I felt mad. The first thing that Jane Elliott did was divide the children into groups: those with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. After recess that day, the brown-eyed children complained that they were . 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. She told the kids that blue-eyed children weren't as good as brown-eyed or green-eyed ones. "How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" ", 2023 Smithsonian Magazine 5/21/2020 Topic: Module 2 Discussion: We use them to divide and destroy people., On Understanding The Different Ways We Treat Other Races, Philip Zimbardo (Biography + Experiments). In this article, we talk about leadership and female discrimination.. 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. Order original essays online. APA principles acknowledge that individuals rights to privacy, self-determination, and confidentiality is paramount to all psychological activities. Today, increased migration means more opportunities for people from different backgrounds to interact with each other, which is often a source of conflict. Would you like to find out? This way, she successfully created two distinct groups in her classroom: The consequences of the minimal group became evident very quickly. Though Jane's actions were justifiable because she was not a psychologist, her experiment cannot be replicated in the present society. She then told them that the children with blue eyes were inherently inferior to the children with brown . These initial criticisms didnt stop Elliott. But not Elliott. [online] Today I Found Out. One student answers, since the day I was born. Throughout the entire experiment, Elliott leads frank conversations about race and discrimination. "That you, Ms. . 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. 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. 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. One scholar asserts that it is "Orwellian" and teaches whites "self-contempt." 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." In 2001, Jane Elliott recordedThe Angry Eye,in which she revised and updated her experiment. All rights reserved. Elliott and I were sitting at her dining room table. But the protests happening now have given her hope. "The browneyed people are the better people in this room," Elliott began. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle the exercise and would be seriously damaged by the exercise. However, both Mary and Zeke have brown eyes. The minimal group paradigm has shaped an entire methodology in social psychology. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. She was a local girl and the other teachers were intimidated by her success. "You better apologize to us for getting in our way because we're better than you are," one of the brownies said. Blue eyes, brown eyes: What Jane Elliott's famous experiment says about race 50 years on. he asked. 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. one girl asked. Thats how it started, and thats how it went all day long. Once indoors, the brown-eyed group was then treated to coffee and doughnuts, while the blue-eyed group could only stand around and wait. 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. Terms of Use Now 45, she had been in Elliott's third grade class in 1969. At recess, three brown-eyed girls ganged up on her. 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. "Let me look at you," Elliott said. 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 . He printed them under the headline "How Discrimination Feels." 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 . Yet what Elliott did continues to stir controversy. The day after Kings murder, Jane Elliott, a white third-grade teacher in rural Riceville, Iowa, sought to make her students feel the brutality of racism. We dont have to learn about those who are other than white. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. Pasicznyk joined 75 other employees for a training session in the companys suburban Denver headquarters in the late 1980s. ", Steve Harnack, 62, served as the elementary school principal beginning in 1977. Youve probably heard different versions of it. ", The two hugged, and Whisenhunt had tears streaming down her cheeks. 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 are the original author of this essay and no longer wish to have it published on the She said she watched and was horrified at what she saw. We have to let people find out how it feels to be on the receiving end of that which we dish out so readily.". Its not true and its not fair no matter what you say! he responded. 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. 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. I have brown eyes. 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. We walked into the principal's office at RicevilleElementary School, Elliott's old haunt. Things even got violent at recess. 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. She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of colors shoes. She split the class in two categories, according to eye color, and told the children that one group was superior to the others. Racism is not genetical. ", "I've never forgotten the exercise," Whisenhunt volunteered. "I don't think this community was ready for what she did," he said. "That's what I tried to teach, and that's what drove the other teachers crazy. This was the smaller group. In doing the research for my book with scores of peoples who were participants in the experiment, I reached out to Elliott. 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. 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. The next day, Elliott reversed the roles. The publication of compositions which the children had written about the experience in the local . Elliott, who is white, separated the students into two groupsthose with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. In this 1998 photograph, former Iowa teacher Jane Elliott, center, speaks with two Augsburg University . 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. 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. 