The corn grows so fast in northern Iowafrom seedling to seven-foot-high stalk in 12 weeksthat it crackles. Most Riceville residents seem to have an opinion of Elliott, whether or not they've met her. 4 Pages. The blue-eyed participants faced discrimination for two and a half hours. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle . It's cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage. PracticalPsychology. Questioning authority The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. Students in the inferior groups were more likely to get a worse score. Ethical & Pedagogical Issues 2. She wanted them to understand what discrimination felt like. Below, . What Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? They were also relevant in the 1950s when Elliott first began this work. Role Theory: Expectations, Identities, and Behaviors. Blue-eyed students slumped in their chairs, as though . Considering all the stereotypes and prejudices that exist, what kind of damage is being done? Exploring your mind Blog about psychology and philosophy. It has since evolved into an online blog and YouTube channel providing mental health advice, tools, and academic support to individuals from all backgrounds. She appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show five times. 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. The publication of compositions which the children had written about the experience in the local . From the moment the experiment begins, Jane Elliott uses a mean tone to speak to the participants. Blue-eyed children got five extra minutes of recess. 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. This way, she successfully created two distinct groups in her classroom: The consequences of the minimal group became evident very quickly. Elliott's friends and family say she's tenacious, and has always had a reformer's zeal. 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." 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. Did they know what it was like to be discriminated against? Given the ethical concerns, will you still rely on a quasi-experimental research design as a source of information in counselling psychology? And what she did caused an uproar. Written and verified by the psychologist Francisco Roballo. 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. 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? To begin with, Jane Elliot's experiment involved deception in which the children were made in believing that change in eye color influence intelligence. The more melanin, the darker the person's eyesand the smarter the person. 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. Elliott shared the essays with her mother, who showed them to the editor of the weekly Riceville Recorder. In the most uncomfortable moments, Elliott reminds the students of violent acts caused by racism or homophobia. One of the main ones was the fact that their right to withdraw was taken away from them. That same year, Elliott was invited to the White House Conference on Children and Youth to conduct an exercise on adult educators. 1. Kellen Castineiras PSY Dr. Gail C. Flanagan February 6, 2022. . "Would you like to come on the show?" Problems with this research were that it went against a lot of ethical issues. . This meeting, along with other clips of the exercises impact on education, is featured in a PBS documentary called A Class Divided. Stripping away the veneer of the experiment, what was left had nothing to do with race. Elliott started to see her own white privilege, even her own ignorance. "We are repeating the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise on a daily basis.". The blue-eyed students, when told they were superior and offered privileges such as extra recess time, changed their behavior dramatically and their attitudes toward the children with brown eyes. All the work should be used in accordance with the appropriate policies and applicable laws. Could you?". Sign up for Politics Weekly.]. On Friday, April 5, 1968, in Riceville, IA, a third-grade student walked . 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. Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa. Elliott is nothing if not stubborn. [White people] on the other hand, don't have to understand them. "They are cleaner and they are smarter.". They gossiped about her in the hallway. . I was stunned. 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." Her class, a brown-eyed boy asked. The interaction only strengthened Elliott's resolve. ", A former teacher, Ruth Setka, 79, said she was perhaps the only teacher who would still talk to Elliott. Blue-eyed students suggested that the teacher use a yardstick to discipline brown-eyed students that misbehaved. Junior high, maybe. (2013). A columnist at a Denver newspaper called it "evil. Would you like to find out? 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. She nodded. 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. Normally, blue-eyes isnt an insult. Not only were they fewer in numbers, but the authority figure was against them. Why are we still talking about this experiment over 50 years later? More than 50 years after her famous exercise, Elliott is still fighting. she asked the children, who were white. (2010). Thats how it started, and thats how it went all day long. Jane Elliott has done a lot of reflection about the consequences of the minimal group experiment. Or alternatively you may decide to keep them in ignorance of what is happening. ", "I've never forgotten the exercise," Whisenhunt volunteered. The people of riceville did not exactly welcome Elliott home from New York with a hayride. While Jane Elliot's experiment makes several assumptions, it also has some ethical concerns. Within a few hours of starting the exercise, Elliott noticed big differences in the childrens behavior and how they treated each other. On the second day of the experiment, Elliott switched the childrens roles. See Page 1. In the early morning, dew and fog cover the acres of gently swaying stalks that surround Riceville the way water surrounds an island. Jane divided the class into 9 brown eyes and 9 blue eyes. I'm tired of hearing about her and her experiment and how everyone here is a racist. "Your son got what he deserved," the woman said. those with brown eyes (or hazel eyes). She says its because racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and ethnocentrism are mean and nasty. They are steeped in centuries of economic deprivation and cultural appropriation. Would you like to get this essay by email? Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? The exercise is "an inoculation against racism," she says. 