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 . At the time, she was a third-grade . Fourteen years later, the students featured in The Eye of the Storm reunited and discussed their experiences with Elliott. In 1968 after Martin Luther King was assassinated the United States was in turmoil. Elliot's approach to the experiment involved creativity in which the pupils' age and ability to comprehend discrimination was taken into account. Jane Elliot's experiment explains the reasons for discrimination to a small extent. For many, the experiment went horribly awry. These initial criticisms didnt stop Elliott. 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 . Elliott, who is white, separated the students into two groupsthose with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. 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. . 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. (In later versions of the exercise, children in the inferior group were given collars to wear.). Much like the Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment where students were divided by either being the jailer or the jailed. If you are the original author of this essay and no longer wish to have it published on the She was 10 before the farmhouse had running water and electricity. Brown-eyed people, she told the students, are smarter, more civilized and better than blue-eyed people. She has . This meeting, along with other clips of the exercises impact on education, is featured in a PBS documentary called A Class Divided. 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. The blue-eyed participants faced discrimination for two and a half hours. ", We backed out. They felt superior and had the support of the authority figure (the teacher). . Sorry, but it's not possible to copy the text due to security reasons. Scores of others did participate. 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. 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. "I think these children walked in a colored child's moccasins for a day," she was quoted as saying. This procedure is sometimes so subtle that no one notices it happening. Jane Elliots work and experiences have made her an authority on education and anti-racism. The blue eyes brown eyes study was a study on group prejudice and discrimination conducted by Jane Elliot. That says very plainly that you know whats happening, you know you dont want it for you. "Well, what do you expect from him, Mrs. Elliott," a brown-eyed student said as a blue-eyed student got an arithmetic problem wrong. Two students even got into a physical altercation. One of the main ones was the fact that their right to withdraw was taken away from them. 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. I'm tired of hearing about her and her experiment and how everyone here is a racist. Issues such as the right to know, the right to privacy, and informed consent. The Brown Eyed / Blue Eyed Experiment. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. 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. Jane Elliott, shown here in 2009, remains an outspoken advocate against racism. "It changed my life. That might have been the end of it, but a month later, Elliott says, Johnny Carson called her. Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? However, the study shows some bias in the sample size and race of participants. 10 Psychological Experiments That Could Never Happen Today. The test violated the principle of respect for people's rights and dignity. ", We stopped on Woodlawn Avenue, and a woman in her mid-40s approached us on the sidewalk. Sign up for Politics Weekly.]. Blue-eyed people would get 5 extra minutes on the playground and blue-eyed people could not talk to brown-eyed people. Jane Elliott, one of the most controversial figures in U.S. education and diversity training, began her journey to international acclaim in Riceville, Iowa. It has since evolved into an online blog and YouTube channel providing mental health advice, tools, and academic support to individuals from all backgrounds. 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. In 1970, Elliott would come to national attention when ABC broadcast their Eye of the Storm documentary which filmed the experiment in action. Jane Elliot and the Blue-Eyed Children Experiment. She believed that experience was the only way her students could understand how it felt like to be discriminated. In this article, we talk about leadership and female discrimination.. Kids on top would tease the children who were deemed as the inferior group. Not a day goes by without me thinking about it, Ms. Elliott. Many critics that the children were too young to understand the exercise. ", Dean Weaver, 70, superintendent of Riceville schools from 1972 to 1979, said, "She'd just go ahead and do things. A columnist at a Denver newspaper called it "evil. From the moment the experiment begins, Jane Elliott uses a mean tone to speak to the participants. 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. On the second day of the experiment, Elliott switched the childrens roles. She has made statements about the increase in hate crimes and racism in recent years. (Byrnes & Kiger, 1992). The experiment is to help the children to understand about prejudice and discrimination. [White people] on the other hand, don't have to understand them. In the documentary, she said that she conducted the original blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment to make a positive change. 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 people of riceville did not exactly welcome Elliott home from New York with a hayride. Regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, decision making in psychology should protect individual rights and welfare to eliminate potential biases. Not only were they fewer in numbers, but the authority figure was against them. Solve your problem differently! Yet what Elliott did continues to stir controversy. In Jane Elliott's experiment she made the third graders believe that the blue eyed people were better,than the brown eyed people. When the blue-eyed group saw that the brown-eyed group was going to be seated first, some became upset. When you read about this experiment, its hard not to question labels. They were also relevant in the 1950s when Elliott first began this work. Hundreds of viewers wrote letters saying Elliott's work appalled them. SpeedyPaper.com 2023 All rights reserved. The ethical concerns arising from the experiment are consent and deception. Cookie Policy 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. ", That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. Children often fight, argue, and sometimes hit each other, but this time they were motivated by eye color. When the exercise ended, some of the kids hugged, some cried. It's the Jane Elliott machine. She left teaching in the mid-80s to speak publicly about the experience and the impact of prejudice and 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. The searing story is a cautionary tale that examines power and privilege in and out of the classroom. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue-eyed kids to wear one. 