"They can't forget me," she said, "and because of who they are, they can't forgive me. You must get the parents first. Elliott? 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. Blue eyes, brown eyes: Jane Elliott's race experiment 50 years later 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. All rights reserved. She continued to conduct the exercise with her third graders. Blue-eyed children got five extra minutes of recess. 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 . At recess, three brown-eyed girls ganged up on her. Jane Elliot: Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes - UKEssays.com Racism is not genetical. She has . The blue-eyed girl apologized. "You know, sweetheart, you haven't changed one bit. One of the most famous experiments in education Jane Elliott's "blue eyes, brown eyes" separation of her third grade students to teach them about prejudice was very different from what the public was told, as revealed in this excerpt from the in-depth story about what really happened in that classroom. On the second day of the experiment, Elliott switched the childrens roles. Weve been here before, with unsettling and disturbing results. "Because we might catch something," a brown-eyed boy said. (2013). Right off the bat, she picked me out of the room and called me Barbie, Pasicznyk told me. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle . Everyone's tired of her. The experiment, known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. She told them brown-eyed . In 1970, she demonstrated it for educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth. PPT The Ethics of Using Human Participants - University of New Mexico 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 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. Although actions from the experiment show lack of respect towards subjects it has widely been recognized in the study of human behavior in social and cultural context. "It's Riceville 30 years ago. Exploring your mind Blog about psychology and philosophy. The corn grows so fast in northern Iowafrom seedling to seven-foot-high stalk in 12 weeksthat it crackles. Introduction | FRONTLINE - PBS The smell of the crops and loam and topsoil and manure wafted though the open door. 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. If you have ever heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy, these results may not come as a surprise. There are risks to those inoculations, too, but we determine that those risks are worth taking. "Maybe the way to sell the exercise would have been to invite the parents in, to talk about what she'd be doing. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. I felt like quitting school. Elliott, who is white, separated the students into two groupsthose with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. "Why?" The selection was based on the color of the eye for each group. The basic idea was to separate the class into two halves, students with blue eyes and those with brown. Exercise or Experiment-- An Account of Jane Elliott's Tenacity: A They also harassed them constantly. Elliott shared the essays with her mother, who showed them to the editor of the weekly Riceville Recorder. The Blue Eye/Brown Eye was an experiment performed by Jane Elliot in 1968 on the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Privacy Statement 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 . Proceeding with the experiment, Elliot divided the children into two groups each with nine pupils. If you had a good German name, but you had brown eyes, they threw you into the gas chamber because they thought you might be a Jewish person who was trying to pass. Though Jane's actions were justifiable because she was not a psychologist, her experiment cannot be replicated in the present society. It didnt take long for the children to turn on each other. She told her students that she had made a mistake the previous day and that brown-eyed students . 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." About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features NFL Sunday Ticket Press Copyright . Initial Reaction to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Exercise. And what she did caused an uproar. PracticalPie.com is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. On the first day, the blue-eyed students were informed that they were genetically inferior to the brown-eyed students. "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. "That's what I tried to teach, and that's what drove the other teachers crazy. Yes, the children felt angry, hurt, betrayed. In this article, we'll explain what happened during the experiment and discuss its consequences. 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. It brings up immediate anger and hatred. 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. That's what it feels like when you're discriminated against.". Jane Elliott's blue eye brown eye case study is/isn't more ethical than The blue-eyed participants faced discrimination for two and a half hours. "She taught in this school for 18 years." ( 1985-03-26) " A Class Divided " is a 1985 episode of the PBS series Frontline. Two years later, a BBC documentary captured the experiment in Elliott's classroom. Module 2 Discussion_ Are We Still Divided_ Blue Eyes_Brown Eyes_ A 3rd 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. Nevertheless, Elliott became as famous as a teacher could become in America. (2010). From Elliot's highly controversial experiment it is clear that prejudice and discrimination can only be understood through experience. Normally, blue-eyes isnt an insult. "Hey, Mrs. Elliott," Steven yelled as he slung his books on his desk. Before proceeding with the test, she began with random questions to fully understand the children's perception of Negroes. 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 basic idea was to separate the class into two halves - those with blue eyes and those with brown. 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. She slumped. In 2001, she was still trying to make a change. Mental Floss, 4. Below, . It makes you proud. "How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children," one said. 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 same experiment was also used a couple of years later with adults. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. Elliott was featured on nearly every national news show in America for decades. 9 Unethical Psychological Experiments That Actually Happened Why are we still talking about this experiment over 50 years later? 