In the case of any doubt, it's best to consult a trusted specialist. "She taught in this school for 18 years." 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. Stripping away the veneer of the experiment, what was left had nothing to do with race. Danko, M. (2013). Need an original essay on Essay Sample: Ethical Concerns in Jane Elliot's Experiment? Many critics that the children were too young to understand the exercise. One teacher ended up displaying the same bigotry Elliott had spent the morning trying to fight. Initial Reaction to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Exercise. It has everything to do with power.. 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. At first, she cooperated with me. Ethical issues were 1/3 of the participants refused to take the head off the rat . Though Jane's actions were justifiable because she was not a psychologist, her experiment cannot be replicated in the present society. Elliott created the blue-eyes/brown-eyes classroom exercise in 1968 to teach students about racism. Jane would get invited to go to Timbuktu to give a speech. Elliott was even brought on The Tonight Show to talk about her experiences. One key assumption is that the sample population represents an actual society. In 1968 after Martin Luther King was assassinated the United States was in turmoil. She could feel a chasm forming between the two groups of students. When Elliott first conducted the exercise in 1968, brown-eyed students were given special privileges. The brown-eyed people were told to step to the front of the line. Order from one of our vetted writers instead, First name should have at least 2 letters, Phone number should have at least 10 digits, Free Essay with a Response to Cross Words by UIW President Louis Agnese, How Does Donald Duk View His Chinese Heritage? She appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show five times. ISBN 9780520382268. 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. If brown-eyed children made a mistake, Elliott would call out the mistake and attribute it to the students brown eyes. The experiment is to help the children to understand about prejudice and discrimination. She has since refused to answer any of my inquiries. You give them something nice and they just wreck it." ( 1985-03-26) " A Class Divided " is a 1985 episode of the PBS series Frontline. I was stunned. 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. This procedure is sometimes so subtle that no one notices it happening. Charity is humiliating because its exercised vertically and from above; solidarity is horizontal and implies mutual respect.. I got to have five minutes extra of recess." They are cleaner than blue-eyed people. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. The next day, Elliott reversed the roles. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise is now known as the inspiration for diversity training in the workplace, making Jane Elliott one of the most influential educators in recent American history. I have brown eyes. Regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, decision making in psychology should protect individual rights and welfare to eliminate potential biases. From Elliot's highly controversial experiment it is clear that prejudice and discrimination can only be understood through experience. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue . "Well, what do you expect from him, Mrs. Elliott," a brown-eyed student said as a blue-eyed student got an arithmetic problem wrong. ", A chorus of "Yeahs" went up, and so began one of the most astonishing exercises ever conducted in an American classroom. "If this ugly change, if this negative change can happen this quickly, why can't positive change happen that quickly? 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. 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 . Everyone's tired of her. Delivery in 6+ hours! She traveled to corporations, banks, prisons, schools and military bases. Disclaimer: SpeedyPaper.com is a custom writing service that provides online on-demand writing work for assistance purposes. "It's the same thing over and over again," Cross says. he asked. With a couple of basic and arbitrary examples, Elliott made the case that brown-eyed people were better. ", Steve Harnack, 62, served as the elementary school principal beginning in 1977. The Hangout Bar & Grill, the Riceville Pharmacy and ATouch of Dutch, a restaurant owned by Mennonites, line Main Street. Why do researchers use correlational studies? Elliott championed the experiment as an inoculation against racism., [The Conversations Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. She believed that experience was the only way her students could understand how it felt like to be discriminated. "Maybe the way to sell the exercise would have been to invite the parents in, to talk about what she'd be doing. We walked into the principal's office at RicevilleElementary School, Elliott's old haunt. Ms. Elliott, now 87, said she started teaching about racism on April 5, 1968 the day after the Rev. It's the Jane Elliott machine. Elliot said that when the children were given the test on the same day that they were in the superior group, they tended to get the highest scores. On the "Tonight Show" Carson broke the ice by spoofing Elliott's rural roots. One group consisted pupils with brown eye while the other group consisted of those with blue eyes. Below, . Stephen G. Bloom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Blue-eyed children got five extra minutes of recess. Not only were they fewer in numbers, but the authority figure was against them. Hundreds of viewers wrote letters saying Elliott's work appalled them. The roots of racism and why it continues unabated in America and other nations are complicated and gnarled. Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. "Probably because they have been taught how they're treated in this country that they have to understand us. "I think these children walked in a colored child's moccasins for a day," she was quoted as saying. 10 Psychological Experiments That Could Never Happen Today. ", Absolutely not. The results showed a . How do you think the world would change if everyone experienced the perils and setbacks that come with prejudice and discrimination? She and Darald split their time between a converted schoolhouse in Osage, Iowa, a town 18 miles from Riceville, and a home near Riverside, California. 