In the brown eyed/blue eyed experiment Jane Elliot told her third graders with blue eyes that they were better than the brown-eyed children. On the second day of the experiment, Elliott switched the childrens roles. It's cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage. She said she watched and was horrified at what she saw. Blue-eyed students suggested that the teacher use a yardstick to discipline brown-eyed students that misbehaved. In doing the research for my book with scores of peoples who were participants in the experiment, I reached out to Elliott. On Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, and the brown-eyed kids were told how shifty, dumb and lazy theywere. I interviewed Julie Pasicznyk, who had been working for US West, a giant telecommunications company in Minneapolis. There is a way to avoid editing or writing from scratch! A smart blue-eyed girl who had never had problems with multiplication tables started making mistakes. (She prefers the term "exercise.") "Things are changing, and they're going to change rapidly if we're very, very fortunate," she said. ", A former teacher, Ruth Setka, 79, said she was perhaps the only teacher who would still talk to Elliott. ( 1985-03-26) " A Class Divided " is a 1985 episode of the PBS series Frontline. Traditionally, society has always treated leadership as a male issue. Children with brown eyes were forced to wear armbands that made it easy for people to see that they had brown eyes. Jane Elliott has done a lot of reflection about the consequences of the minimal group experiment. Before proceeding with the test, she began with random questions to fully understand the children's perception of Negroes. Problems with this research were that it went against a lot of ethical issues. [White people] on the other hand, don't have to understand them. Outside, rows of corn stretched to the horizon. When she went downtown to do errands, she heard whispers. Theyd have to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain. And the exercise continued in a similar fashion to how it was executed the day before. Jane Elliott's Blue-Eyed versus Brown-Eyed Students experiment was conducted to determine whether racism was a learned characteristic. While Jane Elliot's experiment makes several assumptions, it also has some ethical concerns. 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. Mental Floss, 4. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? "Because we might catch something," a brown-eyed boy said. What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? Now 45, she had been in Elliott's third grade class in 1969. Shermer and Bloom discuss: "Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes" Jane Elliott famous racism experiment reactions to it (in the classroom, locally, nationally, internationally) whether the "experiment" was really more of a demonstration public interest, from Johnny Carson to Oprah Winfrey the questionable ethics of the experiment what it reveals about tribalism, racism . January 1, 2003. Charity is humiliating because its exercised vertically and from above; solidarity is horizontal and implies mutual respect.. On the first day of the two-day experiment, Elliott told the . 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. All rights reserved. Junior high, maybe. Considering all the stereotypes and prejudices that exist, what kind of damage is being done? 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 empathy she works to inspire in students with the experiment, which has been modified over the years, is necessary, she said. ", Elliott defends her work as a mother defends her child. The brown-eyed children felt suddenly that they were discriminated, while the blue eyed started seeing them as inferior. ", We stopped on Woodlawn Avenue, and a woman in her mid-40s approached us on the sidewalk. They don't replace the diagnosis, advice, or treatment of a professional. . The results showed a . ", The two hugged, and Whisenhunt had tears streaming down her cheeks. 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 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. Elliott, who is white, separated the students into two groupsthose with blue eyes and those 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. The latter felt discriminated against by the other brown-eyed children. Grasping for a scientific explanation, she ended up claiming that melanin makes eyes darker, and makes . Jane Elliott, a teacher and anti-racism activist, performed a direct experiment with the students in her classroom. The Blue Eye/Brown Eye was an experiment performed by Jane Elliot in 1968 on the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. They all either smiled or laughed and nodded.". Danko, M. (2013). Sign up for Politics Weekly.]. Separate the class into two halves - those with blue eyes and those with brown. Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER! Many critics that the children were too young to understand the exercise. "Why?" "Well, what do you expect from him, Mrs. Elliott," a brown-eyed student said as a blue-eyed student got an arithmetic problem wrong. We have to let people find out how it feels to be on the receiving end of that which we dish out so readily.". Stripping away the veneer of the experiment, what was left had nothing to do with race. 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. (2013). ", "I've never forgotten the exercise," Whisenhunt volunteered. She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. The test violated the principle of respect for people's rights and dignity. That same year, Elliott was invited to the White House Conference on Children and Youth to conduct an exercise on adult educators. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. ", When I met Elliott in 2003, she hadn't been back to Riceville in 12 years. Elliott began the exercise by dividing her students by eye color. The brown-eyed children didnt want to play with the blue-eyes during recess. Sadly, these conversations are still relevant today. Yes, that day was tough. Decent Essays. Things even got violent at recess. "People of other color groups seem to understand," she said. 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. The video . "We are repeating the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise on a daily basis.". Elliott? The more melanin, the darker the person's eyesand the smarter the person. How do you think the world would change if everyone experienced the perils and setbacks that come with prejudice and discrimination? "I know who she is. "It's Riceville 30 years ago. Multi-Problem Adolescents: An Increasing Problem, Professor Jane Elliott performed a group experiment, the current problems related to discrimination. Mental Sandboxes and Their Usefulness in Today's World, The Law of Reversed Effort: When Taking Action Isn't the Best Option. Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER! From the moment the experiment begins, Jane Elliott uses a mean tone to speak to the participants. Issues such as the right to know, the right to privacy, and informed consent. Right off the bat, she picked me out of the room and called me Barbie, Pasicznyk told me. Scores of others did participate. The Blue-Eyed/Brown-Eyed Experiment: Investigation. Before she could answer, another boy piped up: "If she didn't have blue eyes, she'd be the principal or the superintendent.". Not everyone appreciated Elliotts exercise. 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 Elliott, an educator and anti-racism activist, first conducted her blue eyes/brown eyes exercise in her third-grade classroom in Iowa in 1968. 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." Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Jane Elliott's Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes experiment was a turning point in social psychology. Elliott was even brought on The Tonight Show to talk about her experiences. She pointed out flaws in a student and associated it with . Nobodys standing here. When you read about this experiment, its hard not to question labels. Why was the Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment considered unethical in psychology? Still, Elliott said the last few years have brought out America's worst racist tendencies. This time, the participants werent a bunch of elementary school children they were young adults. . Two years later, a BBC documentary captured the experiment in Elliott's classroom. Consequently, the brown-eyed children started using blue-eyes as an insult. . This meeting, along with other clips of the exercises impact on education, is featured in a PBS documentary called A Class Divided. Or alternatively you may decide to keep them in ignorance of what is happening. Order from one of our vetted writers instead. You can contribute to that positive change by watching the documentary. In Zimbardo's experiment the conditions were much more controlled for later study but the r. ABC broadcast a documentary about her work. What Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? However, the study shows some bias in the sample size and race of participants. A columnist at a Denver newspaper called it "evil. Blue Eyed versus Brown Eyed Students Jane Elliott was not a psychologist, but she developed one of the most famously controversial exercises in 1968 by dividing students into a blue-eyed group and . She believed that experience was the only way her students could understand how it felt like to be discriminated. "I think these children walked in a colored child's moccasins for a day," she was quoted as saying. In this article, we'll explain what happened during the experiment and discuss its consequences. Questioning authority The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. Racism is not genetical. "Not one of them reprimanded her for that or even corrected her. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. The tallest structure in Riceville is the water tower. 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. 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. It is a must . Why Did Jane Elliott Choose Eye Color To Divide Her Students? See Page 1. Kids on top would tease the children who were deemed as the inferior group. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. 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 exercise is "an inoculation against racism," she says. In 1970, she demonstrated it for educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth. The next day when the tables were turned, "I felt like quitting school. ISBN 9780520382268. At lunchtime, Elliott hurried to the teachers' lounge. "Eye color, hair color and skin color are caused by a chemical," Elliott went on, writing MELANIN on the blackboard. 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. 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. Elliott flew to the NBC studio in New York City. 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. 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. She then told them that the children with blue eyes were inherently inferior to the children with brown . As a journalism professor and author of a book on race that spans more than 50 years, Ive watched these developments with great concern. One student answers, since the day I was born. Throughout the entire experiment, Elliott leads frank conversations about race and discrimination. Thus, the dominant group, supported by the authorities, will always have the upper hand. 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. 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. Malinda Whisenhunt? Essay Sample: Ethical Concerns in Jane Elliot's Experiment. Elliott reminded them that the reason for the lesson was the King assassination, and she asked them to write down what they had learned. Jane Elliott's experiment. You should be happy! I think it can. Locals say that drivers don't signal when they turn because everyone knows where everyone else is going. That might have been the end of it, but a month later, Elliott says, Johnny Carson called her. 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. A second look at the blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment that taught third-graders about racism. 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. This procedure is sometimes so subtle that no one notices it happening. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? Elliott asked her students to write about their experiences for the local newspaper. The Associated Press followed up, quoting Elliott as saying she was "dumbfounded" by the exercise's effectiveness. Knowing that her experiment would have consequences, Jane remained committed to her course. Regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, decision making in psychology should protect individual rights and welfare to eliminate potential biases. Brian, the Elliotts' oldest son, got beaten up at school, and Jane called the ringleader's, mother. I have brown eyes. The subjects were 164 students enrolled in eight sections of an introductory elementary education course at a state university. 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. Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. The people of riceville did not exactly welcome Elliott home from New York with a hayride. Elliott was featured on nearly every national news show in America for decades. Solve your problem differently! One of the blue eyed even went to hit a brown eyed just for the fact that he was brown eyed. Words are the most powerful weapon devised by humankind. Brown-eyed people. 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 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. In explaining the experiment rules to the brown-eyed contestants, she addresses the people of color in the room. "This here is Jane Elliott," I said. 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 . Children often fight, argue, and sometimes hit each other, but this time they were motivated by eye color. The experiment was to be a division of eye colour starting with blue eyed student having superiority and then the following day, the roles would be reversed. She and her husband, Darald Elliott, then a grocer, have four children, and they, too, felt a backlash. 