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. 5/21/2020 Topic: Module 2 Discussion: The study also violates the American Principles of Psychologist codes of conduct making its replication or further investigation unethical. You must get the parents first. I got to have five minutes extra of recess." 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. 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. The experiment is to help the children to understand about prejudice and discrimination. . As the morning wore on, brown-eyed kids berated their blue-eyed classmates. Jane Elliott is 84 years old, a tiny woman with white hair, wire-rim glasses and little patience. 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. Elliott championed the experiment as an inoculation against racism., [The Conversations Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. She chatted about the experiment, and before she knew it was whisked off the stage. Brown-eyed people. That's not true. The searing story is a cautionary tale that examines power and privilege in and out of the classroom. Additionally, the brown-eyed students got to sit in the front of the class, while the blue-eyed kids . Jane Elliot's experiment involves cheating and intentional misinterpretation of facts. 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). One of the blue eyed even went to hit a brown eyed just for the fact that he was brown eyed. 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. The kids in the bottom group became timider and kept to themselves. Elliotts coworkers avoided her after her appearance on The Tonight Show. "This here is Jane Elliott," I said. The students initially involved wished that everyone could participate in an exercise like this. Answer (1 of 3): My guess is that is doesn't really represent racism but classism. 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. When Elliott conducted the exercise the next year, she added something extra to collect data. Three sections were selected to be administered the simulation . Jane Elliott's experiment. Hundreds of viewers wrote letters saying Elliott's work appalled them. She told them brown-eyed . Elliott said that blue-eyed people were less intelligent and less clean. To back up my statement Bloom (2005) says Jane Elliott's blue-eyes brown-eyes exercise encouraged children to mistrust authority figures. "That's what I tried to teach, and that's what drove the other teachers crazy. This time, the participants werent a bunch of elementary school children they were young adults. "It changed my life. As a journalism professor and author of a book on race that spans more than 50 years, Ive watched these developments with great concern. 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. 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. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise continues to be relevant. The same experiment was also used a couple of years later with adults. 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. 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. 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. One teacher ended up displaying the same bigotry Elliott had spent the morning trying to fight. She could feel a chasm forming between the two groups of students. Mental Floss, 4. The anti-racism sessions Elliott led were intense. She learned that the responses from the children were negative and more generalized about what they thought about black people. On the first day of the two-day experiment, Elliott told the . I think it can. It brings up immediate anger and hatred. Its goal was to demonstrate what prejudice was to her third grade class. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue-eyed kids to wear 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 experiment to demonstrate . 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. How do you think the world would change if everyone experienced the perils and setbacks that come with prejudice and discrimination? The "invisible knapsack" is an analogy for a set of invisible and not widely talked about privileges that white people possess in the society. Some people feel we can't move on when you have her out there hawking her 30-year-old experiment. The minimal group paradigm has shaped an entire methodology in social psychology. 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. Brown-eyed people, she told the students, are smarter, more civilized and better than blue-eyed people. "Because we might catch something," a brown-eyed boy said. Why do researchers use correlational studies? The first day of the experiment she convinced the children that blue-eyed people were smarter, better and would have more priorities. Classroom experiment. To get her points across, Elliott hurled insults at workshop participants, particularly those who were white and had 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. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 prompted educator Jane Elliott to create the now-famous "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise ." As a school teacher in the small town of Riceville, Iowa, Elliott first conducted the anti-racism experiment on her all-white third-grade classroom, the day after the civil rights leader was killed. "Maybe the way to sell the exercise would have been to invite the parents in, to talk about what she'd be doing. The textbook publisher McGraw-Hill has listed her on a timeline of key educators, along with Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Horace Mann, Booker T. Washington, Maria Montessori and 23 others. Would you? They needed not acknowledge their privilege or reflect on it. The episode features with new footage of the students, who are now adults. On the morning of april 5, 1968, a Friday, Steven Armstrong stepped into Jane Elliott's third-grade classroom in Riceville, Iowa. It also documents small-town White America's reflex reaction to the . Things even got violent at recess. 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. We use them to divide and destroy people., White peoples number one freedom, in the United States of America, is the freedom to be totally ignorant of those who are other than white. The Blue-Eyed/Brown-Eyed Experiment: Investigation. Two years later, a BBC documentary captured the experiment in Elliott's classroom. Elliott was shocked by the results and decided to switch the roles the following day. 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. 