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." Biddle, B. J. She compromised the APA's Code of Conduct and Ethical Standard because she lied, after that she recanted the lies and kept as they were justified because of her greater purpose. That got the other teachers angry. Essay Sample: Ethical Concerns in Jane Elliot's Experiment. "How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" ", Others have praised Elliott's exercise. They don't replace the diagnosis, advice, or treatment of a professional. It also shows how arbitrary and subjective things can turn friends, family members, and citizens against each other. In 2001, she was still trying to make a change. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise continues to be relevant. ", 2023 Smithsonian Magazine 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. This paradigm helps understand the current problems related to discrimination. Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER! Decent Essays. She was hesitant to enroll in Elliotts workshop but was told that if she wanted to succeed as a manager, shed have to attend. How can put those little children through that exercise for a day? And they seem unable to relate the sympathy that theyre feeling for these little white children for a day to what happens to children of color in this society for a lifetime or to the fact that they are doing this to children based on skin color every day. she asked the children, who were white. January 1, 2003. . Consequently, the brown-eyed children started using blue-eyes as an insult. In present society, psychological experiments are guided by honesty, truthfulness, and accuracy. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? They are steeped in centuries of economic deprivation and cultural appropriation. The documentary has become a popular teaching tool among teachers, business owners, and even employees at correctional facilities. Some residents were furious. They felt superior and had the support of the authority figure (the teacher). Jane Elliott's brown eye/blue eye experiment starts at 03:10 of A Class Divided. The Blue Eye/Brown Eye was an experiment performed by Jane Elliot in 1968 on the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. 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. The Associated Press followed up, quoting Elliott as saying she was "dumbfounded" by the exercise's effectiveness. 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. Elliot's approach to the experiment involved creativity in which the pupils' age and ability to comprehend discrimination was taken into account. "I know who she is. one girl asked. But the protests happening now have given her hope. In Jane Elliott's experiment she made the third graders believe that the blue eyed people were better,than the brown eyed people. What Lies Behind Your Urgent Need to Answer Work E Mails? When Elliott conducted the exercise the next year, she added something extra to collect data. "She could get kids to do anything she wanted them to," he says of Elliott. "Why?" 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. 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. THE ANGRY EYE , a 35-minute video, features Jane Elliott conducting her Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed exercise with college students. "He's a bluey! The tallest structure in Riceville is the water tower. Undeterred, Elliott tried to appeal to Pauls self-interest. Sign up for Politics Weekly.]. One even wrote a lipstick message with racial slurs. ", Vision and tenacity may get results, but they don't always endear a person to her neighbors. To this day, at the age of 86, Jane Elliott continues this work. "We want to see Room No. Jane Elliot's experiment involves cheating and intentional misinterpretation of facts. Scores of others did participate. On Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN. Select from the 0 categories from which you would like to receive articles. Elliott was featured on nearly every national news show in America for decades. She pointed out flaws in a student and associated it with . See Page 1. These differences lead to war and hate. She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. [White people] on the other hand, don't have to understand them. Some people feel we can't move on when you have her out there hawking her 30-year-old experiment. She has spoken at more than 350 colleges and universities. 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). Although Jane Elliot's intentions were to teach the youngsters about racism, ethical issues related to the simulation were raised. And the exercise continued in a similar fashion to how it was executed the day before. Let's just move on. Normally, blue-eyes isnt an insult. According to the article is Jane Elliot's experiment to small degree effective. When you read about this experiment, its hard not to question labels. 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. "Eye color, hair color and skin color are caused by a chemical," Elliott went on, writing MELANIN on the blackboard. The children said yes, and the exercise began. The publication of compositions which the children had written about the experience in the local . (2022, Apr 06). ", Elliott replied, "Why are we so worried about the fragile egos of white children who experience a couple of hours of made-up racism one day when blacks experience real racism every day of their lives?". What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? 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). Or alternatively you may decide to keep them in ignorance of what is happening. The same experiment was also used a couple of years later with adults. How can we teach kids to be more like him? 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. They gossiped about her in the hallway. 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. 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. The selection was based on the color of the eye for each group. This way, she successfully created two distinct groups in her classroom: The consequences of the minimal group became evident very quickly. On the morning of april 5, 1968, a Friday, Steven Armstrong stepped into Jane Elliott's third-grade classroom in Riceville, Iowa. When she went downtown to do errands, she heard whispers. Knowing that her experiment would have consequences, Jane remained committed to her course. 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. 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." 