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. There were more brown-eyed students in the room. Need an original essay on Essay Sample: Ethical Concerns in Jane Elliot's Experiment? If you are the original author of this essay and no longer wish to have it published on the It has since evolved into an online blog and YouTube channel providing mental health advice, tools, and academic support to individuals from all backgrounds. You can start from that point in Activity 2, or you can play the video from the beginning (00:00) so that your students can see civil rights era footage following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as Elliott's students returning to Iowa . Thousands of educators across the United States folded the experiment into their curriculums. Blue-eyed people would get 5 extra minutes on the playground and blue-eyed people could not talk to brown-eyed people. Typical of their responses was that of Debbie Hughes, who reported that "the people in Mrs. Elliott's room who had brown eyes got to discriminate against the people who had blue eyes. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. In the most uncomfortable moments, Elliott reminds the students of violent acts caused by racism or homophobia. The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment. Their response is to create dichotomies of inferiority and superiority. With this experiment she wanted to let the blue-eyed people (white people) feel how it is to be in low power position. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue-eyed kids to wear one. 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. Throughout the day, Elliott continued to give the children with blue eyes special treatment. "They are cleaner and they are smarter.". I felt mad. The second day, Elliott reversed the groups. I felt like quitting school. But not Elliott. She chatted about the experiment, and before she knew it was whisked off the stage. 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. The nearest traffic light is 20 miles away. Disclaimer: SpeedyPaper.com is a custom writing service that provides online on-demand writing work for assistance purposes. They were also relevant in the 1950s when Elliott first began this work. Why do researchers use correlational studies? Everyone looked at Mrs. Elliott. Jane Elliott (ne Jennison; born on November 30, 1933) is an American diversity educator.As a schoolteacher, she became known for her "Blue eyes/Brown eyes" exercise, which she first conducted with her third-grade class on April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. "The browneyed people are the better people in this room," Elliott began. Jane Elliott, Creator of the "Blue/Brown Eyes" Experiment, Says Racism Is Easy To Fix. The results are mixed. She began this work in "I don't think this community was ready for what she did," he said. It is sometimes cited as a landmark of social science. They were forced to sit on the back rows and had to use a . Sorry, but it's not possible to copy the text due to security reasons. Ethical & Pedagogical Issues 2. 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. The blue-eyed girl apologized. In the documentary, she said that she conducted the original blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment to make a positive change. Today, she says, it's still playing out as the U.S. reckons with racial injustice. She had never met me, and she accused me in front of everyone of using my sexuality to get ahead.. "I think third grade was too young for what she did. In present society, psychological experiments are guided by honesty, truthfulness, and accuracy. Perhaps because the outcome seemed so optimistic and comforting, coverage of Elliott and the experiments alleged curative powers cropped up everywhere. Elliot wanted to show that the same thing happens in real life with brown eyed people (minority). Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. In 1968, schoolteacher Jane Elliott decided to divide her classroom into students with blue eyes and students with brown eyes. 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. THE ANGRY EYE , a 35-minute video, features Jane Elliott conducting her Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed exercise with college students. The episode features with new footage of the students, who are now adults. She was a standing-room-only speaker at hundreds of colleges and universities. At this point you may wish to tell the pupils that you are conducting an "experiment" to look at what prejudice is. Not only were they fewer in numbers, but the authority figure was against them. "We give our children shots to inoculate them against polio and smallpox, to protect them against the realities in the future. As the morning wore on, brown-eyed kids berated their blue-eyed classmates. Jane divided the class into 9 brown eyes and 9 blue eyes. Jane Elliott, shown here in 2009, remains an outspoken advocate against racism. 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 demonstration has since been taught by generations of teachers to millions of kids across the country. If you have ever heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy, these results may not come as a surprise. The publication of compositions which the children had written about the experience in the local . 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. One even wrote a lipstick message with racial slurs. 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. Would you like to find out? These differences lead to war and hate. 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? We walked into the principal's office at RicevilleElementary School, Elliott's old haunt. She repeated the abuse with subsequent classes, and finally turned it into a fully commercial enterprise. And you'll always have it. "You can see the look on their faces. That's not true. Proceeding with the experiment, Elliot divided the children into two groups each with nine pupils. She also assumed that none of the children had interacted with black people and that the only place they could have seen them is on television. She asked the other teachers what they were doing to bring news of the King assassination into their classrooms. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise received national attention shortly after it ended. According to role theorist Erving Goffman, emotional and cognitive experiences in such experiments as the Blue-Eyed versus the Brown-Eyed can have a long-term influence on behaviors and attitudes of participants especially when they are made to play the role of a stigmatized group (Biddle, 2013). Society made them believe they were better than other people for arbitrary reasons such as skin color or gender. Introduction. "That's what I tried to teach, and that's what drove the other teachers crazy. 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 .