"Not one of them reprimanded her for that or even corrected her. Additionally, the brown-eyed students got to sit in the front of the class, while the blue-eyed kids . That got the other teachers angry. This bibliography was generated on Cite This For Me on Monday, March 7, 2016. As a result of those divisions, you see racial discrimination or even terrorism. Written and verified by the psychologist Francisco Roballo. ", Jane shielded her eyes from the morning sun. They don't replace the diagnosis, advice, or treatment of a professional. Stephen G. Bloom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. And what she did caused an uproar. Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images 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. Right off the bat, she picked me out of the room and called me Barbie, Pasicznyk told me. That's what it feels like when you're discriminated against.". In 1968 after Martin Luther King was assassinated the United States was in turmoil. The basic idea was to separate the class into two halves, students with blue eyes and those with brown. When Elliott walked into the teachers' lounge the next Monday, several teachers got up and walked out. Elliott and I were sitting at her dining room table. 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 . 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. Practical Psychology began as a collection of study material for psychology students in 2016, created by a student in the field. "I think these children walked in a colored child's moccasins for a day," she was quoted as saying. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. In 1968, schoolteacher Jane Elliott decided to divide her classroom into students with blue eyes and students with brown eyes. Mental Floss, 4. 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. She was a standing-room-only speaker at hundreds of colleges and universities. Open Document. 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." 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). Strong, Effective and Ethical Lessons | Applied Social Psychology (ASP) Did they know what it was like to be discriminated against? Order from one of our vetted writers instead. She attended a oneroom rural schoolhouse.Today, at 72, Elliott, who has short white hair, a penetrating gaze and no-nonsense demeanor, shows no signs of slowing. Dick DeMarsico/New York World-Telegram & the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection/PhotoQuest/Getty Images, Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images, Committee Member - MNF Research Advisory Committee, PhD Scholarship - Uncle Isaac Brown Indigenous Scholarship. She nodded. 1. She wanted to show her students that an arbitrarily established difference could separate them and pit them against each other. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 prompted educator Jane Elliott to create the now-famous "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise.". Even though some of the children said yes, Elliott pushed back. Then tell them that . There were more brown-eyed students in the room. PracticalPie.com is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. 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. In Zimbardo's experiment the conditions were much more controlled for later study but the r. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle . Elliott instructed the blue-eyed kids not to play on the jungle gym or swings. One of the main ones was the fact that their right to withdraw was taken away from them. 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." 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. Students in the inferior groups were more likely to get a worse score. Elliott is nothing if not stubborn. It's cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage. American Psychological Association, 4. (2022, Apr 06). I got to have five minutes extra of recess." When she went downtown to do errands, she heard whispers. Folks leave their cars unlocked, keys in the ignition. Within a few hours of starting the exercise, Elliott noticed big differences in the childrens behavior and how they treated each other. Despite the adaptation of the experiment in psychological studies, Jane has been widely criticized for her unethical conduct and promotion of discrimination among children. 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. The story was then picked up by the Associated Press. Jane Elliot and the Blue-Eyed Children Experiment. The first day of the experiment she convinced the children that blue-eyed people were smarter, better and would have more priorities. ", Elliott says the role of a teacher is to enhance students' moral development. Blue Eyes vs. Brown Eyes Experiment. Abstract The effectiveness of a well-known prejudice-reduction simulation, "Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes," was assessed as a tool for changing the attitudes of ncnblack teacher eduction students toward blacks. 296. Stephen Bloom on Jane Elliott's Famous Experiment on Race and 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. A Class Divided | FRONTLINE - PBS PDF Discrimination: Experimental Evidence from Psychology and Economics Jane Elliott's brown eye/blue eye experiment starts at 03:10 of A Class Divided. Retrieved from https://speedypaper.com/essays/ethical-concerns-in-jane-elliots-experiment, Free essays can be submitted by anyone, so we do not vouch for their quality. One example that has been in place for many years is the blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment. As for the criticism that the exercise encourages children to distrust authority figuresthe teacher lies, then recants the lies and maintains they were justified because of a greater goodshe says she worked hard to rebuild her students' trust. Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa. You have the right color eyes!. In response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, Jane Elliott devised the controversial and startling, "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise." This, now famous, exercise labels participants as inferior or superior based solely upon the color of their eyes and exposes them to the experience of . I think it can. They are steeped in centuries of economic deprivation and cultural appropriation. I felt mad. The students initially involved wished that everyone could participate in an exercise like this. "They shot that King yesterday. This time, the participants werent a bunch of elementary school children they were young adults. 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. To back up my statement Bloom (2005) says Jane Elliott's blue-eyes brown-eyes exercise encouraged children to mistrust authority figures. And Im only doing this as an exercise that every child knows is an exercise and every child knows is going to end at the end of the day., We learn to be racist, therefore we can learn not to be racist. Theyd have to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain. One of the blue eyed even went to hit a brown eyed just for the fact that he was brown eyed. Elliott shared the essays with her mother, who showed them to the editor of the weekly Riceville Recorder. And the exercise continued in a similar fashion to how it was executed the day before. ", When I met Elliott in 2003, she hadn't been back to Riceville in 12 years. "The racists carry on, so I carry on." The lives and legacies of Dr. Jane Elliott and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are inextricably linked. Many critics that the children were too young to understand the exercise. They are more civilized than blue-eyed people. The hate and discrimination that we see in adults have their origin in their upbringing. Kids on top would tease the children who were deemed as the inferior group. APA principles acknowledge that individuals rights to privacy, self-determination, and confidentiality is paramount to all psychological activities. The idea of white privilege is closely tied to Elliotts initial question to her students. ", Elliott defends her work as a mother defends her child. However, in this classroom, having blue-eyes had become a condition of inferiority. Ethics + Religion; Health; Politics + Society; . 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. The minimal group paradigm has shaped an entire methodology in social psychology. Elliott asked. She split the class in two categories, according to eye color, and told the children that one group was superior to the others. On the morning of april 5, 1968, a Friday, Steven Armstrong stepped into Jane Elliott's third-grade classroom in Riceville, Iowa. Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle the exercise and would be seriously damaged by the exercise. 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." The children said yes, and the exercise began. 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 . A Teacher Held a Famous Racism Exercise in 1968. She's Still at It. Stripping away the veneer of the experiment, what was left had nothing to do with race. "I think third grade was too young for what she did. Traditionally, society has always treated leadership as a male issue. ", Dean Weaver, 70, superintendent of Riceville schools from 1972 to 1979, said, "She'd just go ahead and do things. A class divided: lessons learned - Times Bulletin Later, it would occur to Elliott that the blueys were much less nasty than the brown-eyed kids had been, perhaps because the blue-eyed kids had felt the sting of being ostracized and didn't want to inflict it on their former tormentors. This paradigm helps understand the current problems related to discrimination. Privacy Statement See Page 1. After the exercise white college students in . Now 45, she had been in Elliott's third grade class in 1969. 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. 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 decided to continue the exercise with her students after lunch. 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 Jane Elliott, Known for "Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes," on Racism in 2020 Exploring your mind Blog about psychology and philosophy. 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. Facilitators should be aware that Jane Elliott's focus on white people can lead viewers to the wrong impression that people of color are passively molded by white people's behavior when, in actuality, people of color can and do respond to racism in a variety of ways. 