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 Brown Eyed / Blue Eyed Experiment. Outside, rows of corn stretched to the horizon. Essay Example, Essay Example on Racism Towards Black People, Essay Sample about Developing a Campaign for School Intimidation, Essay Example on Therapist-Client Relationship Boundaries, Islamic Perspective on Euthanasia, Free Essay Sample. Website. Carson asked, grinning. Blue-eyed students suggested that the teacher use a yardstick to discipline brown-eyed students that misbehaved. She then told them that the children with blue eyes were inherently inferior to the children with brown . One student answers, since the day I was born. Throughout the entire experiment, Elliott leads frank conversations about race and discrimination. In this article, we talk about leadership and female discrimination.. 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. 4. Additionally, the brown-eyed students got to sit in the front of the class, while the blue-eyed kids . "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. The basic idea was to separate the class into two halves - those with blue eyes and those with brown. 5/21/2020 Topic: Module 2 Discussion: The blue-eyed girl apologized. Fourteen years later, the students featured in The Eye of the Storm reunited and discussed their experiences with Elliott. Elliott was shocked by the results and decided to switch the roles the following day. Students in the inferior groups were more likely to get a worse score. Jane Elliott, shown here in 2009, remains an outspoken advocate against racism. And you'll always have it. ", Jane shielded her eyes from the morning sun. Brown-eyed people, she told the students, are smarter, more civilized and better than blue-eyed people. Copyright 20102023, The Conversation Media Group Ltd. Elliott shared the essays with her mother, who showed them to the editor of the weekly Riceville Recorder. The contents of Exploring Your Mind are for informational and educational purposes only. They needed not acknowledge their privilege or reflect on it. "You have to put the exercise in the context of the rest of the year. Jane Elliott has done a lot of reflection about the consequences of the minimal group experiment. Given the ethical concerns, will you still rely on a quasi-experimental research design as a source of information in counselling psychology? She decided to continue the exercise with her students after lunch. I often think about Paul Bodensteiner. [online] Today I Found Out. (She prefers the term "exercise.") Did they know what it was like to be discriminated against? 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 defends her work as a mother defends her child. Youve probably heard different versions of it. Grey eyes are also a rare eye color. In 1970, a documentary about the exercise was released. There were more brown-eyed students in the room. The more melanin, the darker the person's eyesand the smarter the person. Elliotts bullying rejoinder to any nonbeliever was to say that however much pain a white person felt after one or two days of made-up discrimination was nothing when compared to what Blacks endure daily. Its goal was to demonstrate what prejudice was to her third grade class. Elliott started to see her own white privilege, even her own ignorance. Blue-eyed students slumped in their chairs, as though . It has since evolved into an online blog and YouTube channel providing mental health advice, tools, and academic support to individuals from all backgrounds. It is sometimes cited as a landmark of social science. Would you like to get this essay by email? But Paul, one of eight siblings and the son of a dairy farmer, didnt buy Elliotts mollification. Yes, that day was tough. Their response is to create dichotomies of inferiority and superiority. I felt like hitting them if I wanted to. I interviewed Julie Pasicznyk, who had been working for US West, a giant telecommunications company in Minneapolis. The people and cultures already present in a place often feel threatened by new immigrants. 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 . "I understand this is the first time you've flown?" This is the phrase that inspired one of the most well-known experiments in education. Subsequently the brown-eyed children stopped objecting, even when Miss Elliott and the blue-eyed kids chastised and bullied them. 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. She wanted to show her students that an arbitrarily established difference could separate them and pit them against each other. 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. 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." Could you?". "How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children," one said. Nevertheless, Elliott became as famous as a teacher could become in America. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise received national attention shortly after it ended. Jane Elliott was a third grade teacher in Riceville, Iowa when she developed the Blue Eyed/ Brown Eyed exercise to teach the effects of racism. As for the criticism that the exercise encourages children to distrust authority figuresthe teacher lies, then recants the lies and maintains they were justified because of a greater goodshe says she worked hard to rebuild her students' trust. Elliott flew to the NBC studio in New York City. I'm tired of hearing about her and her experiment and how everyone here is a racist. In the most uncomfortable moments, Elliott reminds the students of violent acts caused by racism or homophobia. 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. "Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior, but white children, there's no way they could possibly understand it. Elliott went after Ken and Barbie all day long, drilling, accusing, ridiculing them, to make the point that whites make baseless judgments about Blacks all the time, Pasicznyk said. Little children don't like uproar in the classroom. She then made the blue-eyed students believe that they were better and smarter than their counterparts. Elliott said that blue-eyed people were less intelligent and less clean. 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. Solve your problem differently! About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features NFL Sunday Ticket Press Copyright . Folks leave their cars unlocked, keys in the ignition. 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.
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