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. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. Danko, M. (2013). While Jane Elliot's experiment makes several assumptions, it also has some ethical concerns. In 1968, schoolteacher Jane Elliott decided to divide her classroom into students with blue eyes and students with brown 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). Most Riceville residents seem to have an opinion of Elliott, whether or not they've met her. She wanted them to understand what discrimination felt like. Elliott asked her students to write about their experiences for the local newspaper. Why was the Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment considered unethical in psychology? About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features NFL Sunday Ticket Press Copyright . The "invisible knapsack" is an analogy for a set of invisible and not widely talked about privileges that white people possess in the society. Would you? "Things are changing, and they're going to change rapidly if we're very, very fortunate," she said. 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. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. 4. On Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN. In 1970, Elliott would come to national attention when ABC broadcast their Eye of the Storm documentary which filmed the experiment in action. 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. . Two years later, a BBC documentary captured the experiment in Elliott's classroom. "You can see the look on their faces. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue . . Now, almost four decades later, Elliott's experiment still mattersto the grown children with whom she experimented, to the people of Riceville, population 840, who all but ran her out of town, and to thousands of people around the world who have also participated in an exercise based on the experiment. Knowing that her experiment would have consequences, Jane remained committed to her course. That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. In the documentary, she said that she conducted the original blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment to make a positive change. 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. ", Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images, now-famous "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise, 'I See These Conversations As Protective': Talking With Kids About Race. Sign up for Politics Weekly.]. Elliott began the exercise by dividing her students by eye color. Their response is to create dichotomies of inferiority and superiority. Brown-eyed people, she told the students, are smarter, more civilized and better than blue-eyed people. At the time, she was a third-grade . 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 . 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 also documents small-town White America's reflex reaction to the . The three outcomes are: (1) virtually all of the subjects reported that the experience was Melanin, she said, is what causes intelligence. Jane Elliott at Riceville, Iowa, Elementary School in 1968. In the case of any doubt, it's best to consult a trusted specialist. She chatted about the experiment, and before she knew it was whisked off the stage. In Zimbardo's experiment the conditions were much more controlled for later study but the r. It also shows how arbitrary and subjective things can turn friends, family members, and citizens against each other. Select from the 0 categories from which you would like to receive articles. Jane Elliot's experiment involves cheating and intentional misinterpretation of facts. You must get the parents first. "If this ugly change, if this negative change can happen this quickly, why can't positive change happen that quickly? Provide your email for sample delivery, You agree to receive our emails and consent to our Terms & Conditions, Order an essay on this subject and get a 100% original paper. (2013). Then tell them that . 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. The brown-eyed people were told to step to the front of the line. "They shot that King yesterday. 980 Words. Elliot's approach to the experiment involved creativity in which the pupils' age and ability to comprehend discrimination was taken into account. 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? Elliott instructed the blue-eyed kids not to play on the jungle gym or swings. Classroom experiment. A second look at the blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment that taught third-graders about racism. Why are we still talking about this experiment over 50 years later? The tallest structure in Riceville is the water tower. Not everyone appreciated Elliotts exercise. This time, the participants werent a bunch of elementary school children they were young adults. Elliott was even brought on The Tonight Show to talk about her experiences. Their 12-year-old daughter, Mary, came home from school one day in tears, sobbing that her sixth-grade classmates had surrounded her in the school hallway and taunted her by saying her mother would soon be sleeping with black men. ", Jane shielded her eyes from the morning sun. "She got carried away by this possession she developed over human beings. 4 Pages. The brown-eyed students also exercised a certain level of power over the blue-eyed students when they put the armbands on them. One of the blue eyed even went to hit a brown eyed just for the fact that he was brown eyed. Jane Elliott's experiment of dividing an otherwise homogenous group of school kids by their eye color. Delivery in 6+ hours! Jane Elliot, a third-grade teacher from Lowa town, became troubled with the turn of events and knew that something had to be done about racial discrimination (Danko, 2013). For many, the experiment went horribly awry. The children were not aware of the experiment, and therefore they could not give their permission of involvement. The exercise is "an inoculation against racism," she says. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. THE ANGRY EYE , a 35-minute video, features Jane Elliott conducting her Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed exercise with college students. "There's a sense of renewal here that I've never seen anywhere else," Elliott says. Jane Elliott is 84 years old, a tiny woman with white hair, wire-rim glasses and little patience. When Elliott walked into the teachers' lounge the next Monday, several teachers got up and walked out. Watch it online right now! Elliotts coworkers avoided her after her appearance on The Tonight Show. Thats just the way blue-eyed kids were, Elliott told the students. 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 . She and her husband, Darald Elliott, then a grocer, have four children, and they, too, felt a backlash. (In later versions of the exercise, children in the inferior group were given collars to wear.). What Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? At lunchtime, Elliott hurried to the teachers' lounge. I think it can. Her bold experiment to teach Iowa third graders about racial prejudice divided townspeople and thrust her onto the national stage. Would you like to get this essay by email? In this article, we'll explain what happened during the experiment and discuss its consequences. Separate the class into two halves - those with blue eyes and those with brown. The students who had blue eyes were told that they were better and smarter than their inferior brown-eyed peers. They gossiped about her in the hallway. The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. 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. Elliot said that when the children were given the test on the same day that they were in the superior group, they tended to get the highest scores. In the early morning, dew and fog cover the acres of gently swaying stalks that surround Riceville the way water surrounds an island. Questioning authority The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. With this experiment she wanted to let the blue-eyed people (white people) feel how it is to be in low power position. Weve been here before, with unsettling and disturbing results. "She could get kids to do anything she wanted them to," he says of Elliott. If brown-eyed children made a mistake, Elliott would call out the mistake and attribute it to the students brown eyes. 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. 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. Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa. When the blue-eyed group saw that the brown-eyed group was going to be seated first, some became upset. Could you?". Elliott is nothing if not stubborn. Thus, the dominant group, supported by the authorities, will always have the upper hand. I felt like hitting them if I wanted to. Jane Elliot's 'The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment' was unethical in that she created a segregated environment in a third grade classroom. "Because we might catch something," a brown-eyed boy said. The results were the same. 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. When Sarah, the Elliotts' oldest daughter, went to the girls' bathroom in junior high, she came out of a stall to see a message scrawled in red lipstick on the mirror: "Nigger lover.". Some guidelines for avoiding or reducing this effect are: In conclusion, Jane Elliotts experiment demonstrates the fragility of coexistence and cooperation. The blue-eyed participants faced discrimination for two and a half hours. American Psychological Association, 4. Initial Reaction to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Exercise. One of the most famous experiments in education Jane Elliott's "blue eyes, brown eyes" separation of her third grade students to teach them about prejudice was very different from what the public was told, as revealed in this excerpt from the in-depth story about what really happened in that classroom. 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. 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 is quite powerful to watch. SpeedyPaper.com 2023 All rights reserved. She decided to continue the exercise with her students after lunch. This bibliography was generated on Cite This For Me on Monday, March 7, 2016. Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes offers an intimate portrait of the insular community where Elliott grew up and conducted the experiment on the town's children for more than a decade. The hate and discrimination that we see in adults have their origin in their upbringing. The blue-eyed girl apologized. Two students even got into a physical altercation. I felt mad. Given the ethical concerns, will you still rely on a quasi-experimental research design as a source of information in counselling psychology? people are better than blue-eyed people. She wanted to show her students that an arbitrarily established difference could separate them and pit them against each other. That might have been the end of it, but a month later, Elliott says, Johnny Carson called her. March 26, 1985. You didnt understand the directions. 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." Elliott championed the experiment as an inoculation against racism., [The Conversations Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. "I know who she is. The video . On the "Tonight Show" Carson broke the ice by spoofing Elliott's rural roots. They needed not acknowledge their privilege or reflect on it. At this point you may wish to tell the pupils that you are conducting an "experiment" to look at what prejudice is. In Jane Elliott's experiment she made the third graders believe that the blue eyed people were better,than the brown eyed people. New York: Elsevier Science. 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. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? One teacher ended up displaying the same bigotry Elliott had spent the morning trying to fight. Before she could answer, another boy piped up: "If she didn't have blue eyes, she'd be the principal or the superintendent.". 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. Not a day goes by without me thinking about it, Ms. Elliott. ", Dean Weaver, 70, superintendent of Riceville schools from 1972 to 1979, said, "She'd just go ahead and do things.