Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? he asked. Issues such as the right to know, the right to privacy, and informed consent. To this day, at the age of 86, Jane Elliott continues this work. "The browneyed people are the better people in this room," Elliott began. January 1, 2003. "We just want to peek in," I volunteered. They also harassed them constantly. This is the phrase that inspired one of the most well-known experiments in education. But Elliotts experiment had a more sinister impact. In this article, we talk about leadership and female discrimination.. In the documentary, she said that she conducted the original blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment to make a positive change. Jane Elliott (ne Jennison; born on November 30, 1933) is an American diversity educator.As a schoolteacher, she became known for her "Blue eyes/Brown eyes" exercise, which she first conducted with her third-grade class on April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. 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. Blue-eyed people. Blue-eyed people would get 5 extra minutes on the playground and blue-eyed people could not talk to brown-eyed people. When Elliott walked into the teachers' lounge the next Monday, several teachers got up and walked out. The story was then picked up by the Associated Press. You must get the parents first. ", Elliott says the role of a teacher is to enhance students' moral development. And our number two freedom is the freedom to deny that were ignorant., I want every white person in this room who would be happy to be treated as this society in general treats our citizens, our black citizens, if you, as a white person, would be happy to receive the same treatment that our black citizens do in this society, please stand. Open Document. Elliott asked her students to write about their experiences for the local newspaper. 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. The searing story is a cautionary tale that examines power and privilege in and out of the classroom. I often think about Paul Bodensteiner. Now 45, she had been in Elliott's third grade class in 1969. ", Jane shielded her eyes from the morning sun. Junior high, maybe. Her bold experiment to teach Iowa third graders about racial prejudice divided townspeople and thrust her onto the national stage. Students in the inferior groups were more likely to get a worse score. one girl asked. The students initially involved wished that everyone could participate in an exercise like this. In fact, most of the initial response was negative. Elliott asked. Your Privacy Rights Kids on top would tease the children who were deemed as the inferior group. 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." They gossiped about her in the hallway. She learned that the responses from the children were negative and more generalized about what they thought about black people. Below, . Many critics that the children were too young to understand the exercise. Sorry, but it's not possible to copy the text due to security reasons. Elliotts coworkers avoided her after her appearance on The Tonight Show. You give them something nice and they just wreck it." ", We backed out. Solve your problem differently! ", "I've never forgotten the exercise," Whisenhunt volunteered. "Mention two wordsJane Elliottand you get a flood of emotions from people," says Jim Cross, the Riceville Recorder's editor these days. According to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, 2010 the experiment also violates the principle of Integrity. Let's just move on. Melanin, she said, is what causes intelligence. Much like the Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiment where students were divided by either being the jailer or the jailed. Consequently, the brown-eyed children started using blue-eyes as an insult. It has since evolved into an online blog and YouTube channel providing mental health advice, tools, and academic support to individuals from all backgrounds. Some residents were furious. She has since refused to answer any of my inquiries. Blue Eye/Brown Eye is an experiment performed by Jane Elliot in 1968 on the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated to demonstrate what prejudice was to her third grade class. (2013). Elliott began the exercise by dividing her students by eye color. 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." Knowing that her experiment would have consequences, Jane remained committed to her course. Still, Elliott said the last few years have brought out America's worst racist tendencies. More than 50 years after she first tried that exercise in her classroom, Elliott, now 87, said she sees much more work left to do to change racist attitudes. Children often fight, argue, and sometimes hit each other, but this time they were motivated by eye color. Why Did Jane Elliott Choose Eye Color To Divide Her Students? They are more civilized than blue-eyed people. Jane Elliott at Riceville, Iowa, Elementary School in 1968. Problems with this research were that it went against a lot of ethical issues. Advertising Notice Days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The selection was based on the color of the eye for each group. "They shot that King yesterday. Yes, the children felt angry, hurt, betrayed. Perhaps because the outcome seemed so optimistic and comforting, coverage of Elliott and the experiments alleged curative powers cropped up everywhere. SYNOPSIS OF BLUE EYED. The people of riceville did not exactly welcome Elliott home from New York with a hayride. Cookie Settings, Kids Start Forgetting Early Childhood Around Age 7, Archaeologists Discover Wooden Spikes Described by Julius Caesar, Artificial Sweetener Tied to Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke, Study Finds, Rare Jurassic-Era Insect Discovered at Arkansas Walmart. Classroom experiment. These initial criticisms didnt stop Elliott. Or alternatively you may decide to keep them in ignorance of what is happening. Its not surprising to anyone that some social groups discriminate against others due to ethnicity, religion, or culture. They don't replace the diagnosis, advice, or treatment of a professional. "How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" Jane Elliot and the Blue-Eyed Children Experiment. What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. Thousands of educators across the United States folded the experiment into their curriculums. The basic idea was to separate the class into two halves - those with blue eyes and those with brown. Though Jane's actions were justifiable because she was not a psychologist, her experiment cannot be replicated in the present society. But not Elliott. However, the study shows some bias in the sample size and race of participants. Biddle, B. J. The following are some of her most insightful quotes on these issues. Her class, Undeterred, Elliott tried to appeal to Pauls self-interest. "She got carried away by this possession she developed over human beings. 