Essay Sample: Ethical Concerns in Jane Elliot's Experiment - SpeedyPaper A Class Divided | FRONTLINE - PBS She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of colors shoes. ", Then, the inevitable: "Hey, Mrs. Elliott, how come you're the teacher if you've got blue eyes?" I think it can. In fact, most of the initial response was negative. 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. However, the study shows some bias in the sample size and race of participants. It is quite powerful to watch. They wouldnt be allowed second helpings for lunch. "Do blue-eyed people remember what they've been taught?" A class divided: lessons learned - Times Bulletin The anti-racism sessions Elliott led were intense. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise received national attention shortly after it ended. Thousands of educators across the United States folded the experiment into their curriculums. If you are the original author of this essay and no longer wish to have it published on the The tallest structure in Riceville is the water tower. She and her husband, Darald Elliott, then a grocer, have four children, and they, too, felt a backlash. Jane Elliott on The Tonight Show on May 31, 1968. Blue-eyed people would get 5 extra minutes on the playground and blue-eyed people could not talk to brown-eyed people. Lasting Impact of Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment, Words are the most powerful weapon devised by humankind. She said she watched and was horrified at what she saw. You've still got that same sweet smile. 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. Why was the Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment considered - Study Jane Elliott's Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes experiment was a turning point in social psychology. Folks leave their cars unlocked, keys in the ignition. ", For years scholars have evaluated Elliott's exercise, seeking to determine if it reduces racial prejudice in participants or poses a psychological risk to them. 4 Pages. Thats just the way blue-eyed kids were, Elliott told the students. "That you, Ms. Professor Jane Elliott performed a group experiment with her students that they would never forget. 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. Students in the inferior groups were more likely to get a worse score. 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. Would you? This was intentional. 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. 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. 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 1970, she demonstrated it for educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth. "Brown-eyed people have more of that chemical in their eyes, so brown-eyed people are better than those with blue eyes," Elliott said. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. 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. Scores of others did participate. ", A chorus of "Yeahs" went up, and so began one of the most astonishing exercises ever conducted in an American classroom. 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. One of the ways Hitler decided who went into the gas chamber was eye color, Elliott said in a later speech. Did they know what it was like to be discriminated against? "How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" . Elliotts coworkers avoided her after her appearance on The Tonight Show. Jane Elliott's blue eye brown eye case study is/isn't more ethical than Tears formed in the corners of Elliott's eyes. They were also relevant in the 1950s when Elliott first began this work. I was stunned. Looking back, I think part of the problem was that, like the residents of other small midwestern towns I've covered, many in Riceville felt that calling attention to oneself was poor manners, and that Elliott had shone a bright light not just on herself but on Riceville; people all over the United States would think Riceville was full of bigots. 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. Role Theory: Expectations, Identities, and Behaviors. 1. Exploring your mind Blog about psychology and philosophy. She has appeared on the "Oprah Winfrey Show" five times. Ethical issues were 1/3 of the participants refused to take the head off the rat . In the documentary, she said that she conducted the original blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment to make a positive change. Some guidelines for avoiding or reducing this effect are: In conclusion, Jane Elliotts experiment demonstrates the fragility of coexistence and cooperation. The students started to internalize, and accept, the characteristics they'd been arbitrarily assigned based on the color of their eyes. (PDF) A Class Divided - ResearchGate Everyone's tired of her. One even wrote a lipstick message with racial slurs. 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." After recess that day, the brown-eyed children complained that they were . 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. "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 my grandchildren are old enough, I'd give anything if you'd try the exercise out on them. ", Jane shielded her eyes from the morning sun. A Teacher's Report on 'a Class Divided' a Pbs Film: Teaching It also shows how arbitrary and subjective things can turn friends, family members, and citizens against each other. 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. The Associated Press followed up, quoting Elliott as saying she was "dumbfounded" by the exercise's effectiveness. [online] Today I Found Out. Stripping away the veneer of the experiment, what was left had nothing to do with race. Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. Elliot wanted to show that the same thing happens in real life with brown eyed people (minority). "Mention two wordsJane Elliottand you get a flood of emotions from people," says Jim Cross, the Riceville Recorder's editor these days. The corn grows so fast in northern Iowafrom seedling to seven-foot-high stalk in 12 weeksthat it crackles. That might have been the end of it, but a month later, Elliott says, Johnny Carson called her. What Lies Behind Your Urgent Need to Answer Work E Mails? They also harassed them constantly. 