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. Most Riceville residents seem to have an opinion of Elliott, whether or not they've met her. "She stirs people up. In the most uncomfortable moments, Elliott reminds the students of violent acts caused by racism or homophobia. Jane elliots the blue eyes and brown eyes experiment - Course Hero Ethics + Religion; Health; Politics + Society; . "The browneyed people are the better people in this room," Elliott began. She wanted them to understand what discrimination felt like. Her bold experiment to teach Iowa third graders about racial prejudice divided townspeople and thrust her onto the national stage. "Brown eyes and Blue eyes" Study | sabbaila They wouldnt be allowed second helpings for lunch. 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. Issues such as the right to know, the right to privacy, and informed consent. We Are Repeating The Discrimination Experiment Every Day, Says - NPR How do you think the world would change if everyone experienced the perils and setbacks that come with prejudice and discrimination? 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 separated her all-white class of students into two groups: blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children. From the University of California Press website: The never-before-told true story of Jane Elliott and the "Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes Experiment" she made world-famous, using eye color to simulate racism. Even family members can turn against each other if some authority suddenly decides that those differences are a problem. She gave the blue-eyed students an armband so other students could more easily identify them, and then she told her class that it was a scientific fact that people with brown eyes are smarter than those with blue because their bodies had more . Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue . 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. After the exercise white college students in . When some of the . 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. All rights reserved. Order from one of our vetted writers instead. ", Elliott defends her work as a mother defends her child. 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. (Byrnes & Kiger, 1992). 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. The study also violates the American Principles of Psychologist codes of conduct making its replication or further investigation unethical. When Sarah, the Elliotts' oldest daughter, went to the girls' bathroom in junior high, she came out of a stall to see a message scrawled in red lipstick on the mirror: "Nigger lover.". Focusing on ethics the experiment violated some of the principles and codes of conduct established by the American Psychological Association. Basically, you establish differences between a set of subjects in order to divide them into separate groups. 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. (In later versions of the exercise, children in the inferior group were given collars to wear.). Having in mind that it would be difficult to explain to third graders about discrimination, she needed to be more practical so that her student could understand how discrimination and prejudice felt. Jane Elliot's experiment involves cheating and intentional misinterpretation of facts. With this experiment she wanted to let the blue-eyed people (white people) feel how it is to be in low power position. ERIC - ED300491 - Ethical and Pedagogical Issues in the Use of Not a day goes by without me thinking about it, Ms. Elliott. "This here is Jane Elliott," I said. The brown-eyed children felt suddenly that they were discriminated, while the blue eyed started seeing them as inferior. The people of riceville did not exactly welcome Elliott home from New York with a hayride. 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. Elliott is nothing if not stubborn. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue-eyed kids to wear one. Charity is humiliating because its exercised vertically and from above; solidarity is horizontal and implies mutual respect.. 4. When the exercise ended, some of the kids hugged, some cried. One even wrote a lipstick message with racial slurs. We use them to divide and destroy people., On Understanding The Different Ways We Treat Other Races, Philip Zimbardo (Biography + Experiments). 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. Thats just the way blue-eyed kids were, Elliott told the students. January 1, 2003. The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment. 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. ", The two hugged, and Whisenhunt had tears streaming down her cheeks. THE ANGRY EYE , a 35-minute video, features Jane Elliott conducting her Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed exercise with college students. Therefore when she gave the blue eyed people more freedom than the brown eyed people, the blue eyed people started feeling like kings because they thought they were better, and were treated better. It has everything to do with power.. We walked into the principal's office at RicevilleElementary School, Elliott's old haunt. You didnt understand the directions. Biddle, B. J. Thousands of educators across the United States folded the experiment into their curriculums. Fourteen years later, the students featured in The Eye of the Storm reunited and discussed their experiences with Elliott. See Page 1. 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. Blue Eyed vs Brown Eyed Experiment by Bree Elliott - Prezi Sadly, these conversations are still relevant today. What can be changed to make the blue eyes and brown eyes experiment The brown-eyed children began to act aggressive and mean towards the blue-eyed children. This paradigm helps understand the current problems related to discrimination. Separate the class into two halves - those with blue eyes and those with brown. Ethical Issues With Jane Elliott's Experiment Yes, that day was tough. She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of colors shoes. Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa. Or alternatively you may decide to keep them in ignorance of what is happening. 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. 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." Elliott started to see her own white privilege, even her own ignorance. 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? Keep me from judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins. This is a Sioux saying. You give them something nice and they just wreck it." ", A former teacher, Ruth Setka, 79, said she was perhaps the only teacher who would still talk to Elliott. I was stunned. Blue-eyed students suggested that the teacher use a yardstick to discipline brown-eyed students that misbehaved. On the second day, the roles were reversed, and those with brown eyes received special treatment, and the blue-eyed children were made to feel inferior (A Class, 2003). The fact that children are easy to manipulate into acting in a particular manner explains Jane's choice of sample. There is a way to avoid editing or writing from scratch! Undeterred, Elliott tried to appeal to Pauls self-interest. "That you, Ms. Jane Elliot's experiment explains the reasons for discrimination to a small extent.