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. Order original essays online. On April 4 1968, King was killed by the single . A Class Divided | FRONTLINE - PBS 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. ( 1985-03-26) " A Class Divided " is a 1985 episode of the PBS series Frontline. Though Jane's actions were justifiable because she was not a psychologist, her experiment cannot be replicated in the present society. You have the right color eyes!. You give them something nice and they just wreck it." Youve probably heard different versions of it. Danko, M. (2013). In the early morning, dew and fog cover the acres of gently swaying stalks that surround Riceville the way water surrounds an island. "Blue-eyed people sit around and do nothing. That same year, Elliott was invited to the White House Conference on Children and Youth to conduct an exercise on adult educators. In 2001, Jane Elliott recordedThe Angry Eye,in which she revised and updated her experiment. The next day when the tables were turned, "I felt like quitting school. In this article, we'll explain what happened during the experiment and discuss its consequences. It is sometimes cited as a landmark of social science. That's what it feels like when you're discriminated against.". Why Did Jane Elliott Choose Eye Color To Divide Her Students? The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment. Right off the bat, she picked me out of the room and called me Barbie, Pasicznyk told me. ", The two hugged, and Whisenhunt had tears streaming down her cheeks. Elliott started to see her own white privilege, even her own ignorance. Privacy Statement About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features NFL Sunday Ticket Press Copyright . Disclaimer: SpeedyPaper.com is a custom writing service that provides online on-demand writing work for assistance purposes. Sadly, these conversations are still relevant today. The basic idea was to separate the class into two halves - those with blue eyes and those with brown. Much like the Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment where students were divided by either being the jailer or the jailed. "They shot that King yesterday. On the first day of the experiment, Elliott told the children who had blue eyes that they were superior to the children with brown eyes; that they were better, nicer and smarter. 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. The selection was based on the color of the eye for each group. But Paul, one of eight siblings and the son of a dairy farmer, didnt buy Elliotts mollification. I got to have five minutes extra of recess." Essay Sample: Ethical Concerns in Jane Elliot's Experiment. This meeting, along with other clips of the exercises impact on education, is featured in a PBS documentary called A Class Divided. Racism is not genetical. Biddle, B. J. 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. But Elliotts experiment had a more sinister impact. Perhaps because the outcome seemed so optimistic and comforting, coverage of Elliott and the experiments alleged curative powers cropped up everywhere. Jane Elliott at Riceville, Iowa, Elementary School in 1968. Jane Elliott was a third grade teacher in Riceville, Iowa when she developed the Blue Eyed/ Brown Eyed exercise to teach the effects of racism. Today, increased migration means more opportunities for people from different backgrounds to interact with each other, which is often a source of conflict. The brown-eyed children felt suddenly that they were discriminated, while the blue eyed started seeing them as inferior. 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. The blue-eyed girl apologized. They also harassed them constantly. ", A former teacher, Ruth Setka, 79, said she was perhaps the only teacher who would still talk to 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. The minimal group paradigm has shaped an entire methodology in social psychology. She began this work in Elliott, who is white, separated the students into two groupsthose with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. The publication of compositions which the children had written about the experience in the local . As a journalism professor and author of a book on race that spans more than 50 years, Ive watched these developments with great concern. Melanin, she said, is what causes intelligence. ", When I met Elliott in 2003, she hadn't been back to Riceville in 12 years. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. What can be changed to make the blue eyes and brown eyes experiment "Would you like to come on the show?" Scores of others did participate. 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." Nobodys standing here. Module 2 Discussion_ Are We Still Divided_ Blue Eyes_Brown Eyes_ A 3rd The Anti-Racism Exercise That Taught Kids to Be Racist - Gizmodo ", That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. The results were the same. 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). Her bold experiment to teach Iowa third graders about racial prejudice divided townspeople and thrust her onto the national stage. "That's what I tried to teach, and that's what drove the other teachers crazy. The fact that children are easy to manipulate into acting in a particular manner explains Jane's choice of sample. Exercise or Experiment-- An Account of Jane Elliott's Tenacity: A Their response is to create dichotomies of inferiority and superiority. The brown-eyed children didnt want to play with the blue-eyes during recess. Charity is humiliating because its exercised vertically and from above; solidarity is horizontal and implies mutual respect.. Jane Elliott's experiment. 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? She said she watched and was horrified at what she saw. New York: Elsevier Science. Elliott was featured on nearly every national news show in America for decades. Blue Eye / Brown Eye experiment - Everything2.com Website. She says its because racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and ethnocentrism are mean and nasty. PracticalPie.com is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise received national attention shortly after it ended. 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. The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment - Studocu SYNOPSIS OF BLUE EYED. Society made them believe they were better than other people for arbitrary reasons such as skin color or gender. The demonstration has since been taught by generations of teachers to millions of kids across the country. Elliott began the exercise by dividing her students by eye color. (She prefers the term "exercise.") Jane Elliots work and experiences have made her an authority on education and anti-racism. Carson asked, grinning. hide caption. Jane Elliot's Famous Classroom Experiment: How Eye Color - Thriveworks To back up my statement Bloom (2005) says Jane Elliott's blue-eyes brown-eyes exercise encouraged children to mistrust authority figures. The first thing that Jane Elliott did was divide the children into groups: those with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. Elliot's approach to the experiment involved creativity in which the pupils' age and ability to comprehend discrimination was taken into account. 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. Weve been here before, with unsettling and disturbing results. A columnist at a Denver newspaper called it "evil. Elliotts coworkers avoided her after her appearance on The Tonight Show. When you read about this experiment, its hard not to question labels. Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes: Jane Elliott's controversial classroom experiment This was the smaller group. At recess, three brown-eyed girls ganged up on her. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. One of the main ones was the fact that their right to withdraw was taken away from them. 296. Stephen Bloom on Jane Elliott's Famous Experiment on Race and 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. A Class Divided - Wikipedia Elliott? The people of riceville did not exactly welcome Elliott home from New York with a hayride. Elliott turned into Americas mother of diversity training. (2013). Terms of Use In Zimbardo's experiment the conditions were much more controlled for later study but the r. At this point you may wish to tell the pupils that you are conducting an "experiment" to look at what prejudice is. On Friday, April 5, 1968, in Riceville, IA, a third-grade student walked . Ethics + Religion; Health; Politics + Society; . Then tell them that . Jane Elliott, one of the most controversial figures in U.S. education and diversity training, began her journey to international acclaim in Riceville, Iowa. (In later versions of the exercise, children in the inferior group were given collars to wear.). What Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? . Why'd they shoot that King?" January 1, 2003. Thousands of educators across the United States folded the experiment into their curriculums. 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. ABC broadcast a documentary about her work. She slumped. What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? One of the ways Hitler decided who went into the gas chamber was eye color, Elliott said in a later speech. 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. 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. Jane would get invited to go to Timbuktu to give a speech. On Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, and the brown-eyed kids were told how shifty, dumb and lazy theywere. Lesson of a Lifetime | Science| Smithsonian Magazine On the first day, the blue-eyed students were informed that they were genetically inferior to the brown-eyed students. And what she did caused an uproar. 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. 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. "Your son got what he deserved," the woman said. For many, the experiment went horribly awry. Jane divided the class into 9 brown eyes and 9 blue eyes. She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of colors shoes. This is the phrase that inspired one of the most well-known experiments in education. 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 . This procedure is sometimes so subtle that no one notices it happening. The basic idea was to separate the class into two halves, students with blue eyes and those with brown. 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. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle the exercise and would be seriously damaged by the exercise. 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. "No person of any age [was] going to leave my presence with those attitudes unchallenged," Elliott said. Things even got violent at recess. Today, she says, it's still playing out as the U.S. reckons with racial injustice. "She could get kids to do anything she wanted them to," he says of Elliott. But the protests happening now have given her hope. Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes: A Cautionary Tale of Race and Brutality Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa. Yes, that day was tough. From the moment the experiment begins, Jane Elliott uses a mean tone to speak to the participants. But not Elliott. 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." 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. Blue Eyed vs Brown Eyed Experiment by Bree Elliott - Prezi Blue-eyed students slumped in their chairs, as though . Brown-eyed people. They are cleaner than blue-eyed people. 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. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. 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. 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 . 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. She pointed out flaws in a student and associated it with . On Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN. Most Riceville residents seem to have an opinion of Elliott, whether or not they've met her. The experiment, known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. Normally, blue-eyes isnt an insult. The more melanin, the darker the person's eyesand the smarter the person. Back in the classroom, Elliott's experiment had taken on a life of its own. one girl asked. PDF Discrimination: Experimental Evidence from Psychology and Economics "It's Riceville 30 years ago. A class divided: lessons learned - Times Bulletin A Review of Jane Elliott's Experiment In, a Class Divided When Elliott walked into the teachers' lounge the next Monday, several teachers got up and walked out. "Maybe the way to sell the exercise would have been to invite the parents in, to talk about what she'd be doing. Elliott championed the experiment as an inoculation against racism., [The Conversations Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. Did We Fail the Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes ExperimentOr Did It Fail Us? They are steeped in centuries of economic deprivation and cultural appropriation. people are better than blue-eyed people. Problems with this research were that it went against a lot of ethical issues. Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. In this 1998 photograph, former Iowa teacher Jane Elliott, center, speaks with two Augsburg University . 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. 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. Proceeding with the experiment, Elliot divided the children into two groups each with nine pupils. "I understand this is the first time you've flown?" PDF A Guide to THE ANGRY EYE - 016e880.netsolhost.com 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 . We Are Repeating The Discrimination Experiment Every Day, Says - NPR She wanted to show her students that an arbitrarily established difference could separate them and pit them against each other. Copyright 20102023, The Conversation Media Group Ltd. "Probably because they have been taught how they're treated in this country that they have to understand us. 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. "You better apologize to us for getting in our way because we're better than you are," one of the brownies said. ERIC - ED300491 - Ethical and Pedagogical Issues in the Use of The act of treating students differently was obviously a metaphor for the social decisions made on a larger level. 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. Why do researchers use correlational studies? 9 Unethical Psychological Experiments That Actually Happened They were also relevant in the 1950s when Elliott first began this work. To begin with, Jane Elliot's experiment involved deception in which the children were made in believing that change in eye color influence intelligence. Elliott was even brought on The Tonight Show to talk about her experiences. 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 . Through this study, Elliot demonstrated how easy it is for prejudice and discrimination to emerge from just a simple message that people with one eye color are superior to people with another eye color. 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. 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. 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. 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. Given the ethical concerns, will you still rely on a quasi-experimental research design as a source of information in counselling psychology? That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. 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. According to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, 2010 the experiment also violates the principle of Integrity.