyPaper website, please click below to request its removal: Liked this essay sample but need an original one? Nobodys standing here. In the early morning, dew and fog cover the acres of gently swaying stalks that surround Riceville the way water surrounds an island. Select from the 0 categories from which you would like to receive articles. It also shows how arbitrary and subjective things can turn friends, family members, and citizens against each other. one girl asked. They were forced to sit on the back rows and had to use a . 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. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? (In later versions of the exercise, children in the inferior group were given collars to wear.). 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. ", The two hugged, and Whisenhunt had tears streaming down her cheeks. Even family members can turn against each other if some authority suddenly decides that those differences are a problem. The students initially involved wished that everyone could participate in an exercise like this. Unfortunately, you cant copy samples. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. 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. Elliott instructed the blue-eyed kids not to play on the jungle gym or swings. The next day, Jane made it known to the students that she had made a mistake and that the brown-eyed pupils were better and smarter than their counterparts. Lasting Impact of Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment, Words are the most powerful weapon devised by humankind. The blue-eyed participants faced discrimination for two and a half hours. "Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior, but white children, there's no way they could possibly understand it. Sorry, but it's not possible to copy the text due to security reasons. 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. ", We backed out. Jane Elliots work and experiences have made her an authority on education and anti-racism. 1. "She got carried away by this possession she developed over human beings. Back in the classroom, Elliott's experiment had taken on a life of its own. Order original essays online. Nevertheless, Elliott became as famous as a teacher could become in America. Thats what it feels like when youre discriminated against., -A child participant in the Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes experiment-. Elliott reminded them that the reason for the lesson was the King assassination, and she asked them to write down what they had learned. "You better apologize to us for getting in our way because we're better than you are," one of the brownies said. The blue eyes brown eyes study was a study on group prejudice and discrimination conducted by Jane Elliot. Right off the bat, she picked me out of the room and called me Barbie, Pasicznyk told me. "Hey, Mrs. Elliott," Steven yelled as he slung his books on his desk. It's cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage. Jane Elliott's brown eye/blue eye experiment starts at 03:10 of A Class Divided. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. ", 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?". She traveled to corporations, banks, prisons, schools and military bases. The first day of the experiment she convinced the children that blue-eyed people were smarter, better and would have more priorities. In this photograph from Sept. 13, 1965, Black children on their way to school in New York City pass by segregationists protesting integrated busing. . Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? Days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., she pioneered an experiment to show her all-white class of third graders what it was like to be Black in America. . A smart blue-eyed girl who had never had problems with multiplication tables started making mistakes. The smell of the crops and loam and topsoil and manure wafted though the open door. Despite the adaptation of the experiment in psychological studies, Jane has been widely criticized for her unethical conduct and promotion of discrimination among children. The more melanin, the darker the person's eyesand the smarter the person. 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 . "Would you like to come on the show?" Jane Elliott, Creator of the "Blue/Brown Eyes" Experiment, Says Racism Is Easy To Fix. According to role theorist Erving Goffman, emotional and cognitive experiences in such experiments as the Blue-Eyed versus the Brown-Eyed can have a long-term influence on behaviors and attitudes of participants especially when they are made to play the role of a stigmatized group (Biddle, 2013). A difference as simple as eye color, defined and established by the authority figure, created a rift between the students. As Elliott recalls, she engineered the "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise" in 1968 after watching the late-night news cycle announce the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Rather than be deterred by possible "Not one of them reprimanded her for that or even corrected her. Much like the Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment where students were divided by either being the jailer or the jailed. 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. When my grandchildren are old enough, I'd give anything if you'd try the exercise out on them. She repeated the abuse with subsequent classes, and finally turned it into a fully commercial enterprise. When you read about this experiment, its hard not to question labels. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 was also an event that spurred educators to action, motivating one teacher to try out a bold experiment touted to reduce racism. Folks leave their cars unlocked, keys in the ignition. She was a standing-room-only speaker at hundreds of colleges and universities. Exploring your mind Blog about psychology and philosophy. Jane Elliot and the Blue-Eyed Children Experiment. They are cleaner than blue-eyed people. 4 Pages. 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. Why are we still talking about this experiment over 50 years later? On the first day of the two-day experiment, Elliott told the . "Eye color, hair color and skin color are caused by a chemical," Elliott went on, writing MELANIN on the blackboard. "I think these children walked in a colored child's moccasins for a day," she was quoted as saying. The experiment was to be a division of eye colour starting with blue eyed student having superiority and then the following day, the roles would be reversed. Decent Essays. 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 . She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of colors shoes. In doing the research for my book with scores of peoples who were participants in the experiment, I reached out to Elliott. Introduction. [White people] on the other hand, don't have to understand them. While controversial, the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise continues to be one of the most well-known and praised learning exercises in the world of educational psychology. Directed by William Peters, the episode profiles the Iowa schoolteacher Jane Elliott and her class of third graders, who took part in a class exercise about discrimination and prejudice in 1970 and reunited in the present day to recall the experience. All rights reserved. In fact, most of the initial response was negative. 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. Many critics that the children were too young to understand the exercise. It was the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968 that Elliott ran her first "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise in her Riceville, Iowa classroom. Role Theory: Expectations, Identities, and Behaviors. At points, you are likely to feel uncomfortable. In 1970, a documentary about the exercise was released. "I know who she is. The tallest structure in Riceville is the water tower. hide caption. "Why?" ", Jane shielded her eyes from the morning sun. 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. She could feel a chasm forming between the two groups of students. Elliott, who is white, separated the students into two groupsthose with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. What Lies Behind Your Urgent Need to Answer Work E Mails? The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise is now known as the inspiration for diversity training in the workplace, making Jane Elliott one of the most influential educators in recent American history. Biddle, B. J. In Zimbardo's experiment the conditions were much more controlled for later study but the r. ", A chorus of "Yeahs" went up, and so began one of the most astonishing exercises ever conducted in an American classroom. Though Jane's actions were justifiable because she was not a psychologist, her experiment cannot be replicated in the present society. The next day, Jane made it known to the students that she had made a mistake and that the brown-eyed pupils were better and smarter than their counterparts. ", Elliott defends her work as a mother defends her child. The experiment is to help the children to understand about prejudice and discrimination. 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. Three sections were selected to be administered the simulation . "Do blue-eyed people remember what they've been taught?" From the moment the experiment begins, Jane Elliott uses a mean tone to speak to the participants. 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. ", That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. Even though some of the children said yes, Elliott pushed back. 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. Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes 1968 - Jane Elliot, grade school teacher in Iowa conducted a classroom experiment to test whether racism was a learned characteristic Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes - an experiment to "create racism" Jane Elliot divided her 4th grade class into two groups based on eye color The Brown eyed group were told they were superior due . Its not true and its not fair no matter what you say! he responded. Articles and opinions on happiness, fear and other aspects of human psychology. 2012 2023 . "Because we might catch something," a brown-eyed boy said. Want a quality guarantee? "Blue-eyed people sit around and do nothing. That's what it feels like when you're discriminated against.". Knowing that her experiment would have consequences, Jane remained committed to her course. Would you like to get this essay by email? Website. According to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, 2010 the experiment also violates the principle of Integrity. He printed them under the headline "How Discrimination Feels."