The goal of the minimal group paradigm is to establish subjective differences and create a climate of favoritism. Privacy Statement Elliott was even brought on The Tonight Show to talk about her experiences. Youve probably heard different versions of it. 4. The contents of Exploring Your Mind are for informational and educational purposes only. Her bold experiment to teach Iowa third graders about racial prejudice divided townspeople and thrust her onto the national stage. Introduction. 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. It brings up immediate anger and hatred. Order original essays online. Problems with this research were that it went against a lot of ethical issues. That says very plainly that you know whats happening, you know you dont want it for you. 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. 10," Elliott said. Would you like to find out? Your Privacy Rights As the morning wore on, brown-eyed kids berated their blue-eyed classmates. 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. The selection was based on the color of the eye for each group. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue . Focusing on ethics the experiment violated some of the principles and codes of conduct established by the American Psychological Association. Why are we still talking about this experiment over 50 years later? 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. She gave all of the students simple spelling and math tests two weeks before the exercise, on the days of the exercise, and after the exercise. See Page 1. "There's a sense of renewal here that I've never seen anywhere else," Elliott says. On Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN. 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. "Do blue-eyed people remember what they've been taught?" Jane Elliott's experiment of dividing an otherwise homogenous group of school kids by their eye color. You didnt understand the directions. The killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, was a seismic event, a turning point that compelled many Americans to do something and do it with urgency. Jane Elliot's experiment explains the reasons for discrimination to a small extent. 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. APA principles acknowledge that individuals rights to privacy, self-determination, and confidentiality is paramount to all psychological activities. "Hey, Mrs. Elliott," Steven yelled as he slung his books on his desk. When you read about this experiment, its hard not to question labels. At points, you are likely to feel uncomfortable. Considering all the stereotypes and prejudices that exist, what kind of damage is being done? Jane Elliott, a teacher and anti-racism activist, performed a direct experiment with the students in her classroom. When she separated the class by eye color and announced that blue-eyed children were superior, Paul Bodensteiner objected at every turn. Jane Elliott at Riceville, Iowa, Elementary School in 1968. Researchers later concluded that there was evidence that the students became less prejudiced after the study and that it was inconclusive as to whether or not the potential harm outweighed the benefits of the exercise. 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 . ", A chorus of "Yeahs" went up, and so began one of the most astonishing exercises ever conducted in an American classroom. Elliott began the exercise by dividing her students by eye color. The publication of compositions which the children had written about the experience in the local . 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 . Before proceeding with the test, she began with random questions to fully understand the children's perception of Negroes. Brown-eyed people, she told the students, are smarter, more civilized and better than blue-eyed people. (Byrnes & Kiger, 1992). Many of them noted that when they hear prejudice and discrimination from others, they wish they could whip out those collars and give them the experience they had as third graders. The secretary said the south side of the building was closed, something about waxing the hallways. "On an airplane, it is," Elliott said to appreciative laughter from the studio audience. Elliott is nothing if not stubborn. She and her husband, Darald Elliott, then a grocer, have four children, and they, too, felt a backlash. 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. They were also relevant in the 1950s when Elliott first began this work. In this article, we'll explain what happened during the experiment and discuss its consequences. They are cleaner than blue-eyed people. ", Absolutely not. Sorry, but it's not possible to copy the text due to security reasons. "Things are changing, and they're going to change rapidly if we're very, very fortunate," she said. That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. "People of other color groups seem to understand," she said. If you have ever heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy, these results may not come as a surprise. 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. 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. "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. How do you think the world would change if everyone experienced the perils and setbacks that come with prejudice and discrimination? . She says its because racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and ethnocentrism are mean and nasty. 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. Jane Elliott, Creator of the "Blue/Brown Eyes" Experiment, Says Racism Is Easy To Fix. The people and cultures already present in a place often feel threatened by new immigrants. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 prompted educator Jane Elliott to create the now-famous "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise.". 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. The blue-eyed brown-eyed experiment was conducted by Jane Elliott, a school teacher from Iowa, in which she separated blue eyed children from brown eyed children and took turns making one of the "superior" to the other. They felt superior and had the support of the authority figure (the teacher). Blue eyes, brown eyes: What Jane Elliott's famous experiment says about race 50 years on. She has made statements about the increase in hate crimes and racism in recent years. Classroom experiment. In a similar vein, Linda Seebach, a conservative columnist for the Rocky Mountain News, wrote in 2004 that Elliott was a "disgrace" and described her exercise as "sadistic," adding, "You would think that any normal person would realize that she had done an evil thing. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. 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." She was a standing-room-only speaker at hundreds of colleges and universities. In 1970, a documentary about the exercise was released. It makes you proud. Racism is not genetical. 