From Elliot's highly controversial experiment it is clear that prejudice and discrimination can only be understood through experience. You've still got that same sweet smile. "We want to see Room No. (2013). 1. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. Thats how it started, and thats how it went all day long. 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. Blue-eyed people. "There's a sense of renewal here that I've never seen anywhere else," Elliott says. ", "I've never forgotten the exercise," Whisenhunt volunteered. 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. One of the blue eyed even went to hit a brown eyed just for the fact that he was brown eyed. ", Jane shielded her eyes from the morning sun. Regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, decision making in psychology should protect individual rights and welfare to eliminate potential biases. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features NFL Sunday Ticket Press Copyright . For many, the experiment went horribly awry. Perhaps because the outcome seemed so optimistic and comforting, coverage of Elliott and the experiments alleged curative powers cropped up everywhere. Ethics + Religion; Health; Politics + Society; . 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." The "invisible knapsack" is an analogy for a set of invisible and not widely talked about privileges that white people possess in the society. 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. Yes, that day was tough. March 26, 1985. You have the right color eyes!. 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. That same year, Elliott was invited to the White House Conference on Children and Youth to conduct an exercise on adult educators. Jane Elliott's Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes experiment was a turning point in social psychology. "It's Riceville 30 years ago. Blue-eyed children got five extra minutes of recess. If you have ever heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy, these results may not come as a surprise. The results were the same. Sadly, these conversations are still relevant today. 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. 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 . 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. School ought to be about developing character, but most teachers won't touch that with a ten-foot pole.". It has everything to do with power.. Practical Psychology began as a collection of study material for psychology students in 2016, created by a student in the field. ", 2023 Smithsonian Magazine The Hangout Bar & Grill, the Riceville Pharmacy and ATouch of Dutch, a restaurant owned by Mennonites, line Main Street. New York: Elsevier Science. When the exercise ended, some of the kids hugged, some cried. 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. 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. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. Its goal was to demonstrate what prejudice was to her third grade class. Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. Blue-eyed students suggested that the teacher use a yardstick to discipline brown-eyed students that misbehaved. They didnt need to engage with a single Black person. A smart blue-eyed girl who had never had problems with multiplication tables started making mistakes. A difference as simple as eye color, defined and established by the authority figure, created a rift between the students. Hire a professional with VAST experience! Jane divided the class into 9 brown eyes and 9 blue eyes. Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? Locals say that drivers don't signal when they turn because everyone knows where everyone else is going. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. At lunchtime, Elliott hurried to the teachers' lounge. 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. Jane Elliott, Creator of the "Blue/Brown Eyes" Experiment, Says Racism Is Easy To Fix. What Lies Behind Your Urgent Need to Answer Work E Mails? Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa. Some residents were furious. 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. The Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes Experiment. "Let me look at you," Elliott said. She began this work in "I think third grade was too young for what she did. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? 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. In present society, psychological experiments are guided by honesty, truthfulness, and accuracy. Her class, Not only were they fewer in numbers, but the authority figure was against them. Two education professors in England, Ivor F. Goodson and Pat Sikes, suggest that Elliott's experiment was unethical because the participants weren't informed of its real purpose beforehand. The results showed a reversal effect in which the blue-eyed students showed signs of inferiority and low self-esteem. The searing story is a cautionary tale that examines power and privilege in and out of the classroom. ", A former teacher, Ruth Setka, 79, said she was perhaps the only teacher who would still talk to Elliott. 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. Immediately after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Professor Jane Elliott used the minimal group paradigm to perform an experiment that would teach her students about race discrimination. 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 minimal group paradigm has shaped an entire methodology in social psychology. In her article, Peggy McIntosh compares the "white privilege" to an invisible set of unearned rewards and . Right off the bat, she picked me out of the room and called me Barbie, Pasicznyk told me. "Would you like to come on the show?" She knew that the children weren't going to buy her pitch unless she came up with a reason, and the more scientific to these Space Age children of the 1960s, the better. Now 45, she had been in Elliott's third grade class in 1969. I felt like hitting them if I wanted to. The brown-eyed people were told to step to the front of the line. She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of colors shoes. 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. a brown-eyed boy asked. She traveled to corporations, banks, prisons, schools and military bases. Jane Elliott's experiment of dividing an otherwise homogenous group of school kids by their eye color. It is a must . 