Nevertheless, Elliott became as famous as a teacher could become in America. The people and cultures already present in a place often feel threatened by new immigrants. 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. "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. Melanin, she said, is what causes intelligence. Jane Elliott at Riceville, Iowa, Elementary School in 1968. "There's a sense of renewal here that I've never seen anywhere else," Elliott says. She also made the brown-eyed students put construction paper armbands on the blue-eyed students. 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. "This here is Jane Elliott," I said. "On an airplane, it is," Elliott said to appreciative laughter from the studio audience. It has since evolved into an online blog and YouTube channel providing mental health advice, tools, and academic support to individuals from all backgrounds. When the blue-eyed group saw that the brown-eyed group was going to be seated first, some became upset. ", 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. 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.". Days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It has everything to do with power.. Elliott's friends and family say she's tenacious, and has always had a reformer's zeal. 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. If this arbitrary division that Elliott enforced for a few hours created so many problems in this classroom, whats happening on a larger scale? Essay Example, Essay Example on Racism Towards Black People, Essay Sample about Developing a Campaign for School Intimidation, Essay Example on Therapist-Client Relationship Boundaries, Islamic Perspective on Euthanasia, Free Essay Sample. Order original essays online. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle the exercise and would be seriously damaged by the exercise. Jane Elliots work and experiences have made her an authority on education and anti-racism. Elliott was not. Basically, you establish differences between a set of subjects in order to divide them into separate groups. This way, she successfully created two distinct groups in her classroom: The consequences of the minimal group became evident very quickly. Society made them believe they were better than other people for arbitrary reasons such as skin color or gender. And they are smarter than blue-eyed people." The brown-eyed children got to sit in the front of the room, to go to lunch first, and to have more time at recess. She asked the other teachers what they were doing to bring news of the King assassination into their classrooms. "The browneyed people are the better people in this room," Elliott began. The brown-eyed students also exercised a certain level of power over the blue-eyed students when they put the armbands on them. The anti-racism sessions Elliott led were intense. On Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN. January 1, 2003. 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. The brown-eyed children began to act aggressive and mean towards the blue-eyed children. 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 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 act of treating students differently was obviously a metaphor for the social decisions made on a larger level. There were more brown-eyed students in the room. Jane Elliott, one of the most controversial figures in U.S. education and diversity training, began her journey to international acclaim in Riceville, Iowa. Knowing that her experiment would have consequences, Jane remained committed to her course. 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. She wanted to show her students that an arbitrarily established difference could separate them and pit them against each other. They were forced to sit on the back rows and had to use a . On the "Tonight Show" Carson broke the ice by spoofing Elliott's rural roots. Weve been here before, with unsettling and disturbing results. The test violated the principle of respect for people's rights and dignity. Youve probably heard different versions of it. In her article, Peggy McIntosh compares the "white privilege" to an invisible set of unearned rewards and . From the University of California Press website: The never-before-told true story of Jane Elliott and the "Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes Experiment" she made world-famous, using eye color to simulate racism. I felt mad. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. Not everyone appreciated Elliotts exercise. When you read about this experiment, its hard not to question labels. She learned that the responses from the children were negative and more generalized about what they thought about black people. Order from one of our vetted writers instead. Answer (1 of 3): My guess is that is doesn't really represent racism but classism. 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. It is quite powerful to watch. ", 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. In a grassy front yard down the block is a hand-lettered sign: "Glads for Sale, 3 for $1." It was typical of Elliott's blunt styleno "Good morning," no small talk. Yes, the children felt angry, hurt, betrayed. ", We backed out. 1. Two students even got into a physical altercation. I'm tired of hearing about her and her experiment and how everyone here is a racist. They are more civilized than blue-eyed people. ", Jane shielded her eyes from the morning sun. She traveled to corporations, banks, prisons, schools and military bases. You should be happy! Elliott asked her students to write about their experiences for the local newspaper. SpeedyPaper.com 2023 All rights reserved. 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." APA principles acknowledge that individuals rights to privacy, self-determination, and confidentiality is paramount to all psychological activities. At the time, she was a third-grade . From Elliot's highly controversial experiment it is clear that prejudice and discrimination can only be understood through experience. The roots of racism and why it continues unabated in America and other nations are complicated and gnarled. Once indoors, the brown-eyed group was then treated to coffee and doughnuts, while the blue-eyed group could only stand around and wait. 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. 