January 1, 2003. I felt mad. "No person of any age [was] going to leave my presence with those attitudes unchallenged," Elliott said. 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. On the "Tonight Show" Carson broke the ice by spoofing Elliott's rural roots. The kids in the bottom group became timider and kept to themselves. March 26, 1985. The contents of Exploring Your Mind are for informational and educational purposes only. We use them to divide and destroy people., On Understanding The Different Ways We Treat Other Races, Philip Zimbardo (Biography + Experiments). Not only were they fewer in numbers, but the authority figure was against them. The empathy she works to inspire in students with the experiment, which has been modified over the years, is necessary, she said. In a grassy front yard down the block is a hand-lettered sign: "Glads for Sale, 3 for $1." After recess that day, the brown-eyed children complained that they were . Back in the classroom, Elliott's experiment had taken on a life of its own. 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. Website. She told the kids that blue-eyed children weren't as good as brown-eyed or green-eyed ones. She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. She described to her colleagues what she'd done, remarking how several of her slower kids with brown eyes had transformed themselves into confident leaders of the class. She split the class in two categories, according to eye color, and told the children that one group was superior to the others. Jane Elliott, one of the most controversial figures in U.S. education and diversity training, began her journey to international acclaim in Riceville, Iowa. [online] Today I Found Out. Jane Elliott is 84 years old, a tiny woman with white hair, wire-rim glasses and little patience. In the documentary, she said that she conducted the original blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment to make a positive change. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? (2013). Jane Elliott, Creator of the "Blue/Brown Eyes" Experiment, Says Racism Is Easy To Fix. As for the criticism that the exercise encourages children to distrust authority figuresthe teacher lies, then recants the lies and maintains they were justified because of a greater goodshe says she worked hard to rebuild her students' trust. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. Elliott? The American Psychologists Principles and code of conduct state that in cases of deception, experimenters should take into consideration the potential harmful effects to participants. Ms. Elliott, now 87, said she started teaching about racism on April 5, 1968 the day after the Rev. The latter felt discriminated against by the other brown-eyed children. The ethical concerns arising from the experiment are consent and deception. Although Jane Elliot's intentions were to teach the youngsters about racism, ethical issues related to the simulation were raised. In the most uncomfortable moments, Elliott reminds the students of violent acts caused by racism or homophobia. (2022, Apr 06). 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. ", That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. "Maybe the way to sell the exercise would have been to invite the parents in, to talk about what she'd be doing. "Do blue-eyed people remember what they've been taught?" Role Theory: Expectations, Identities, and Behaviors. Right off the bat, she picked me out of the room and called me Barbie, Pasicznyk told me. 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 . This time, the participants werent a bunch of elementary school children they were young adults. In 1970, Elliott would come to national attention when ABC broadcast their Eye of the Storm documentary which filmed the experiment in action. But the protests happening now have given her hope. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise continues to be relevant. ", Then, the inevitable: "Hey, Mrs. Elliott, how come you're the teacher if you've got blue eyes?" "I know who she is. These initial criticisms didnt stop Elliott. They didnt need to engage with a single Black person. That's what it feels like when you're discriminated against.". At recess, three brown-eyed girls ganged up on her. 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. "There's a sense of renewal here that I've never seen anywhere else," Elliott says. She has . Not everyone appreciated Elliotts exercise. 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. Throughout the day, Elliott continued to give the children with blue eyes special treatment. This is the phrase that inspired one of the most well-known experiments in education. Additionally, the brown-eyed students got to sit in the front of the class, while the blue-eyed kids . "The browneyed people are the better people in this room," Elliott began. The musical is about romance, but it integrates issues of race and discrimination (Norris, 2014), and the song is about how discrimination is taught carefully, in long term. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. (In later versions of the exercise, children in the inferior group were given collars to wear.). On the first day, she told the children with blue eyes they were superior: smarter and more well-behaved than the children with brown eyes. In her article, Peggy McIntosh compares the "white privilege" to an invisible set of unearned rewards and . All rights reserved. And the exercise continued in a similar fashion to how it was executed the day before. Thats just the way blue-eyed kids were, Elliott told the students. To get her points across, Elliott hurled insults at workshop participants, particularly those who were white and had blue eyes. The story was then picked up by the Associated Press. The results are mixed. When my grandchildren are old enough, I'd give anything if you'd try the exercise out on them. In 1968, schoolteacher Jane Elliott decided to divide her classroom into students with blue eyes and students with brown eyes. It also shows how arbitrary and subjective things can turn friends, family members, and citizens against each other. 