Normally, blue-eyes isnt an insult. Why'd they shoot that King?" One teacher ended up displaying the same bigotry Elliott had spent the morning trying to fight. 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." he asked. 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. January 1, 2003. School ought to be about developing character, but most teachers won't touch that with a ten-foot pole.". All rights reserved. The ethical concerns arising from the experiment are consent and deception. The goal of the minimal group paradigm is to establish subjective differences and create a climate of favoritism. Subsequently the brown-eyed children stopped objecting, even when Miss Elliott and the blue-eyed kids chastised and bullied them. In the documentary, she said that she conducted the original blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment to make a positive change. "On an airplane, it is," Elliott said to appreciative laughter from the studio audience. Copyright 20102023, The Conversation Media Group Ltd. Elliott was featured on nearly every national news show in America for decades. 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 idea was simple but profound. To get her points across, Elliott hurled insults at workshop participants, particularly those who were white and had blue eyes. In the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Elliott developed a simple exercise that explored the nature of racism and prejudice.. Elliott's method for exploring racism in the context of an all-white classroom consisted of dividing her students into two groups on the basis of eye color, blue or brown (those with other eye colors were assigned to the group . 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. Elliot's approach to the experiment involved creativity in which the pupils' age and ability to comprehend discrimination was taken into account. There are risks to those inoculations, too, but we determine that those risks are worth taking. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. Danko, M. (2013). See Page 1. ", We backed out. Amitai Etzioni, a sociologist at George WashingtonUniversity, says the exercise helps develop character and empathy. This procedure is sometimes so subtle that no one notices it happening. And they are smarter than blue-eyed people." The brown-eyed children got to sit in the front of the room, to go to lunch first, and to have more time at recess. And you'll always have it. The exercise is "an inoculation against racism," she says. 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. Elliot wanted to show that the same thing happens in real life with brown eyed people (minority). Two students even got into a physical altercation. A difference as simple as eye color, defined and established by the authority figure, created a rift between the students. Or alternatively you may decide to keep them in ignorance of what is happening. ", "I've never forgotten the exercise," Whisenhunt volunteered. 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). 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 . (2022, Apr 06). In this photograph from Sept. 13, 1965, Black children on their way to school in New York City pass by segregationists protesting integrated busing. "We'll just be a couple of minutes. I felt like quitting school. This is the phrase that inspired one of the most well-known experiments in education. 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. Why do researchers use correlational studies? Ethics + Religion; Health; Politics + Society; . As a journalism professor and author of a book on race that spans more than 50 years, Ive watched these developments with great concern. "Mention two wordsJane Elliottand you get a flood of emotions from people," says Jim Cross, the Riceville Recorder's editor these days. As Elliott recalls, she engineered the "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise" in 1968 after watching the late-night news cycle announce the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Rather than be deterred by possible You must get the parents first. The fact that children are easy to manipulate into acting in a particular manner explains Jane's choice of sample. We use them to divide and destroy people., On Understanding The Different Ways We Treat Other Races, Philip Zimbardo (Biography + Experiments). It's the Jane Elliott machine. In fact, most of the initial response was negative. You didnt understand the directions. She also made the brown-eyed students put construction paper armbands on the blue-eyed students. "You can see the look on their faces. 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. Some residents were furious. "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. When the blue-eyed group saw that the brown-eyed group was going to be seated first, some became upset. He printed them under the headline "How Discrimination Feels." At her lunch break that day in the teacher's lounge, she told her colleagues about the exercise. 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. Ethical issues were 1/3 of the participants refused to take the head off the rat . Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? From the moment the experiment begins, Jane Elliott uses a mean tone to speak to the participants. On the first day, the blue-eyed students were informed that they were genetically inferior to the brown-eyed students. Despite the adaptation of the experiment in psychological studies, Jane has been widely criticized for her unethical conduct and promotion of discrimination among children. 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. Elliotts coworkers avoided her after her appearance on The Tonight Show. The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring . Elliott and I were sitting at her dining room table. 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 . In 2001, Jane Elliott recordedThe Angry Eye,in which she revised and updated her experiment. Even though some of the children said yes, Elliott pushed back. Thats how it started, and thats how it went all day long. At this point you may wish to tell the pupils that you are conducting an "experiment" to look at what prejudice is. 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. In 1970, she demonstrated it for educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth. 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. She was a standing-room-only speaker at hundreds of colleges and universities. 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? The secretary on duty looked up, startled, as if she had just seen a ghost. You have the right color eyes!. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. Solve your problem differently! 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. 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. Proceeding with the experiment, Elliot divided the children into two groups each with nine pupils. ", That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. (2013). Jane Elliott, one of the most controversial figures in U.S. education and diversity training, began her journey to international acclaim in Riceville, Iowa. The brown-eyed children felt suddenly that they were discriminated, while the blue eyed started seeing them as inferior. It is sometimes cited as a landmark of social science. The day after Kings murder, Jane Elliott, a white third-grade teacher in rural Riceville, Iowa, sought to make her students feel the brutality of racism. The 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. Society made them believe they were better than other people for arbitrary reasons such as skin color or gender. Undeterred, Elliott tried to appeal to Pauls self-interest. The first thing that Jane Elliott did was divide the children into groups: those with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. The children said yes, and the exercise began. "Would you like to come on the show?" You should be happy! ", Walt Gabelmann, 83, was Riceville's mayor for 18 years beginning in 1966. "We are repeating the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise on a daily basis.". Retrieved from https://speedypaper.com/essays/ethical-concerns-in-jane-elliots-experiment, Free essays can be submitted by anyone, so we do not vouch for their quality. Role Theory: Expectations, Identities, and Behaviors. It has since evolved into an online blog and YouTube channel providing mental health advice, tools, and academic support to individuals from all backgrounds. After the local newspaper published a story on Elliott and the experiment, she was flown to New York to appear on May 31, 1968, on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, where she extolled the experiments effectiveness in cluing in her 8-year-old white students on what it was like to be Black in America. On the first day of the two-day experiment, Elliott told the . She has appeared on the "Oprah Winfrey Show" five times. 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. Scores of others did participate. In present society, psychological experiments are guided by honesty, truthfulness, and accuracy. In a grassy front yard down the block is a hand-lettered sign: "Glads for Sale, 3 for $1." 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. Days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. After the exercise white college students in . Some people feel we can't move on when you have her out there hawking her 30-year-old experiment. Select from the 0 categories from which you would like to receive articles.
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