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? In present society, psychological experiments are guided by honesty, truthfulness, and accuracy. The results are mixed. Its not surprising to anyone that some social groups discriminate against others due to ethnicity, religion, or culture. This procedure is sometimes so subtle that no one notices it happening. What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? When the blue-eyed group saw that the brown-eyed group was going to be seated first, some became upset. Even family members can turn against each other if some authority suddenly decides that those differences are a problem. Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images This was the smaller group. In this article, we talk about leadership and female discrimination.. 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. Yes, that day was tough. I felt mad. In 1970, a documentary about the exercise was released. With this experiment she wanted to let the blue-eyed people (white people) feel how it is to be in low power position. 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 . The test also included violation of consent in which participation of the children was made involuntarily. With a couple of basic and arbitrary examples, Elliott made the case that brown-eyed people were better. Thousands of educators across the United States folded the experiment into their curriculums. A difference as simple as eye color, defined and established by the authority figure, created a rift between the students. According to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, 2010 the experiment also violates the principle of Integrity. Folks leave their cars unlocked, keys in the ignition. Sadly, these conversations are still relevant today. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features NFL Sunday Ticket Press Copyright . Professor Jane Elliott performed a group experiment with her students that they would never forget. In the documentary, she said that she conducted the original blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment to make a positive change. 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. In response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, Jane Elliott devised the controversial and startling, "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise." This, now famous, exercise labels participants as inferior or superior based solely upon the color of their eyes and exposes them to the experience of . The children said yes, and the exercise began. One scholar asserts that it is "Orwellian" and teaches whites "self-contempt." The arbitrary division among the students intensified over the course of the experiment, so much so that it actually ended in physical violence. You have the right color eyes!. Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? At points, you are likely to feel uncomfortable. 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." Ethics + Religion; Health; Politics + Society; . The video . 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." Separate the class into two halves - those with blue eyes and those with brown. 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 felt like quitting school. (In later versions of the exercise, children in the inferior group were given collars to wear.). They wouldnt be allowed second helpings for lunch. Charity is humiliating because its exercised vertically and from above; solidarity is horizontal and implies mutual respect.. I often think about Paul Bodensteiner. (Byrnes & Kiger, 1992). In 1968 after Martin Luther King was assassinated the United States was in turmoil. She pointed out flaws in a student and associated it with . Mary and Zeke have three children, all of whom have blue eyes. When Elliott first conducted the exercise in 1968, brown-eyed students were given special privileges. Blue eyes, brown eyes: What Jane Elliott's famous experiment says about race 50 years on. "I understand this is the first time you've flown?" They also harassed them constantly. The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. Their response is to create dichotomies of inferiority and superiority. 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. Back in the classroom, Elliott's experiment had taken on a life of its own. In this scenario, students are told brown-eyed people . New York: Elsevier Science. 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. "Probably because they have been taught how they're treated in this country that they have to understand us. Elliott instructed the blue-eyed kids not to play on the jungle gym or swings. She split the class in two categories, according to eye color, and told the children that one group was superior to the others. She had never met me, and she accused me in front of everyone of using my sexuality to get ahead.. Elliott asked her students to write about their experiences for the local newspaper. Days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She also made the brown-eyed students put construction paper armbands on the blue-eyed students. Children often fight, argue, and sometimes hit each other, but this time they were motivated by eye color. The fact that children are easy to manipulate into acting in a particular manner explains Jane's choice of sample. Jane Elliot and the Blue-Eyed Children Experiment. "She was an excellent school teacher, but she has a way about her," says 90-year-old Riceville native Patricia Bodenham, who has known Elliott since Jane was a baby. Today, she says, it's still playing out as the U.S. reckons with racial injustice. 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. "Malinda? Scores of others did participate. But not Elliott. Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. Elliott began the exercise by dividing her students by eye color. "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. Open Document. Cookie Policy Why Did Jane Elliott Choose Eye Color To Divide Her Students? 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. How can we teach kids to be more like him? Carson asked, grinning. It didnt take long for the children to turn on each other. "If this ugly change, if this negative change can happen this quickly, why can't positive change happen that quickly? But Elliotts experiment had a more sinister impact. In this article, we'll explain what happened during the experiment and discuss its consequences. 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. Her bold experiment to teach Iowa third graders about racial prejudice divided townspeople and thrust her onto the national stage. She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of colors shoes. She was hesitant to enroll in Elliotts workshop but was told that if she wanted to succeed as a manager, shed have to attend.