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 Anti-Racism Exercise That Taught Kids to Be Racist - Gizmodo Though Jane's actions were justifiable because she was not a psychologist, her experiment cannot be replicated in the present society. 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 . "We are repeating the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise on a daily basis.". Blue Eye / Brown Eye experiment - Everything2.com 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. Elliott rattled off the rules for the day, saying blue-eyed kids had to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain. 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. 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. 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. She then told them that the children with blue eyes were inherently inferior to the children with brown . Introduction | FRONTLINE - PBS Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? At her lunch break that day in the teacher's lounge, she told her colleagues about the exercise. The Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes Experiment. Jane Elliot's Experiment - 879 Words | Bartleby Watch it online right now! On the first day, the blue-eyed students were informed that they were genetically inferior to the brown-eyed students. Did we fail the blue eyes/brown eyes experiment or did it fail us? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER! This way, she successfully created two distinct groups in her classroom: The consequences of the minimal group became evident very quickly. The following are some of her most insightful quotes on these issues. Jane Elliott's Blue-Eyed versus Brown-Eyed Students experiment was conducted to determine whether racism was a learned characteristic. Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes: On Race and Jane Elliott's Famous Experiment on "She could get kids to do anything she wanted them to," he says of Elliott. Advertising Notice See Page 1. Mary and Zeke have three children, all of whom have blue eyes. "That's what I tried to teach, and that's what drove the other teachers crazy. It's cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage. ", Absolutely not. Melanin, she said, is what causes intelligence. 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. "It would be hard to know, wouldn't it, unless we actually experienced discrimination ourselves. This bibliography was generated on Cite This For Me on Monday, March 7, 2016. But Elliotts experiment had a more sinister impact. There are risks to those inoculations, too, but we determine that those risks are worth taking. They were forced to sit on the back rows and had to use a . There is a way to avoid editing or writing from scratch! They are more civilized than blue-eyed people. "If this ugly change, if this negative change can happen this quickly, why can't positive change happen that quickly? 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. Regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, decision making in psychology should protect individual rights and welfare to eliminate potential biases. 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. The basic idea was to separate the class into two halves, students with blue eyes and those with brown. Pasicznyk joined 75 other employees for a training session in the companys suburban Denver headquarters in the late 1980s. In 2001, Jane Elliott recordedThe Angry Eye,in which she revised and updated her experiment. The children said yes, and the exercise began. The brown-eyed children felt suddenly that they were discriminated, while the blue eyed started seeing them as inferior. Ethics + Religion; Health; Politics + Society; . Elliott separated her all-white class of students into two groups: blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children. Articles and opinions on happiness, fear and other aspects of human psychology. 2012 2023 . Charity is humiliating because its exercised vertically and from above; solidarity is horizontal and implies mutual respect.. One of the main ones was the fact that their right to withdraw was taken away from them. The blue eyes brown eyes study was a study on group prejudice and discrimination conducted by Jane Elliot. . Elliott asked. Jane Elliott, shown here in 2009, remains an outspoken advocate against racism. Jane Elliott, Creator of the "Blue/Brown Eyes" Experiment, Says Racism Is Easy To Fix. ( 1985-03-26) " A Class Divided " is a 1985 episode of the PBS series Frontline. Jane Elliott at Riceville, Iowa, Elementary School in 1968. "They are cleaner and they are smarter.". 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. She says its because racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and ethnocentrism are mean and nasty. In 1968 after Martin Luther King was assassinated the United States was in turmoil. Elliott had hoped that this experiment would help the children to better understand the feelings of discrimination that certain groups feel on a daily basis, but what she didn . Hundreds of viewers wrote letters saying Elliott's work appalled them. Brown-eyed people. They are cleaner than blue-eyed people. Your Privacy Rights Proceeding with the experiment, Elliot divided the children into two groups each with nine pupils. The selection was based on the color of the eye for each group. 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). Module 2 Discussion_ Are We Still Divided_ Blue Eyes_Brown Eyes_ A 3rd Jane Elliot's Famous Classroom Experiment: How Eye Color - Thriveworks Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes: A Cautionary Tale of Race and Brutality Privacy Statement She asked the other teachers what they were doing to bring news of the King assassination into their classrooms. "Would you like to come on the show?" All rights reserved. It makes you proud. If this arbitrary division that Elliott enforced for a few hours created so many problems in this classroom, whats happening on a larger scale? On the other hand, privileged members of the community are treated as in-groups which earn them undue respect and capacity to abuse the less advantaged. "Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior, but white children, there's no way they could possibly understand it. 