Keep me from judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins. This is a Sioux saying. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. ", Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images, now-famous "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise, 'I See These Conversations As Protective': Talking With Kids About Race. Junior high, maybe. The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment. Then a picture was taken to remember. Tears formed in the corners of Elliott's eyes. Theyd have to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain. she asked the children, who were white. ", Others have praised Elliott's exercise. The people and cultures already present in a place often feel threatened by new immigrants. On the second day of the experiment, Elliott switched the childrens roles. Yes, that day was tough. 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. The three outcomes are: (1) virtually all of the subjects reported that the experience was Racism is not genetical. Throughout the day, Elliott continued to give the children with blue eyes special treatment. One teacher ended up displaying the same bigotry Elliott had spent the morning trying to fight. Carson asked, grinning. The secretary on duty looked up, startled, as if she had just seen a ghost. Proceeding with the experiment, Elliot divided the children into two groups each with nine pupils. They didnt need to engage with a single Black person. To back up my statement Bloom (2005) says Jane Elliott's blue-eyes brown-eyes exercise encouraged children to mistrust authority figures. The following are some of her most insightful quotes on these issues. She was 10 before the farmhouse had running water and electricity. See Page 1. The fact that children are easy to manipulate into acting in a particular manner explains Jane's choice of sample. She gave all of the students simple spelling and math tests two weeks before the exercise, on the days of the exercise, and after the exercise. What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? But the protests happening now have given her hope. Most Riceville residents seem to have an opinion of Elliott, whether or not they've met her. "Blue-eyed people sit around and do nothing. "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? ", Steve Harnack, 62, served as the elementary school principal beginning in 1977. She also made the brown-eyed students put construction paper armbands on the blue-eyed 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. When she went downtown to do errands, she heard whispers. PracticalPie.com is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. The interaction only strengthened Elliott's resolve. The kids in the bottom group became timider and kept to themselves. She repeated the abuse with subsequent classes, and finally turned it into a fully commercial enterprise. Jane Elliott's Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes experiment was a turning point in social psychology. ", Jane shielded her eyes from the morning sun. On the "Tonight Show" Carson broke the ice by spoofing Elliott's rural roots. APA principles acknowledge that individuals rights to privacy, self-determination, and confidentiality is paramount to all psychological activities. 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. One of the most famous experiments in education Jane Elliott's "blue eyes, brown eyes" separation of her third grade students to teach them about prejudice was very different from what the public was told, as revealed in this excerpt from the in-depth story about what really happened in that classroom. The results showed a . As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. "We want to see Room No. She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of colors shoes. Elliott began the exercise by dividing her students by eye color. . 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." Normally, blue-eyes isnt an insult. 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. 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. When you read about this experiment, its hard not to question labels. When Elliott first conducted the exercise in 1968, brown-eyed students were given special privileges. The "invisible knapsack" is an analogy for a set of invisible and not widely talked about privileges that white people possess in the society. One student answers, since the day I was born. Throughout the entire experiment, Elliott leads frank conversations about race and discrimination. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise continues to be relevant. Locals say that drivers don't signal when they turn because everyone knows where everyone else is going. Elliott started to see her own white privilege, even her own ignorance. They were forced to sit on the back rows and had to use a . The American Psychologists Principles and code of conduct state that in cases of deception, experimenters should take into consideration the potential harmful effects to participants. I have brown eyes. Thats how it started, and thats how it went all day long. Danko, M. (2013). Some people feel we can't move on when you have her out there hawking her 30-year-old experiment. Considering all the stereotypes and prejudices that exist, what kind of damage is being done? The next day when the tables were turned, "I felt like quitting school. 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. 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). Jane Elliott's brown eye/blue eye experiment starts at 03:10 of A Class Divided. 