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 searing story is a cautionary tale that examines power and privilege in and out of the classroom. Their response is to create dichotomies of inferiority and superiority. In her article, Peggy McIntosh compares the "white privilege" to an invisible set of unearned rewards and . Elliott rattled off the rules for the day, saying blue-eyed kids had to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain. Role Theory: Expectations, Identities, and Behaviors. Many educators responded by holding mandatory workshops on institutional racism and implicit bias, reforming teaching methods and lesson plans and searching for ways to amplify undersung voices. This way, she successfully created two distinct groups in her classroom: The consequences of the minimal group became evident very quickly. Back in the classroom, Elliott's experiment had taken on a life of its own. Unfortunately, you cant copy samples. SpeedyPaper website, please click below to request its removal: Liked this essay sample but need an original one? [White people] on the other hand, don't have to understand them. Everyone's tired of her. Much like the Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment where students were divided by either being the jailer or the jailed. The kids in the bottom group became timider and kept to themselves. The Associated Press followed up, quoting Elliott as saying she was "dumbfounded" by the exercise's effectiveness. A second look at the blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment that taught third-graders about racism. Everyone looked at Mrs. Elliott. The blue eyes brown eyes study was a study on group prejudice and discrimination conducted by Jane Elliot. 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 . I have brown eyes. Undeterred, Elliott tried to appeal to Pauls self-interest. The first day of the experiment she convinced the children that blue-eyed people were smarter, better and would have more priorities. Let's just move on. 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. She has since refused to answer any of my inquiries. . We dont have to learn about those who are other than white. Regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, decision making in psychology should protect individual rights and welfare to eliminate potential biases. They wouldnt be allowed second helpings for lunch. "This here is Jane Elliott," I said. She left teaching in the mid-80s to speak publicly about the experience and the impact of prejudice and racism. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? Though Jane's actions were justifiable because she was not a psychologist, her experiment cannot be replicated in the present society. SpeedyPaper.com 2023 All rights reserved. At first, she cooperated with me. 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 . "We just want to peek in," I volunteered. ", We stopped on Woodlawn Avenue, and a woman in her mid-40s approached us on the sidewalk. Ms. Elliott, now 87, said she started teaching about racism on April 5, 1968 the day after the Rev. Some people feel we can't move on when you have her out there hawking her 30-year-old experiment. One scholar asserts that it is "Orwellian" and teaches whites "self-contempt." One teacher ended up displaying the same bigotry Elliott had spent the morning trying to fight. He printed them under the headline "How Discrimination Feels." However, in this classroom, having blue-eyes had become a condition of inferiority. "They shot that King yesterday. Basically, you establish differences between a set of subjects in order to divide them into separate groups. The experiment, known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. When Elliott walked into the teachers' lounge the next Monday, several teachers got up and walked out. 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. Want a quality guarantee? Theyd have to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain. ", 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. Brown-eyed people. 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. American Psychological Association, 4. In 1970, she demonstrated it for educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth. "I think these children walked in a colored child's moccasins for a day," she was quoted as saying. The smell of the crops and loam and topsoil and manure wafted though the open door. The people of riceville did not exactly welcome Elliott home from New York with a hayride. Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER! ", Dean Weaver, 70, superintendent of Riceville schools from 1972 to 1979, said, "She'd just go ahead and do things. In 2001, Jane Elliott recordedThe Angry Eye,in which she revised and updated her experiment. ", The two hugged, and Whisenhunt had tears streaming down her cheeks. Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER! The brown-eyed students also exercised a certain level of power over the blue-eyed students when they put the armbands on them. Grey eyes are also a rare eye color. Dick DeMarsico/New York World-Telegram & the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection/PhotoQuest/Getty Images, Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images, Committee Member - MNF Research Advisory Committee, PhD Scholarship - Uncle Isaac Brown Indigenous Scholarship. Elliott was featured on nearly every national news show in America for decades. 1. Three sections were selected to be administered the simulation . How can put those little children through that exercise for a day? And they seem unable to relate the sympathy that theyre feeling for these little white children for a day to what happens to children of color in this society for a lifetime or to the fact that they are doing this to children based on skin color every day. That might have been the end of it, but a month later, Elliott says, Johnny Carson called her. Disclaimer: SpeedyPaper.com is a custom writing service that provides online on-demand writing work for assistance purposes. Jane Elliott is 84 years old, a tiny woman with white hair, wire-rim glasses and little patience. Jane Elliott, a teacher and anti-racism activist, performed a direct experiment with the students in her classroom. However, both Mary and Zeke have brown eyes. While Jane Elliot's experiment makes several assumptions, it also has some ethical concerns. To begin with, Jane Elliot's experiment involved deception in which the children were made in believing that change in eye color influence intelligence. Two students even got into a physical altercation. She traveled to corporations, banks, prisons, schools and military bases. 