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. Undeterred, Elliott tried to appeal to Pauls self-interest. "That's what I tried to teach, and that's what drove the other teachers crazy. Elliott separated her all-white class of students into two groups: blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children. Your Privacy Rights THE ANGRY EYE , a 35-minute video, features Jane Elliott conducting her Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed exercise with college students. 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. The experiment is to help the children to understand about prejudice and discrimination. Decent Essays. 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. Children often fight, argue, and sometimes hit each other, but this time they were motivated by eye color. "I don't think this community was ready for what she did," he said. Even though some of the children said yes, Elliott pushed back. Sign up for Politics Weekly.]. She also made the brown-eyed students put construction paper armbands on the blue-eyed students. The documentary has become a popular teaching tool among teachers, business owners, and even employees at correctional facilities. On Friday, April 5, 1968, in Riceville, IA, a third-grade student walked . There were more brown-eyed students in the room. She was a local girl and the other teachers were intimidated by her success. She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. "How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" Advertising Notice "If this ugly change, if this negative change can happen this quickly, why can't positive change happen that quickly? 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. At the time, she was a third-grade . . She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue-eyed kids to wear one. 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. "You can see the look on their faces. ABC broadcast a documentary about her work. The Blue Eye/Brown Eye was an experiment performed by Jane Elliot in 1968 on the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. She and Darald split their time between a converted schoolhouse in Osage, Iowa, a town 18 miles from Riceville, and a home near Riverside, California. "You have to put the exercise in the context of the rest of the year. With a couple of basic and arbitrary examples, Elliott made the case that brown-eyed people were better. 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 . Elliott went after Ken and Barbie all day long, drilling, accusing, ridiculing them, to make the point that whites make baseless judgments about Blacks all the time, Pasicznyk said. Issues such as the right to know, the right to privacy, and informed consent. She left teaching in the mid-80s to speak publicly about the experience and the impact of prejudice and racism. She could feel a chasm forming between the two groups of students. How can we teach kids to be more like him? All the work should be used in accordance with the appropriate policies and applicable laws. Days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. "We give our children shots to inoculate them against polio and smallpox, to protect them against the realities in the future. I interviewed Julie Pasicznyk, who had been working for US West, a giant telecommunications company in Minneapolis. 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. 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 . Elliott said that blue-eyed people were less intelligent and less clean. She has . And the exercise continued in a similar fashion to how it was executed the day before. 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. "She taught in this school for 18 years." ", Elliott defends her work as a mother defends her child. "This here is Jane Elliott," I said. She has appeared on the "Oprah Winfrey Show" five times. Jane Elliott is 84 years old, a tiny woman with white hair, wire-rim glasses and little patience. It's the Jane Elliott machine. "That you, Ms. Nobodys standing here. 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. 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. The publication of compositions which the children had written about the experience in the local . Why do researchers use correlational studies? . 10 Psychological Experiments That Could Never Happen Today. 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 . Hundreds of viewers wrote letters saying Elliott's work appalled them. Yes, the children felt angry, hurt, betrayed. "Well, what do you expect from him, Mrs. Elliott," a brown-eyed student said as a blue-eyed student got an arithmetic problem wrong. One of the ways Hitler decided who went into the gas chamber was eye color, Elliott said in a later speech. Consequently, the brown-eyed children started using blue-eyes as an insult. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? Is it even possible today? The students who had blue eyes were told that they were better and smarter than their inferior brown-eyed peers. 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. The results are mixed. The kids in the bottom group became timider and kept to themselves. "We are repeating the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise on a daily basis.". . 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. They felt superior and had the support of the authority figure (the teacher). They gossiped about her in the hallway. Melanin, she said, is what causes intelligence. When Elliott first conducted the exercise in 1968, brown-eyed students were given special privileges. Traditionally, society has always treated leadership as a male issue. 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. Before she could answer, another boy piped up: "If she didn't have blue eyes, she'd be the principal or the superintendent.". However, the study shows some bias in the sample size and race of participants. But when she discovered that I was asking pointed questions of scores of her former students, as well as others subjected to the experiment, she made an about-face and said she no longer would cooperate with me. "Not one of them reprimanded her for that or even corrected her. 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. 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 . And what she did caused an uproar. The people of riceville did not exactly welcome Elliott home from New York with a hayride. 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. The corn grows so fast in northern Iowafrom seedling to seven-foot-high stalk in 12 weeksthat it crackles. According to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, 2010 the experiment also violates the principle of Integrity. 