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. 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. To this day, at the age of 86, Jane Elliott continues this work. . 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. I felt mad. Jane Elliott is 84 years old, a tiny woman with white hair, wire-rim glasses and little patience. PDF TRAUMA-RELATED PSYCHOLOGY EXPERIMENTS - Boston University ", Steve Harnack, 62, served as the elementary school principal beginning in 1977. The searing story is a cautionary tale that examines power and privilege in and out of the classroom. Practical Psychology began as a collection of study material for psychology students in 2016, created by a student in the field. Cookie Policy "Maybe the way to sell the exercise would have been to invite the parents in, to talk about what she'd be doing. 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. "Malinda? Days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. A columnist at a Denver newspaper called it "evil. "You know, sweetheart, you haven't changed one bit. You give them something nice and they just wreck it." She repeated the abuse with subsequent classes, and finally turned it into a fully commercial enterprise. Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? The ethical concerns arising from the experiment are consent and deception. In 1970, a documentary about the exercise was released. 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 Blue Eyes & Brown Eyes Exercise. (In later versions of the exercise, children in the inferior group were given collars to wear.). They are steeped in centuries of economic deprivation and cultural appropriation. Keep me from judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins. This is a Sioux saying. She could feel a chasm forming between the two groups of students. 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. Written and verified by the psychologist Francisco Roballo. Yet what Elliott did continues to stir controversy. 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." When you read about this experiment, its hard not to question labels. "I think third grade was too young for what she did. The experiment, known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. I want to know why youre so willing to accept it or to allow it to happen for others., The first reaction I get from teachers, who see this film or from hearing, hear me discuss what I do say to me How can you do that to these little children? 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. In a grassy front yard down the block is a hand-lettered sign: "Glads for Sale, 3 for $1." Jane Elliot, a third-grade teacher from Lowa town, became troubled with the turn of events and knew that something had to be done about racial discrimination (Danko, 2013). One student answers, since the day I was born. Throughout the entire experiment, Elliott leads frank conversations about race and discrimination. "I think these children walked in a colored child's moccasins for a day," she was quoted as saying. 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 . Jane Elliott, Known for "Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes," on Racism in 2020 As the morning wore on, brown-eyed kids berated their blue-eyed classmates. Brian, the Elliotts' oldest son, got beaten up at school, and Jane called the ringleader's, mother. 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 got carried away by this possession she developed over human beings. Given the ethical concerns, will you still rely on a quasi-experimental research design as a source of information in counselling psychology? "I understand this is the first time you've flown?" ", Walt Gabelmann, 83, was Riceville's mayor for 18 years beginning in 1966. Blue or Brown; A Classroom Divided | Applied Social Psychology (ASP) "You have to put the exercise in the context of the rest of the year. Fourteen years later, the students featured in The Eye of the Storm reunited and discussed their experiences with Elliott. Some people feel we can't move on when you have her out there hawking her 30-year-old experiment. School ought to be about developing character, but most teachers won't touch that with a ten-foot pole.". Why is Jane Elliot's exercise problematic for some people? ", That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. It is sometimes cited as a landmark of social science. The study also violates the American Principles of Psychologist codes of conduct making its replication or further investigation unethical. It's the Jane Elliott machine. 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 . 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. For many, the experiment went horribly awry. Order from one of our vetted writers instead. "No person of any age [was] going to leave my presence with those attitudes unchallenged," Elliott said. Open Document. Elliott, who is white, separated the students into two groupsthose with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. She was a local girl and the other teachers were intimidated by her success. Blue-eyed people. ", "I've never forgotten the exercise," Whisenhunt volunteered. A difference as simple as eye color, defined and established by the authority figure, created a rift between the students. You can contribute to that positive change by watching the documentary. "Probably because they have been taught how they're treated in this country that they have to understand us. he asked. When Elliott conducted the exercise the next year, she added something extra to collect data. She has . Then a picture was taken to remember. Kids on top would tease the children who were deemed as the inferior group. Why was the Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment considered unethical in psychology? 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. She also made the brown-eyed students put construction paper armbands on the blue-eyed students. Jane elliots the blue eyes and brown eyes experiment - Course Hero Jane divided the class into 9 brown eyes and 9 blue eyes. She nodded. The secretary said the south side of the building was closed, something about waxing the hallways. How do you think the world would change if everyone experienced the perils and setbacks that come with prejudice and discrimination?