Blue eyes vs brown eyes experiment. Brown Eyes vs. Blue Eyes: Discrimination in a Third 2019-01-06
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Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes: Jane Elliott’s controversial classroom experiment on racism, 1968
There are places today where Elliot - and others like her - conduct workshops similar to the Riceville School exercise, where the message about treating your fellow human beings with respect is often viciously pounded into the attendees heads. I think the results of this experiment apply not only to prejudice and racism based on external or visual notions like physical differences- I believe it applies to discrimination on the individual-to-group level as a whole. They pick the color of their car, and of their couch. While the brown-eyed children did taunt the blue-eyed children in ways similar to what had occurred the previous day, Elliott reports it was much less intense. In 1968 Jane Elliot a third grade teacher in a all white Iowa town divided her third grade students into blue-eyed and brown eyed groups to teach the young boys and girls a lesson in discrimination the day after Dr. She repeated the abuse with subsequent classes, and finally turned it into a fully commercial enterprise.
It was conducted in a small school in Riceville, Iowa, amongst 8-year-old children on the day after the assassination of Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King. So the next day I introduced an eye color exercise in my classroom and split the class according to eye color. Next, she set up rules for the day. In the end of the week, my teacher said it was all an experiment, and that we all passed. The other teachers, save a few, snubbed her. That might have been the end of it, but a month later, Elliott says, Johnny Carson called her. She suggested to the class that it would be hard for them to understand discrimination without experiencing it themselves and then asked the children if they would like to find out.
We need to remember Jane Elliott. The nearest traffic light is 20 miles away. Another program evaluation in 2003, conducted by Tracie Stewart at the , showed that white students got significantly more positive attitudes toward Asian-American and Latino individuals, but only marginally more positive attitudes toward African-American individuals. They said things like when we lost our leader, his widow helped to hold us together. I'm not certain about other shades such as green or gray, but I think the brown probably meant light and dark. What is there to believe in? As the students did not know they were in an experiment, they had no right to withdraw, which violates ethical guidelines.
When examined in a larger social context, and looking at some of the statistics concerning race, it seems apparent the profound affect the idea of racial superiority has had on those groups that have been marginalized by the dominant culture. In the end the students hugged and cried with each other, understanding they would not treat anyone that way because they had learned first-hand what it felt like. The brown eyes first took them about five minutes to finish when they were inferior, but when they became the superior ones in the classroom they did it in only two minutes and thirty seconds. And I have never heard the issue of raised in my community. Her 28 students had filed into the classroom the morning after King was assassinated, talking about what had happened. She described to her colleagues what she'd done, remarking how several of her slower kids with brown eyes had transformed themselves into confident leaders of the class. Almost 40 years later, Elliott's former students are still spreading the knowledge and insight they gained from their powerful experience.
Presenting not only to students in a classroom but moved on to speeches and other anti-racial progressive acts, Jane Elliot was an important part to bringing people together; showing what a ridiculous thing like treating someone different by what she demonstrated with, color, can do to anyone. One of the children is shown trying to rip the cloth at the end. Simpson is a writer, editor and teacher. When the experiment switched and the blue eyed children had the cloth around their neck they looked oppressed, whereas the brown eyed children who lacked the cloth felt superior because they were told they are better. A transformation also occurred with the brown-eyed children. And what she did caused an uproar.
Kennedy was killed several years ago, his widow held us together. Different races or skin colors are unnecessary in an experiment with prejudice and discrimination based on physical differences, which is important because it shows the arbitrary nature of prejudice. . Certainly it must be acknowledged that discrimination based on skin color knows no adherents: any creed can be have elements of racial superiority and everyone probably has been judged by their physical appearance in one way or another at some time. The tallest structure in Riceville is the water tower.
On the second day, the roles were reversed and the blue-eyed children were made to feel inferior while the brown eyes were designated the dominant group. Of all her coworkers, Elliott states that only one of them, Ruth Setka, continued to speak to her after her exercise went public. According to the scientist named Young, inside our eyes is a tri-color system which allows us to receive and perceive color information. They were about to get a taste of their own medicine. So Elliott decided to teach her class a daring lesson in the meaning of discrimination. To ensure that the eye color differentiation could be made swiftly, Elliott handed out strips of cloth that fastened at the neck as collars. Applied social psychology is the use of social psychology principles to help make society a better place.
On both days, children who were designated as inferior took on the look and behavior of genuinely inferior students, performing poorly on tests and other work. This cloth represents the lack of power. While watching Elliot in some of her interviews or workshop clips, you cannot help but wonder that she must realize that she is an actor and that in order to convey her message, she puts on a charade of sorts. Sample Design This is an experimental study, with he independent variable being the treatment of the students based on their eye colour. She would offer praise and commendation to the blue-eyes for being hardworking and intelligent while the 'brownies' were treated like rubbish, being continually put down. Back in the classroom, Elliott's experiment had taken on a life of its own.