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. It's cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage. She began this work in Privacy Statement From the moment the experiment begins, Jane Elliott uses a mean tone to speak to the participants. Students in the inferior groups were more likely to get a worse score. hide caption. At lunchtime, Elliott hurried to the teachers' lounge. Little children don't like uproar in the classroom. Thats how it started, and thats how it went all day long. On the second day of the experiment, Elliott switched the childrens roles. Brown-eyed people. 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. The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. The blue eyes brown eyes study was a study on group prejudice and discrimination conducted by Jane Elliot. Elliott, who is white, separated the students into two groupsthose with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. 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. I often think about Paul Bodensteiner. They didnt need to engage with a single Black person. In 2001, she was still trying to make a change. "Your son got what he deserved," the woman said. The minimal group paradigm has shaped an entire methodology in social psychology. When Elliott walked into the teachers' lounge the next Monday, several teachers got up and walked out. The arbitrary division among the students intensified over the course of the experiment, so much so that it actually ended in physical violence. 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. 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. They also harassed them constantly. She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. Before proceeding with the test, she began with random questions to fully understand the children's perception of Negroes. 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. 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." SpeedyPaper website, please click below to request its removal: Liked this essay sample but need an original one? 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 . Jane Elliott, Creator of the "Blue/Brown Eyes" Experiment, Says Racism Is Easy To Fix. In 1970, Elliott would come to national attention when ABC broadcast their Eye of the Storm documentary which filmed the experiment in action. She slumped. Hundreds of viewers wrote letters saying Elliott's work appalled them. Classroom experiment. One scholar asserts that it is "Orwellian" and teaches whites "self-contempt." They wouldnt be allowed second helpings for lunch. New York: Elsevier Science. Its not true and its not fair no matter what you say! he responded. The students initially involved wished that everyone could participate in an exercise like this. When my grandchildren are old enough, I'd give anything if you'd try the exercise out on them. Her bold experiment to teach Iowa third graders about racial prejudice divided townspeople and thrust her onto the national stage. she asked the children, who were white. At first, she cooperated with me. Given the ethical concerns, will you still rely on a quasi-experimental research design as a source of information in counselling psychology? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. "I think third grade was too young for what she did. It's the Jane Elliott machine. 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. 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. Select from the 0 categories from which you would like to receive articles. In 2001, Jane Elliott recordedThe Angry Eye,in which she revised and updated her experiment. Today, she says, it's still playing out as the U.S. reckons with racial injustice. It is sometimes cited as a landmark of social science. Articles and opinions on happiness, fear and other aspects of human psychology. 2012 2023 . Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER! She chatted about the experiment, and before she knew it was whisked off the stage. "They shot that King yesterday. One of the main ones was the fact that their right to withdraw was taken away from them. To this day, at the age of 86, Jane Elliott continues this work. Proceeding with the experiment, Elliot divided the children into two groups each with nine pupils. those with brown eyes (or hazel eyes). "No person of any age [was] going to leave my presence with those attitudes unchallenged," Elliott said. Before she could answer, another boy piped up: "If she didn't have blue eyes, she'd be the principal or the superintendent.". 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 . The next day when the tables were turned, "I felt like quitting school. Unfortunately, you cant copy samples. The more melanin, the darker the person's eyesand the smarter the person. "She got carried away by this possession she developed over human beings. The smell of the crops and loam and topsoil and manure wafted though the open door. She noticed that student relationships had changed; even if students were friendly outside of the exercise, they treated each other with arrogance or bossiness once the roles were assigned. Despite the adaptation of the experiment in psychological studies, Jane has been widely criticized for her unethical conduct and promotion of discrimination among children. (2010). Sorry, but it's not possible to copy the text due to security reasons. "Would you like to come on the show?" 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. Most Riceville residents seem to have an opinion of Elliott, whether or not they've met her. He printed them under the headline "How Discrimination Feels." We have to let people find out how it feels to be on the receiving end of that which we dish out so readily.". 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. One group consisted pupils with brown eye while the other group consisted of those with blue eyes. 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." She then told them that the children with blue eyes were inherently inferior to the children with brown . Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. 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. 