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. They all either smiled or laughed and nodded.". One scholar asserts that it is "Orwellian" and teaches whites "self-contempt." ", That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. Could you?". Still, Elliott said the last few years have brought out America's worst racist tendencies. This was intentional. Brian, the Elliotts' oldest son, got beaten up at school, and Jane called the ringleader's, mother. After recess that day, the brown-eyed children complained that they were . 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. Two students even got into a physical altercation. In the most uncomfortable moments, Elliott reminds the students of violent acts caused by racism or homophobia. Why'd they shoot that King?" ", Elliott replied, "Why are we so worried about the fragile egos of white children who experience a couple of hours of made-up racism one day when blacks experience real racism every day of their lives?". The blue eyes brown eyes study was a study on group prejudice and discrimination conducted by Jane Elliot. There is a way to avoid editing or writing from scratch! Classroom experiment. "How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children," one said. Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER! She decided to continue the exercise with her students after lunch. Jane Elliott, shown here in 2009, remains an outspoken advocate against racism. 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? 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. Elliot's approach to the experiment involved creativity in which the pupils' age and ability to comprehend discrimination was taken into account. Multi-Problem Adolescents: An Increasing Problem, Professor Jane Elliott performed a group experiment, the current problems related to discrimination. This time, the participants werent a bunch of elementary school children they were young adults. The smell of the crops and loam and topsoil and manure wafted though the open door. One group consisted pupils with brown eye while the other group consisted of those with blue eyes. 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. Withdrawn brown-eyed kids were suddenly outgoing, some beaming with the widest smiles she had ever seen on them. 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. Articles and opinions on happiness, fear and other aspects of human psychology. 2012 2023 . Subsequent research designed to gauge the efficacy of Elliotts attempt at reducing prejudice showed that many participants were shocked by the experiment, but it did nothing to address or explain the root causes of racism. This bibliography was generated on Cite This For Me on Monday, March 7, 2016. When she went downtown to do errands, she heard whispers. You didnt understand the directions. Website. 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. The blue-eyed participants faced discrimination for two and a half hours. "We just want to peek in," I volunteered. That got the other teachers angry. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue . The secretary said the south side of the building was closed, something about waxing the hallways. She has spoken at more than 350 colleges and universities. Elliott flew to the NBC studio in New York City. That might have been the end of it, but a month later, Elliott says, Johnny Carson called her. Everyone's tired of her. "People of other color groups seem to understand," she said. 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. When my grandchildren are old enough, I'd give anything if you'd try the exercise out on them. They were also relevant in the 1950s when Elliott first began this work. Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? A columnist at a Denver newspaper called it "evil. ", The two hugged, and Whisenhunt had tears streaming down her cheeks. Blue eyes, brown eyes: What Jane Elliott's famous experiment says about race 50 years on. Watch it online right now! Elliott is nothing if not stubborn. In 2001, she was still trying to make a change. The idea was simple but profound. She told her students that she had made a mistake the previous day and that brown-eyed students . . She learned that the responses from the children were negative and more generalized about what they thought about black people. Elliott rattled off the rules for the day, saying blue-eyed kids had to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain. She wanted to show her students that an arbitrarily established difference could separate them and pit them against each other. ", Dean Weaver, 70, superintendent of Riceville schools from 1972 to 1979, said, "She'd just go ahead and do things. In doing the research for my book with scores of peoples who were participants in the experiment, I reached out to Elliott. When the blue-eyed group saw that the brown-eyed group was going to be seated first, some became upset. 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. "The browneyed people are the better people in this room," Elliott began. "They shot that King yesterday. All rights reserved. The students started to internalize, and accept, the characteristics they'd been arbitrarily assigned based on the color of their eyes. 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. Elliott and I were sitting at her dining room table. Racism is not genetical. The video . If this arbitrary division that Elliott enforced for a few hours created so many problems in this classroom, whats happening on a larger scale? When you read about this experiment, its hard not to question labels. In 1968 after Martin Luther King was assassinated the United States was in turmoil. 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. Select from the 0 categories from which you would like to receive articles. The experiment known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. ", Absolutely not. Knowing that her experiment would have consequences, Jane remained committed to her course. 5/21/2020 Topic: Module 2 Discussion: The episode features with new footage of the students, who are now adults. With this experiment she wanted to let the blue-eyed people (white people) feel how it is to be in low power position. The exercise is "an inoculation against racism," she says. The brown-eyed children didnt want to play with the blue-eyes during recess.

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