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 idea was simple but profound. The students who had blue eyes were told that they were better and smarter than their inferior brown-eyed peers. Jane would get invited to go to Timbuktu to give a speech. . At this point you may wish to tell the pupils that you are conducting an "experiment" to look at what prejudice is. They gossiped about her in the hallway. However, in this classroom, having blue-eyes had become a condition of inferiority. Elliott instructed the blue-eyed kids not to play on the jungle gym or swings. "There's a sense of renewal here that I've never seen anywhere else," Elliott says. This was the smaller group. Elliott turned into Americas mother of diversity training. One group consisted pupils with brown eye while the other group consisted of those with blue eyes. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle . In her article, Peggy McIntosh compares the "white privilege" to an invisible set of unearned rewards and . They needed not acknowledge their privilege or reflect on it. The Blue Eye/Brown Eye was an experiment performed by Jane Elliot in 1968 on the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. 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. Why do researchers use correlational studies? Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa. Days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. They all either smiled or laughed and nodded.". Stripping away the veneer of the experiment, what was left had nothing to do with race. It is quite powerful to watch. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. Knowing that her experiment would have consequences, Jane remained committed to her course. Mental Sandboxes and Their Usefulness in Today's World, The Law of Reversed Effort: When Taking Action Isn't the Best Option. She split the class in two categories, according to eye color, and told the children that one group was superior to the others. 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 . 10 Psychological Experiments That Could Never Happen Today. The story was then picked up by the Associated Press. . "I think third grade was too young for what she did. hide caption. Thats just the way blue-eyed kids were, Elliott told the students. 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 . The contents of Exploring Your Mind are for informational and educational purposes only. Decent Essays. 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. 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 second day, Elliott reversed the groups. They were also relevant in the 1950s when Elliott first began this work. You've still got that same sweet smile. Elliott reminded them that the reason for the lesson was the King assassination, and she asked them to write down what they had learned. The smell of the crops and loam and topsoil and manure wafted though the open door. She appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show five times. Elliott championed the experiment as an inoculation against racism., [The Conversations Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. Why Did Jane Elliott Choose Eye Color To Divide Her Students? Why'd they shoot that King?" Exploring your mind Blog about psychology and philosophy. 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. 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). Despite the adaptation of the experiment in psychological studies, Jane has been widely criticized for her unethical conduct and promotion of discrimination among children. ", We backed out. All rights reserved. ", A former teacher, Ruth Setka, 79, said she was perhaps the only teacher who would still talk to Elliott. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue . "How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children," one said. 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. Could you?". 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. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle the exercise and would be seriously damaged by the exercise. "It's the same thing over and over again," Cross says. Scores of others did participate. Watch it online right now! (2022, Apr 06). a brown-eyed boy asked. In Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues That Teach Kids to Do the Right Things, educational psychologist Michele Borda says it "teaches our children to counter stereotypes before they become full-fledged, lasting prejudices and to recognize that every human being has the right to be treated with respect." The Blue-Eyed/Brown-Eyed Experiment: Investigation. 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. Many of them noted that when they hear prejudice and discrimination from others, they wish they could whip out those collars and give them the experience they had as third graders. "He's a bluey! The children were not aware of the experiment, and therefore they could not give their permission of involvement. Everyone looked at Mrs. Elliott. That might have been the end of it, but a month later, Elliott says, Johnny Carson called her. In this documentary, Jane Elliott, a third grade teacher divided her class into two groups based on their eye color; one group had blue eyes and the other had brown eyes. "Because we might catch something," a brown-eyed boy said. Introduction. The Associated Press followed up, quoting Elliott as saying she was "dumbfounded" by the exercise's effectiveness. To begin with, Jane Elliot's experiment involved deception in which the children were made in believing that change in eye color influence intelligence. It was typical of Elliott's blunt styleno "Good morning," no small talk. (In later versions of the exercise, children in the inferior group were given collars to wear.). In 1968, schoolteacher Jane Elliott decided to divide her classroom into students with blue eyes and students with brown eyes. "We'll just be a couple of minutes. Elliott was even brought on The Tonight Show to talk about her experiences. That's not true. The subjects were 164 students enrolled in eight sections of an introductory elementary education course at a state university. 