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 . The publication of compositions which the children had written about the experience in the local . Terms of Use With this experiment she wanted to let the blue-eyed people (white people) feel how it is to be in low power position. "Blue-eyed people sit around and do nothing. At her lunch break that day in the teacher's lounge, she told her colleagues about the exercise. THE ANGRY EYE , a 35-minute video, features Jane Elliott conducting her Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed exercise with college students. ", Elliott defends her work as a mother defends her child. "She said, on the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, 'I don't know why you're doing that I thought it was about time somebody shot that son of a bitch,' " she said. "Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior, but white children, there's no way they could possibly understand it. ", Absolutely not. The following are some of her most insightful quotes on these issues. The secretary said the south side of the building was closed, something about waxing the hallways. The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment. Kellen Castineiras PSY Dr. Gail C. Flanagan February 6, 2022. . Not a day goes by without me thinking about it, Ms. Elliott. Why are we still talking about this experiment over 50 years later? Elliott rattled off the rules for the day, saying blue-eyed kids had to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain. In the documentary, she said that she conducted the original blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment to make a positive change. "Mention two wordsJane Elliottand you get a flood of emotions from people," says Jim Cross, the Riceville Recorder's editor these days. The test also included violation of consent in which participation of the children was made involuntarily. This paradigm helps understand the current problems related to discrimination. Her class, You didnt understand the directions. Would you like to find out? Separate the class into two halves - those with blue eyes and those with brown. "Maybe the way to sell the exercise would have been to invite the parents in, to talk about what she'd be doing. 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. Although Jane Elliot's intentions were to teach the youngsters about racism, ethical issues related to the simulation were raised. One of the blue eyed even went to hit a brown eyed just for the fact that he was brown eyed. The fourth of five children, Elliott was born on her family's farm in Riceville in 1933, and was delivered by her Irish-American father himself. There are risks to those inoculations, too, but we determine that those risks are worth taking. 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. Charity is humiliating because its exercised vertically and from above; solidarity is horizontal and implies mutual respect.. The kids in the bottom group became timider and kept to themselves. She has made statements about the increase in hate crimes and racism in recent years. PracticalPsychology. Blue-eyed people would get 5 extra minutes on the playground and blue-eyed people could not talk to brown-eyed people. The brown-eyed people were told to step to the front of the line. This was intentional. She appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show five times. It didnt take long for the children to turn on each other. She had never met me, and she accused me in front of everyone of using my sexuality to get ahead.. Much like the Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment where students were divided by either being the jailer or the jailed. Want a quality guarantee? Problems with this research were that it went against a lot of ethical issues. Locals say that drivers don't signal when they turn because everyone knows where everyone else is going. That same year, Elliott was invited to the White House Conference on Children and Youth to conduct an exercise on adult educators. 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. [online] Today I Found Out. "They are cleaner and they are smarter.". 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. This is the phrase that inspired one of the most well-known experiments in education. "It would be hard to know, wouldn't it, unless we actually experienced discrimination ourselves. Jane Elliot's experiment involves cheating and intentional misinterpretation of facts. 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. I have brown eyes. Blue-eyed children got five extra minutes of recess. Ms. Elliott, now 87, said she started teaching about racism on April 5, 1968 the day after the Rev. But Paul, one of eight siblings and the son of a dairy farmer, didnt buy Elliotts mollification. ", A chorus of "Yeahs" went up, and so began one of the most astonishing exercises ever conducted in an American classroom. Elliott separated her all-white class of students into two groups: blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children. In the early morning, dew and fog cover the acres of gently swaying stalks that surround Riceville the way water surrounds an island. In present society, psychological experiments are guided by honesty, truthfulness, and accuracy. What Lies Behind Your Urgent Need to Answer Work E Mails? The Associated Press followed up, quoting Elliott as saying she was "dumbfounded" by the exercise's effectiveness. That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. 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 . 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. . As a journalism professor and author of a book on race that spans more than 50 years, Ive watched these developments with great concern. "You have to put the exercise in the context of the rest of the year. The blue-eyed participants faced discrimination for two and a half hours. Open Document. The blue-eyed girl apologized. 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. "We give our children shots to inoculate them against polio and smallpox, to protect them against the realities in the future. The ethical concerns arising from the experiment are consent and deception. You give them something nice and they just wreck it." The video . Sadly, these conversations are still relevant today. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle . Elliott had hoped that this experiment would help the children to better understand the feelings of discrimination that certain groups feel on a daily basis, but what she didn . She split the class in two categories, according to eye color, and told the children that one group was superior to the others. In the case of any doubt, it's best to consult a trusted specialist. Why Did Jane Elliott Choose Eye Color To Divide Her Students? The subjects were 164 students enrolled in eight sections of an introductory elementary education course at a state university. Initial Reaction to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Exercise.