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 . "Blue-eyed people sit around and do nothing. The brown-eyed children felt suddenly that they were discriminated, while the blue eyed started seeing them as inferior. Select from the 0 categories from which you would like to receive articles. "No person of any age [was] going to leave my presence with those attitudes unchallenged," Elliott said. She was hesitant to enroll in Elliotts workshop but was told that if she wanted to succeed as a manager, shed have to attend. She told the students that the brown-eyed children were inferior and repeated the experiment. Why do researchers use correlational studies? When my grandchildren are old enough, I'd give anything if you'd try the exercise out on them. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. If brown-eyed children made a mistake, Elliott would call out the mistake and attribute it to the students brown eyes. 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. But Elliotts experiment had a more sinister impact. One student answers, since the day I was born. Throughout the entire experiment, Elliott leads frank conversations about race and discrimination. "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. 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. 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. Withdrawn brown-eyed kids were suddenly outgoing, some beaming with the widest smiles she had ever seen on them. 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. 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 . On the first day, the blue-eyed students were informed that they were genetically inferior to the brown-eyed students. Ms. Elliott, now 87, said she started teaching about racism on April 5, 1968 the day after the Rev. The people and cultures already present in a place often feel threatened by new immigrants. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? They gossiped about her in the hallway. 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. Your Privacy Rights Weve been here before, with unsettling and disturbing results. Subsequently the brown-eyed children stopped objecting, even when Miss Elliott and the blue-eyed kids chastised and bullied them. 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? When some of the . This bibliography was generated on Cite This For Me on Monday, March 7, 2016. Thats what it feels like when youre discriminated against., -A child participant in the Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes experiment-. In 1970, a documentary about the exercise was released. Elliott instructed the blue-eyed kids not to play on the jungle gym or swings. Problems with this research were that it went against a lot of ethical issues. It was typical of Elliott's blunt styleno "Good morning," no small talk. Terms of Use 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.". The brown-eyed students also exercised a certain level of power over the blue-eyed students when they put the armbands on them. 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. Junior high, maybe. "The browneyed people are the better people in this room," Elliott began. 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. 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. That same year, Elliott was invited to the White House Conference on Children and Youth to conduct an exercise on adult educators. Jane Elliot's 'The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment' was unethical in that she created a segregated environment in a third grade classroom. "How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" Society made them believe they were better than other people for arbitrary reasons such as skin color or gender. The Blue Eyes & Brown Eyes Exercise. On the first day of the two-day experiment, Elliott told the . Delivery in 6+ hours! Written and verified by the psychologist Francisco Roballo. 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. That got the other teachers angry. "Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior, but white children, there's no way they could possibly understand it. Below, . "He's a bluey! Blue-eyed children got five extra minutes of recess. Could you?". To this day, at the age of 86, Jane Elliott continues this work. Jane Elliott's Blue-Eyed versus Brown-Eyed Students experiment was conducted to determine whether racism was a learned characteristic. "We'll just be a couple of minutes. To most people, it seemed to suggest that racism could be reduced, even eliminated, by a one- or two-day exercise. 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. 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. She asked her students, who were all white, whether or not they knew what it felt like to be judged by the color of their skin. Most Riceville residents seem to have an opinion of Elliott, whether or not they've met her. "Not one of them reprimanded her for that or even corrected her. 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. The documentary has become a popular teaching tool among teachers, business owners, and even employees at correctional facilities. 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. In this documentary, Jane Elliott, a third grade teacher divided her class into two groups based on their eye color; one group had blue eyes and the other had brown eyes. One of the blue eyed even went to hit a brown eyed just for the fact that he was brown eyed. The experiment, known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. ", 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. What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? Traditionally, society has always treated leadership as a male issue. The fact that children are easy to manipulate into acting in a particular manner explains Jane's choice of sample. She asked the other teachers what they were doing to bring news of the King assassination into their classrooms. The blue-eyed participants faced discrimination for two and a half hours. She then told them that the children with blue eyes were inherently inferior to the children with brown . When Elliott walked into the teachers' lounge the next Monday, several teachers got up and walked out. The same experiment was also used a couple of years later with adults. ", A chorus of "Yeahs" went up, and so began one of the most astonishing exercises ever conducted in an American classroom. Within a few hours of starting the exercise, Elliott noticed big differences in the childrens behavior and how they treated each other. She was a standing-room-only speaker at hundreds of colleges and universities. Elliott shared the essays with her mother, who showed them to the editor of the weekly Riceville Recorder. Locals say that drivers don't signal when they turn because everyone knows where everyone else is going. The brown-eyed children didnt want to play with the blue-eyes during recess. 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. Biddle, B. J. 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. As a journalism professor and author of a book on race that spans more than 50 years, Ive watched these developments with great concern. Elliott? 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 . Even family members can turn against each other if some authority suddenly decides that those differences are a problem. One even wrote a lipstick message with racial slurs. The video . 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. Everyone's tired of her. I felt mad. Jane divided the class into 9 brown eyes and 9 blue eyes. Before proceeding with the test, she began with random questions to fully understand the children's perception of Negroes. Blue-eyed people. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. The next day, Elliott reversed the roles. 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. The subjects were 164 students enrolled in eight sections of an introductory elementary education course at a state university. The kids in the bottom group became timider and kept to themselves. It brings up immediate anger and hatred. It makes you proud. (2013). "It would be hard to know, wouldn't it, unless we actually experienced discrimination ourselves. Elliott began the exercise by dividing her students by eye color. Given the long-term results of the experiment, the controversial study could not have taken place in today's society despite its significant insights on matters racism. THE ANGRY EYE , a 35-minute video, features Jane Elliott conducting her Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed exercise with college students. The first thing that Jane Elliott did was divide the children into groups: those with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. These differences lead to war and hate. SYNOPSIS OF BLUE EYED. 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. Students in the inferior groups were more likely to get a worse score. Though Jane's actions were justifiable because she was not a psychologist, her experiment cannot be replicated in the present society. And our number two freedom is the freedom to deny that were ignorant., I want every white person in this room who would be happy to be treated as this society in general treats our citizens, our black citizens, if you, as a white person, would be happy to receive the same treatment that our black citizens do in this society, please stand. Sadly, these conversations are still relevant today. It occurs to me that for a teacher, the arrival of new students at the start of each school year has a lot in common with the return of crops each summer. They didnt need to engage with a single Black person. Pasicznyk joined 75 other employees for a training session in the companys suburban Denver headquarters in the late 1980s. Throughout the investigation, the classroom represented a real-life scenario in which the unprivileged and minority members of the society are treated as out-groups making them susceptible to discrimination. The study also violates the American Principles of Psychologist codes of conduct making its replication or further investigation unethical. "If this ugly change, if this negative change can happen this quickly, why can't positive change happen that quickly? Stripping away the veneer of the experiment, what was left had nothing to do with race. "It's the same thing over and over again," Cross says. She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of colors shoes. Would you? Although Jane Elliot's intentions were to teach the youngsters about racism, ethical issues related to the simulation were raised. 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 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. Lasting Impact of Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment, Words are the most powerful weapon devised by humankind. "Malinda? It also shows how arbitrary and subjective things can turn friends, family members, and citizens against each other. Jane Elliott on The Tonight Show on May 31, 1968. However, in this classroom, having blue-eyes had become a condition of inferiority. Order original essays online. As the morning wore on, brown-eyed kids berated their blue-eyed classmates. ", 2023 Smithsonian Magazine "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. Jane Elliott, a teacher and anti-racism activist, performed a direct experiment with the students in her classroom. If this arbitrary division that Elliott enforced for a few hours created so many problems in this classroom, whats happening on a larger scale? Even though some of the children said yes, Elliott pushed back. Later, it would occur to Elliott that the blueys were much less nasty than the brown-eyed kids had been, perhaps because the blue-eyed kids had felt the sting of being ostracized and didn't want to inflict it on their former tormentors. 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." "It's happening every day in this country, right now," she said in an interview with Morning Edition. Folks leave their cars unlocked, keys in the ignition. "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. "Let me look at you," Elliott said. 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. Now 45, she had been in Elliott's third grade class in 1969. 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. ", Vision and tenacity may get results, but they don't always endear a person to her neighbors. Undeterred, Elliott tried to appeal to Pauls self-interest. One teacher ended up displaying the same bigotry Elliott had spent the morning trying to fight. 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. Grey eyes are also a rare eye color. In explaining the experiment rules to the brown-eyed contestants, she addresses the people of color in the room. She told the kids that blue-eyed children weren't as good as brown-eyed or green-eyed ones. APA principles acknowledge that individuals rights to privacy, self-determination, and confidentiality is paramount to all psychological activities. It is a must . It also documents small-town White America's reflex reaction to the . One key assumption is that the sample population represents an actual society. Perhaps because the outcome seemed so optimistic and comforting, coverage of Elliott and the experiments alleged curative powers cropped up everywhere. Its not true and its not fair no matter what you say! he responded. ", Steve Harnack, 62, served as the elementary school principal beginning in 1977. "I think third grade was too young for what she did. That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. According to the article is Jane Elliot's experiment to small degree effective. At points, you are likely to feel uncomfortable. 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. The secretary said the south side of the building was closed, something about waxing the hallways. Professor Jane Elliott performed a group experiment with her students that they would never forget. Grasping for a scientific explanation, she ended up claiming that melanin makes eyes darker, and makes . We have to let people find out how it feels to be on the receiving end of that which we dish out so readily.". 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. "There's a sense of renewal here that I've never seen anywhere else," Elliott says. ISBN 9780520382268. Copyright 20102023, The Conversation Media Group Ltd. More than 50 years after her famous exercise, Elliott is still fighting. New York: Elsevier Science. The exercise is "an inoculation against racism," she says. 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. ", Others have praised Elliott's exercise. The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. Essay Sample: Ethical Concerns in Jane Elliot's Experiment. Some residents were furious. 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. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. "How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children," one said. Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. Mental Floss, 4. 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.