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." This procedure is sometimes so subtle that no one notices it happening. Separate the class into two halves - those with blue eyes and those with brown. Yet what Elliott did continues to stir controversy. A second look at the blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment that taught third-graders about racism. Elliott asked her students to write about their experiences for the local newspaper. Disclaimer: SpeedyPaper.com is a custom writing service that provides online on-demand writing work for assistance purposes. Yes, the children felt angry, hurt, betrayed. In this article, we'll explain what happened during the experiment and discuss its consequences. "I don't think this community was ready for what she did," he said. Therefore when she gave the blue eyed people more freedom than the brown eyed people, the blue eyed people started feeling like kings because they thought they were better, and were treated better. Before she could answer, another boy piped up: "If she didn't have blue eyes, she'd be the principal or the superintendent.". She asked the other teachers what they were doing to bring news of the King assassination into their classrooms. Part of the problem is that the blue-eyed group is exclusively white, while the brown-eyed group is predominantly non-white, so that eye colour is no longer an analogue or metaphor for race but a . [online] Today I Found Out. Jane Elliot's experiment involves cheating and intentional misinterpretation of facts. The fourth of five children, Elliott was born on her family's farm in Riceville in 1933, and was delivered by her Irish-American father himself. The brown-eyed children felt suddenly that they were discriminated, while the blue eyed started seeing them as inferior. The experiment, known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. "She was an excellent school teacher, but she has a way about her," says 90-year-old Riceville native Patricia Bodenham, who has known Elliott since Jane was a baby. Order original essays online. 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 . When the blue-eyed group saw that the brown-eyed group was going to be seated first, some became upset. At recess, three brown-eyed girls ganged up on her. ", 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. Charity is humiliating because its exercised vertically and from above; solidarity is horizontal and implies mutual respect.. 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. Everyone's tired of her. Your Privacy Rights She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. "Not one of them reprimanded her for that or even corrected her. Mary and Zeke have three children, all of whom have blue eyes. These differences lead to war and hate. It is a must . ISBN 9780520382268. 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. ", Elliott defends her work as a mother defends her child. Blue Eyed vs Brown Eyed Study Conducted by Jane Elliott Presentation by Bree Elliott Ethics Background The Results In 1968, when Dr. Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated, Jane Elliott was the teacher of a third grade class in the town of Riceville, Iowa. 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 Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. When Elliott conducted the exercise the next year, she added something extra to collect data. Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. At the time, she was a third-grade . Brown-eyed people, she told the students, are smarter, more civilized and better than blue-eyed people. She nodded. In 1970, a documentary about the exercise was released. If brown-eyed children made a mistake, Elliott would call out the mistake and attribute it to the students brown eyes. The next day, Elliott reversed the roles. 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. 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. Issues such as the right to know, the right to privacy, and informed consent. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. One of the blue eyed even went to hit a brown eyed just for the fact that he was brown eyed. Right off the bat, she picked me out of the room and called me Barbie, Pasicznyk told me. At points, you are likely to feel uncomfortable. 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. Or alternatively you may decide to keep them in ignorance of what is happening. (Byrnes & Kiger, 1992). The results showed a reversal effect in which the blue-eyed students showed signs of inferiority and low self-esteem. They don't replace the diagnosis, advice, or treatment of a professional. As the morning wore on, brown-eyed kids berated their blue-eyed classmates. Many educators responded by holding mandatory workshops on institutional racism and implicit bias, reforming teaching methods and lesson plans and searching for ways to amplify undersung voices. "No person of any age [was] going to leave my presence with those attitudes unchallenged," Elliott said. "You can see the look on their faces. ", Elliott says the role of a teacher is to enhance students' moral development. Two students even got into a physical altercation. Elliott flew to the NBC studio in New York City. "Hey, Mrs. Elliott," Steven yelled as he slung his books on his desk. people are better than blue-eyed people. Elliott said that blue-eyed people were less intelligent and less clean. Many critics that the children were too young to understand the exercise. We dont have to learn about those who are other than white. They are cleaner than blue-eyed people. March 26, 1985. 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 . If you are the original author of this essay and no longer wish to have it published on the ", Absolutely not. Today, she says, it's still playing out as the U.S. reckons with racial injustice. This was intentional. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise received national attention shortly after it ended. One example that has been in place for many years is the blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment. The Hangout Bar & Grill, the Riceville Pharmacy and ATouch of Dutch, a restaurant owned by Mennonites, line Main Street. Select from the 0 categories from which you would like to receive articles. 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've never forgotten the exercise," Whisenhunt volunteered. Practical Psychology began as a collection of study material for psychology students in 2016, created by a student in the field. On Friday, April 5, 1968, in Riceville, IA, a third-grade student walked . "Mention two wordsJane Elliottand you get a flood of emotions from people," says Jim Cross, the Riceville Recorder's editor these days. The act of treating students differently was obviously a metaphor for the social decisions made on a larger level. Elliott asked. "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. It's cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage. To most people, it seemed to suggest that racism could be reduced, even eliminated, by a one- or two-day exercise. The students initially involved wished that everyone could participate in an exercise like this. Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. In explaining the experiment rules to the brown-eyed contestants, she addresses the people of color in the room. You must get the parents first. 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. Jane Elliott's Blue-Eyed versus Brown-Eyed Students experiment was conducted to determine whether racism was a learned characteristic. She began this work in 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. (She prefers the term "exercise.") The blue-eyed girl apologized. You can start from that point in Activity 2, or you can play the video from the beginning (00:00) so that your students can see civil rights era footage following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as Elliott's students returning to Iowa . This is the phrase that inspired one of the most well-known experiments in education. It also documents small-town White America's reflex reaction to the . Nobodys standing here. On April 4 1968, King was killed by the single . She believed that experience was the only way her students could understand how it felt like to be discriminated. Now 45, she had been in Elliott's third grade class in 1969. "Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior, but white children, there's no way they could possibly understand it. While Jane Elliot's experiment makes several assumptions, it also has some ethical concerns. To this day, at the age of 86, Jane Elliott continues this work. Ethics + Religion; Health; Politics + Society; . Problems with this research were that it went against a lot of ethical issues. If this arbitrary division that Elliott enforced for a few hours created so many problems in this classroom, whats happening on a larger scale? She wanted them to understand what discrimination felt like. Jane Elliott on The Tonight Show on May 31, 1968. 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. To get her points across, Elliott hurled insults at workshop participants, particularly those who were white and had blue eyes. 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 . In 1970, Elliott would come to national attention when ABC broadcast their Eye of the Storm documentary which filmed the experiment in action. 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. Perhaps because the outcome seemed so optimistic and comforting, coverage of Elliott and the experiments alleged curative powers cropped up everywhere. 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. She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. When some of the . Professor Jane Elliott performed a group experiment with her students that they would never forget. Biddle, B. J. The study also violates the American Principles of Psychologist codes of conduct making its replication or further investigation unethical. SpeedyPaper website, please click below to request its removal: Liked this essay sample but need an original one? Initial Reaction to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Exercise. Society made them believe they were better than other people for arbitrary reasons such as skin color or gender. I interviewed Julie Pasicznyk, who had been working for US West, a giant telecommunications company in Minneapolis. Elliott? The hate and discrimination that we see in adults have their origin in their upbringing. The basic idea was to separate the class into two halves, students with blue eyes and those with brown. I got to have five minutes extra of recess." 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. She has spoken at more than 350 colleges and universities. On Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN. Copyright 20102023, The Conversation Media Group Ltd. As a result of those divisions, you see racial discrimination or even terrorism. ", 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?". Below, . Is it even possible today? But Elliotts experiment had a more sinister impact. Unfortunately, you cant copy samples. It also shows how arbitrary and subjective things can turn friends, family members, and citizens against each other. He printed them under the headline "How Discrimination Feels." Basically, you establish differences between a set of subjects in order to divide them into separate groups. Thats what it feels like when youre discriminated against., -A child participant in the Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes experiment-.
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