In 1970, she demonstrated it for educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth. With this experiment she wanted to let the blue-eyed people (white people) feel how it is to be in low power position. Jane Elliott's Blue-Eyed versus Brown-Eyed Students experiment was conducted to determine whether racism was a learned characteristic. We Are Repeating The Discrimination Experiment Every Day, Says - NPR Decent Essays. The results are mixed. On the "Tonight Show" Carson broke the ice by spoofing Elliott's rural roots. Brown-eyed people, she told the students, are smarter, more civilized and better than blue-eyed people. Given the ethical concerns, will you still rely on a quasi-experimental research design as a source of information in counselling psychology? "How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" It brings up immediate anger and hatred. When she separated the class by eye color and announced that blue-eyed children were superior, Paul Bodensteiner objected at every turn. Why Did Jane Elliott Choose Eye Color To Divide Her Students? "Why?" Sign up for Politics Weekly.]. The experiment known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. "She stirs people up. those with brown eyes (or hazel eyes). 4 Pages. 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. They didnt need to engage with a single Black person. The test violated the principle of respect for people's rights and dignity. One of the main ones was the fact that their right to withdraw was taken away from them. This bibliography was generated on Cite This For Me on Monday, March 7, 2016. And StanfordUniversity psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo writes in his 1979 textbook, Psychology and Life, that Elliott's "remarkable" experiment tried to show "how easily prejudiced attitudes may be formed and how arbitrary and illogical they can be." 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. In doing the research for my book with scores of peoples who were participants in the experiment, I reached out to Elliott. In 1968 after Martin Luther King was assassinated the United States was in turmoil. Role Theory: Expectations, Identities, and Behaviors. It is sometimes cited as a landmark of social science. Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER! What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? The searing story is a cautionary tale that examines power and privilege in and out of the classroom. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. ", Others have praised Elliott's exercise. 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. When Elliott conducted the exercise the next year, she added something extra to collect data. PDF Sociology. PUB DATE They all either smiled or laughed and nodded.". If this arbitrary division that Elliott enforced for a few hours created so many problems in this classroom, whats happening on a larger scale? The corn grows so fast in northern Iowafrom seedling to seven-foot-high stalk in 12 weeksthat it crackles. They are more civilized than blue-eyed people. "Hey, Mrs. Elliott," Steven yelled as he slung his books on his desk. "She got carried away by this possession she developed over human beings. Pasicznyk joined 75 other employees for a training session in the companys suburban Denver headquarters in the late 1980s. In the case of any doubt, it's best to consult a trusted specialist. Jane Elliott, shown here in 2009, remains an outspoken advocate against racism. However, in this classroom, having blue-eyes had become a condition of inferiority. I felt mad. The Brown Eyed / Blue Eyed Experiment - 980 Words | Bartleby Essay Sample: Ethical Concerns in Jane Elliot's Experiment - SpeedyPaper The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. Little children don't like uproar in the classroom. 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. 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. 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. The first thing that Jane Elliott did was divide the children into groups: those with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. The publication of compositions which the children had written about the experience in the local . "He's a bluey! "You can see the look on their faces. The selection was based on the color of the eye for each group. Locals say that drivers don't signal when they turn because everyone knows where everyone else is going. 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. 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. "If this ugly change, if this negative change can happen this quickly, why can't positive change happen that quickly? 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 . Thats how it started, and thats how it went all day long. Some people feel we can't move on when you have her out there hawking her 30-year-old experiment. When my grandchildren are old enough, I'd give anything if you'd try the exercise out on them. Classroom experiment. When some of the . She attended a oneroom rural schoolhouse.Today, at 72, Elliott, who has short white hair, a penetrating gaze and no-nonsense demeanor, shows no signs of slowing. The experiment is to help the children to understand about prejudice and discrimination. (Byrnes & Kiger, 1992). "It changed my life. Folks leave their cars unlocked, keys in the ignition. ", Dean Weaver, 70, superintendent of Riceville schools from 1972 to 1979, said, "She'd just go ahead and do things. She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of colors shoes. 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 . "I understand this is the first time you've flown?" You can contribute to that positive change by watching the documentary. ", When I met Elliott in 2003, she hadn't been back to Riceville in 12 years. See Page 1. The study also violates the American Principles of Psychologist codes of conduct making its replication or further investigation unethical. (In later versions of the exercise, children in the inferior group were given collars to wear.). She learned that the responses from the children were negative and more generalized about what they thought about black people. In this 1998 photograph, former Iowa teacher Jane Elliott, center, speaks with two Augsburg University . American Psychological Association, 4. 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. In fact, most of the initial response was negative. Elliott began the exercise by dividing her students by eye color. Nevertheless, Elliott became as famous as a teacher could become in America. In this article, we'll explain what happened during the experiment and discuss its consequences. In 1970, Elliott would come to national attention when ABC broadcast their Eye of the Storm documentary which filmed the experiment in action. 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. Blue Eyes Brown Eyes - Jane Elliott | Practical Psychology 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? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER! "Blue-eyed people sit around and do nothing. The three outcomes are: (1) virtually all of the subjects reported that the experience was Before she could answer, another boy piped up: "If she didn't have blue eyes, she'd be the principal or the superintendent.". Written and verified by the psychologist Francisco Roballo. Elliott started to see her own white privilege, even her own ignorance. Regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, decision making in psychology should protect individual rights and welfare to eliminate potential biases. Subsequently the brown-eyed children stopped objecting, even when Miss Elliott and the blue-eyed kids chastised and bullied them. To get her points across, Elliott hurled insults at workshop participants, particularly those who were white and had blue eyes. The story was then picked up by the Associated Press. She nodded. 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. In this scenario, students are told brown-eyed people . I was stunned. Watch it online right now! ", Walt Gabelmann, 83, was Riceville's mayor for 18 years beginning in 1966. They killed hundreds of thousands of people based on eye color alone, thats the reason I used eye color for my determining factor that day., Elliott divided the class into children with blue eyes and children with brown eyes. Why was the Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment considered - Study 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. 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. They are steeped in centuries of economic deprivation and cultural appropriation. She then made the blue-eyed students believe that they were better and smarter than their counterparts. She told the kids that blue-eyed children weren't as good as brown-eyed or green-eyed ones. Elliott created the blue-eyes/brown-eyes classroom exercise in 1968 to teach students about racism. Jane Elliott's experiment of dividing an otherwise homogenous group of school kids by their eye color. Jane Elliots work and experiences have made her an authority on education and anti-racism. Two students even got into a physical altercation. Ethics + Religion; Health; Politics + Society; . Jane Elliott, Creator of the "Blue/Brown Eyes" Experiment, Says Racism Is Easy To Fix. There is a way to avoid editing or writing from scratch! Society made them believe they were better than other people for arbitrary reasons such as skin color or gender. Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa. It's cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage. And the exercise continued in a similar fashion to how it was executed the day before.
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