10 Psychological Experiments That Could Never Happen Today. Withdrawn brown-eyed kids were suddenly outgoing, some beaming with the widest smiles she had ever seen on them. She repeated the abuse with subsequent classes, and finally turned it into a fully commercial enterprise. Grasping for a scientific explanation, she ended up claiming that melanin makes eyes darker, and makes . (2022, Apr 06). I felt like hitting them if I wanted to. But Paul, one of eight siblings and the son of a dairy farmer, didnt buy Elliotts mollification. The tallest structure in Riceville is the water tower. I think it can. Elliott created the blue-eyes/brown-eyes classroom exercise in 1968 to teach students about racism. Elliott and I were sitting at her dining room table. Is it even possible today? She was a local girl and the other teachers were intimidated by her success. 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. You must get the parents first. Issues such as the right to know, the right to privacy, and informed consent. Jane Elliot's experiment involves cheating and intentional misinterpretation of facts. You can contribute to that positive change by watching the documentary. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features NFL Sunday Ticket Press Copyright . That phrase came to my mind when I watched the video, A Class Divided, about education experiment to teach stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination (Frontline, 1985 . I felt like quitting school. Jane Elliots work and experiences have made her an authority on education and anti-racism. Jane would get invited to go to Timbuktu to give a speech. She appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show five times. 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. Solve your problem differently! "Blue-eyed people sit around and do nothing. The exercise is "an inoculation against racism," she says. Jane Elliott, shown here in 2009, remains an outspoken advocate against racism. However, the study shows some bias in the sample size and race of participants. Professor Jane Elliott performed a group experiment with her students that they would never forget. "She stirs people up. (In later versions of the exercise, children in the inferior group were given collars to wear.). The arbitrary division among the students intensified over the course of the experiment, so much so that it actually ended in physical violence. "I know who she is. Stripping away the veneer of the experiment, what was left had nothing to do with race. And StanfordUniversity psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo writes in his 1979 textbook, Psychology and Life, that Elliott's "remarkable" experiment tried to show "how easily prejudiced attitudes may be formed and how arbitrary and illogical they can be." Blue-eyed students slumped in their chairs, as though . The idea was simple but profound. Weve been here before, with unsettling and disturbing results. 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. Once indoors, the brown-eyed group was then treated to coffee and doughnuts, while the blue-eyed group could only stand around and wait. ", Others have praised Elliott's exercise. Things even got violent at recess. These initial criticisms didnt stop Elliott. The test also included violation of consent in which participation of the children was made involuntarily. If this arbitrary division that Elliott enforced for a few hours created so many problems in this classroom, whats happening on a larger scale? The video . In a grassy front yard down the block is a hand-lettered sign: "Glads for Sale, 3 for $1." School ought to be about developing character, but most teachers won't touch that with a ten-foot pole.". In this photograph from Sept. 13, 1965, Black children on their way to school in New York City pass by segregationists protesting integrated busing. You've still got that same sweet smile. 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. She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. On the "Tonight Show" Carson broke the ice by spoofing Elliott's rural roots. Jane Elliott's experiment. The students started to internalize, and accept, the characteristics they'd been arbitrarily assigned based on the color of their eyes. In fact, most of the initial response was negative. The basic idea was to separate the class into two halves, students with blue eyes and those with brown. I got to have five minutes extra of recess." ", Vision and tenacity may get results, but they don't always endear a person to her neighbors. 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. "It changed my life. As a result of those divisions, you see racial discrimination or even terrorism. Even though some of the children said yes, Elliott pushed back. She has . 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. ", Elliott defends her work as a mother defends her child. The hate and discrimination that we see in adults have their origin in their upbringing. "I understand this is the first time you've flown?" The children were not aware of the experiment, and therefore they could not give their permission of involvement. "Brown-eyed people have more of that chemical in their eyes, so brown-eyed people are better than those with blue eyes," Elliott said. Why'd they shoot that King?" The Blue-Eyed/Brown-Eyed Experiment: Investigation. This bibliography was generated on Cite This For Me on Monday, March 7, 2016. "Maybe the way to sell the exercise would have been to invite the parents in, to talk about what she'd be doing. The results showed a reversal effect in which the blue-eyed students showed signs of inferiority and low self-esteem. (2010). A smart blue-eyed girl who had never had problems with multiplication tables started making mistakes. Elliott said that blue-eyed people were less intelligent and less clean. She asked the other teachers what they were doing to bring news of the King assassination into their classrooms. Some residents were furious. The students who had blue eyes were told that they were better and smarter than their inferior brown-eyed peers. 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. She wanted them to understand what discrimination felt like. Biddle, B. J. 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. Throughout the day, Elliott continued to give the children with blue eyes special treatment. ", Elliott says the role of a teacher is to enhance students' moral development. The brown-eyed children felt suddenly that they were discriminated, while the blue eyed started seeing them as inferior. 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. Folks leave their cars unlocked, keys in the ignition. Elliott's friends and family say she's tenacious, and has always had a reformer's zeal. 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." One student answers, since the day I was born. Throughout the entire experiment, Elliott leads frank conversations about race and discrimination. 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.
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