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 . From the moment the experiment begins, Jane Elliott uses a mean tone to speak to the participants. However, the study shows some bias in the sample size and race of participants. The people of riceville did not exactly welcome Elliott home from New York with a hayride. These differences lead to war and hate. THE ANGRY EYE , a 35-minute video, features Jane Elliott conducting her Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed exercise with college students. Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa. "On an airplane, it is," Elliott said to appreciative laughter from the studio audience. The secretary on duty looked up, startled, as if she had just seen a ghost. 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. She told them brown-eyed . "Let me look at you," Elliott said. It makes you proud. See Page 1. "Why?" "If this ugly change, if this negative change can happen this quickly, why can't positive change happen that quickly? Decent Essays. This procedure is sometimes so subtle that no one notices it happening. Racism is not genetical. Some guidelines for avoiding or reducing this effect are: In conclusion, Jane Elliotts experiment demonstrates the fragility of coexistence and cooperation. 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. "She could get kids to do anything she wanted them to," he says of Elliott. [White people] on the other hand, don't have to understand them. 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. 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. "You know, sweetheart, you haven't changed one bit. "How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" Ethics + Religion; Health; Politics + Society; . "She got carried away by this possession she developed over human beings. "Malinda? "This here is Jane Elliott," I said. SpeedyPaper.com 2023 All rights reserved. She slumped. I felt mad. You must get the parents first. Elliott was not. Jane Elliott has done a lot of reflection about the consequences of the minimal group experiment. Your Privacy Rights We walked into the principal's office at RicevilleElementary School, Elliott's old haunt. "You can see the look on their faces. ", We stopped on Woodlawn Avenue, and a woman in her mid-40s approached us on the sidewalk. Their response is to create dichotomies of inferiority and superiority. Jane Elliott's experiment of dividing an otherwise homogenous group of school kids by their eye color. Unfortunately, you cant copy samples. 980 Words. Essay Sample: Ethical Concerns in Jane Elliot's Experiment. Solve your problem differently! Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? They were forced to sit on the back rows and had to use a . Even family members can turn against each other if some authority suddenly decides that those differences are a problem. On the morning of april 5, 1968, a Friday, Steven Armstrong stepped into Jane Elliott's third-grade classroom in Riceville, Iowa. ", When I met Elliott in 2003, she hadn't been back to Riceville in 12 years. Much like the Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment where students were divided by either being the jailer or the jailed. It also documents small-town White America's reflex reaction to the . "Well, what do you expect from him, Mrs. Elliott," a brown-eyed student said as a blue-eyed student got an arithmetic problem wrong. This was intentional. Order from one of our vetted writers instead, First name should have at least 2 letters, Phone number should have at least 10 digits, Free Essay with a Response to Cross Words by UIW President Louis Agnese, How Does Donald Duk View His Chinese Heritage? She was 10 before the farmhouse had running water and electricity. All 28 children found their desks, and Elliott said she had something special for them to do, to begin to understand the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. the day before. The 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. She left teaching in the mid-80s to speak publicly about the experience and the impact of prejudice and racism. Copyright 20102023, The Conversation Media Group Ltd. ", We backed out. Elliott asked. She would conduct the exercise for the nine more years she taught the third grade, and the next eight years she taught seventh and eighth graders before giving up teaching in Riceville, in 1985, largely to conduct the eye-color exercise for groups outside the school. Elliott championed the experiment as an inoculation against racism., [The Conversations Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. The demonstration has since been taught by generations of teachers to millions of kids across the country. You give them something nice and they just wreck it." Kellen Castineiras PSY Dr. Gail C. Flanagan February 6, 2022. . Let's just move on. That's not true. Brown-eyed people. The act of treating students differently was obviously a metaphor for the social decisions made on a larger level. 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. . She decided to continue the exercise with her students after lunch. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 was also an event that spurred educators to action, motivating one teacher to try out a bold experiment touted to reduce racism. The blue-eyed participants faced discrimination for two and a half hours. She learned that the responses from the children were negative and more generalized about what they thought about black people. You have the right color eyes!. To back up my statement Bloom (2005) says Jane Elliott's blue-eyes brown-eyes exercise encouraged children to mistrust authority figures. 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. ", 2023 Smithsonian Magazine one girl asked. The video . The results were the same. 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. On Friday, April 5, 1968, in Riceville, IA, a third-grade student walked . The nearest traffic light is 20 miles away. Elliott began the exercise by dividing her students by eye color. 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.

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