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. Racism is not genetical. The Associated Press followed up, quoting Elliott as saying she was "dumbfounded" by the exercise's effectiveness. Some residents were furious. Days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Consequently, the brown-eyed children started using blue-eyes as an insult. Unfortunately, you cant copy samples. What can be changed to make the blue eyes and brown eyes experiment Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes: On Race and Jane Elliott's Famous Experiment on While Jane Elliot's experiment makes several assumptions, it also has some ethical concerns. She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. Amitai Etzioni, a sociologist at George WashingtonUniversity, says the exercise helps develop character and empathy. All rights reserved. Jane Elliott, a teacher and anti-racism activist, performed a direct experiment with the students in her classroom. Blue-eyed students suggested that the teacher use a yardstick to discipline brown-eyed students that misbehaved. Blue Eyed vs Brown Eyed Experiment by Bree Elliott - Prezi Biddle, B. J. ", That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. Brian, the Elliotts' oldest son, got beaten up at school, and Jane called the ringleader's, mother. She has since refused to answer any of my inquiries. She could feel a chasm forming between the two groups of students. The video . The results showed a . Jane Elliott "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. I'm tired of hearing about her and her experiment and how everyone here is a racist. You give them something nice and they just wreck it." 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 . She says its because racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and ethnocentrism are mean and nasty. 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. Ethical Principles of Psychologists & Code of Conduct - StudyMode Barbie had to have a Ken, so Elliott picked from the audience a tall, handsome man and accused him of doing the same things with his female subordinates, Pasicznyk said. Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? Jane Elliott's experiment. "Hey, Mrs. Elliott," Steven yelled as he slung his books on his desk. The idea was simple but profound. The "invisible knapsack" is an analogy for a set of invisible and not widely talked about privileges that white people possess in the society. 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. She also assumed that none of the children had interacted with black people and that the only place they could have seen them is on television. We walked into the principal's office at RicevilleElementary School, Elliott's old haunt. Still, Elliott said the last few years have brought out America's worst racist tendencies. On the first day of the two-day experiment, Elliott told the . When Elliott conducted the exercise the next year, she added something extra to collect data. The selection was based on the color of the eye for each group. She told her students that she had made a mistake the previous day and that brown-eyed students . "We want to see Room No. ", Absolutely not. At this point you may wish to tell the pupils that you are conducting an "experiment" to look at what prejudice is. Society made them believe they were better than other people for arbitrary reasons such as skin color or gender. The students who had blue eyes were told that they were better and smarter than their inferior brown-eyed peers. But not Elliott. Some people feel we can't move on when you have her out there hawking her 30-year-old experiment. At first, she cooperated with me. 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. "You know, sweetheart, you haven't changed one bit. 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. Elliott asked her students to write about their experiences for the local newspaper. The interaction only strengthened Elliott's resolve. The nearest traffic light is 20 miles away. They were forced to sit on the back rows and had to use a . She began this work in You should be happy! "It's Riceville 30 years ago. The latter felt discriminated against by the other brown-eyed children. Jane Elliott on The Tonight Show on May 31, 1968. 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. Ethical & Pedagogical Issues 2. Yet what Elliott did continues to stir controversy. Yes, the children felt angry, hurt, betrayed. The smell of the crops and loam and topsoil and manure wafted though the open door. In a similar vein, Linda Seebach, a conservative columnist for the Rocky Mountain News, wrote in 2004 that Elliott was a "disgrace" and described her exercise as "sadistic," adding, "You would think that any normal person would realize that she had done an evil thing. This is the phrase that inspired one of the most well-known experiments in education. . 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. They also harassed them constantly. Jane Elliot's Experiment - 879 Words | Bartleby The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise continues to be relevant. "Maybe the way to sell the exercise would have been to invite the parents in, to talk about what she'd be doing. "How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" 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. January 1, 2003. Elliott? 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 experiment, known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. 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. As the morning wore on, brown-eyed kids berated their blue-eyed classmates. one girl asked. She pointed out flaws in a student and associated it with . Jane Elliott has done a lot of reflection about the consequences of the minimal group experiment. In 2001, Jane Elliott recordedThe Angry Eye,in which she revised and updated her experiment. "Do blue-eyed people remember what they've been taught?" Then a picture was taken to remember. 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. In her article, Peggy McIntosh compares the "white privilege" to an invisible set of unearned rewards and .
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