She decided to continue the exercise with her students after lunch. Jane Elliots work and experiences have made her an authority on education and anti-racism. Jane divided the class into 9 brown eyes and 9 blue eyes. Still, Elliott said the last few years have brought out America's worst racist tendencies. On Friday, April 5, 1968, in Riceville, IA, a third-grade student walked . Mental Sandboxes and Their Usefulness in Today's World, The Law of Reversed Effort: When Taking Action Isn't the Best Option. "Probably because they have been taught how they're treated in this country that they have to understand us. As a result of those divisions, you see racial discrimination or even terrorism. For many, the experiment went horribly awry. Role Theory: Expectations, Identities, and Behaviors. 10 Psychological Experiments That Could Never Happen Today - Mental Floss The exercise is "an inoculation against racism," she says. hide caption. The Associated Press followed up, quoting Elliott as saying she was "dumbfounded" by the exercise's effectiveness. She was hesitant to enroll in Elliotts workshop but was told that if she wanted to succeed as a manager, shed have to attend. Order from one of our vetted writers instead, First name should have at least 2 letters, Phone number should have at least 10 digits, Free Essay with a Response to Cross Words by UIW President Louis Agnese, How Does Donald Duk View His Chinese Heritage? A smart blue-eyed girl who had never had problems with multiplication tables started making mistakes. Back when she introduced the experiment to her Iowa students more than five decades ago, at least one student had the audacity to challenge Elliotts premise, according to those who were in the classroom at the time. She also made the brown-eyed students put construction paper armbands on the blue-eyed students. When some of the . "We give our children shots to inoculate them against polio and smallpox, to protect them against the realities in the future. Traditionally, society has always treated leadership as a male issue. 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. A Teacher's Report on 'a Class Divided' a Pbs Film: Teaching In doing the research for my book with scores of peoples who were participants in the experiment, I reached out to Elliott. "She taught in this school for 18 years." (PDF) A Class Divided - ResearchGate In 2001, she was still trying to make a change. Is it even possible today? "There's a sense of renewal here that I've never seen anywhere else," Elliott says. Then a picture was taken to remember. ", For years scholars have evaluated Elliott's exercise, seeking to determine if it reduces racial prejudice in participants or poses a psychological risk to them. You must get the parents first. 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. 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. I think it can. Normally, blue-eyes isnt an insult. "Malinda? 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 . American Psychological Association, 4. Would you like to get this essay by email? Elliott? Junior high, maybe. The blue-eyed participants faced discrimination for two and a half hours. The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring . 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. One of the blue eyed even went to hit a brown eyed just for the fact that he was brown eyed. The people and cultures already present in a place often feel threatened by new immigrants. I often think about Paul Bodensteiner. In Jane Elliott's experiment she made the third graders believe that the blue eyed people were better,than the brown eyed people. The test also included violation of consent in which participation of the children was made involuntarily. The video . On the "Tonight Show" Carson broke the ice by spoofing Elliott's rural roots. At points, you are likely to feel uncomfortable. PDF TRAUMA-RELATED PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS - Boston University Kids on top would tease the children who were deemed as the inferior group. When she separated the class by eye color and announced that blue-eyed children were superior, Paul Bodensteiner objected at every turn. Elliott was shocked by the results and decided to switch the roles the following day. I got to have five minutes extra of recess." ", Elliott says the role of a teacher is to enhance students' moral development. What can be changed to make the blue eyes and brown eyes experiment She pointed out flaws in a student and associated it with . 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. 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. Having in mind that it would be difficult to explain to third graders about discrimination, she needed to be more practical so that her student could understand how discrimination and prejudice felt. We use them to divide and destroy people., On Understanding The Different Ways We Treat Other Races, Philip Zimbardo (Biography + Experiments). Essay Sample: Ethical Concerns in Jane Elliot's Experiment - SpeedyPaper She told the students that the brown-eyed children were inferior and repeated the experiment. However, the study shows some bias in the sample size and race of participants. Most Riceville residents seem to have an opinion of Elliott, whether or not they've met her. Evaluation of Jane Elliott's "Blue-Eyed Brown-Eyes" She was a local girl and the other teachers were intimidated by her success. Some people feel we can't move on when you have her out there hawking her 30-year-old experiment. Blue eyes, brown eyes: What Jane Elliott's famous experiment says about race 50 years on. "If this ugly change, if this negative change can happen this quickly, why can't positive change happen that quickly? PDF Sociology. PUB DATE Right off the bat, she picked me out of the room and called me Barbie, Pasicznyk told me. Elliotts bullying rejoinder to any nonbeliever was to say that however much pain a white person felt after one or two days of made-up discrimination was nothing when compared to what Blacks endure daily. What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? This time, the participants werent a bunch of elementary school children they were young adults. The Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes Experiment. She asked the other teachers what they were doing to bring news of the King assassination into their classrooms. Would you like to find out? While Jane Elliot's experiment makes several assumptions, it also has some ethical concerns. Mary and Zeke have three children, all of whom have blue eyes. The children were not aware of the experiment, and therefore they could not give their permission of involvement. The brown-eyed people were told to step to the front of the line. 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. They were forced to sit on the back rows and had to use a . ", A chorus of "Yeahs" went up, and so began one of the most astonishing exercises ever conducted in an American classroom. 4 Pages. Yet what Elliott did continues to stir controversy. Given the long-term results of the experiment, the controversial study could not have taken place in today's society despite its significant insights on matters racism. The fact that children are easy to manipulate into acting in a particular manner explains Jane's choice of sample. Blue-eyed people would get 5 extra minutes on the playground and blue-eyed people could not talk to brown-eyed people. 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. Before proceeding with the test, she began with random questions to fully understand the children's perception of Negroes. Elliott and I were sitting at her dining room table. . And the exercise continued in a similar fashion to how it was executed the day before. Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. SpeedyPaper website, please click below to request its removal: Liked this essay sample but need an original one? Order original essays online. 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.
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