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." 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. Regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status, decision making in psychology should protect individual rights and welfare to eliminate potential biases. "It changed my life. Youve probably heard different versions of it. Delivery in 6+ hours! The people and cultures already present in a place often feel threatened by new immigrants. That's not true. The students were surprised, but they didnt argue. Answer (1 of 3): My guess is that is doesn't really represent racism but classism. That got the other teachers angry. In the case of any doubt, it's best to consult a trusted specialist. You should be happy! Weve been here before, with unsettling and disturbing results. Jane divided the class into 9 brown eyes and 9 blue eyes. Despite the adaptation of the experiment in psychological studies, Jane has been widely criticized for her unethical conduct and promotion of discrimination among children. Jane Elliott is 84 years old, a tiny woman with white hair, wire-rim glasses and little patience. The empathy she works to inspire in students with the experiment, which has been modified over the years, is necessary, she said. She asks them if they have ever faced treatment like the type that blue-eyed people would experience in the following two and a half hours. 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 . Jane Elliott, a teacher and anti-racism activist, performed a direct experiment with the students in her classroom. The exercise is "an inoculation against racism," she says. Did they know what it was like to be discriminated against? Cookie Policy She wanted to show her students that an arbitrarily established difference could separate them and pit them against each other. What Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 was also an event that spurred educators to action, motivating one teacher to try out a bold experiment touted to reduce racism. She said she watched and was horrified at what she saw. Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa. Although Jane Elliot's intentions were to teach the youngsters about racism, ethical issues related to the simulation were raised. 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. 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." "I think third grade was too young for what she did. I felt mad. A difference as simple as eye color, defined and established by the authority figure, created a rift between the students. Why do researchers use correlational studies? 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 racists carry on, so I carry on." The lives and legacies of Dr. Jane Elliott and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are inextricably linked. Stephen G. Bloom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. The smell of the crops and loam and topsoil and manure wafted though the open door. They embraced the experiments reductive message, as well as its promised potential, thereby keeping the implausible rationale of Elliotts crusade alive and well for decades, however flawed and racist it really was. Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. The blue-eyed participants faced discrimination for two and a half hours. Elliott created the blue-eyes/brown-eyes classroom exercise in 1968 to teach students about racism. 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. 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. The experiment is to help the children to understand about prejudice and discrimination. In 2001, she was still trying to make a change. She had never met me, and she accused me in front of everyone of using my sexuality to get ahead.. people are better than blue-eyed people. 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. Jane Elliots work and experiences have made her an authority on education and anti-racism. The act of treating students differently was obviously a metaphor for the social decisions made on a larger level. Thats what it feels like when youre discriminated against., -A child participant in the Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes experiment-. Tears formed in the corners of Elliott's eyes. This procedure is sometimes so subtle that no one notices it happening. Mary and Zeke have three children, all of whom have blue eyes. When Elliott first conducted the exercise in 1968, brown-eyed students were given special privileges. Malinda Whisenhunt? 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). Fourteen years later, the students featured in The Eye of the Storm reunited and discussed their experiences with Elliott. The tallest structure in Riceville is the water tower. "You can see the look on their faces. "We want to see Room No. Locals say that drivers don't signal when they turn because everyone knows where everyone else is going. she asked the children, who were white. The killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, was a seismic event, a turning point that compelled many Americans to do something and do it with urgency. 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. ISBN 9780520382268. Kellen Castineiras PSY Dr. Gail C. Flanagan February 6, 2022. . Little children don't like uproar in the classroom. It is a must . Three sections were selected to be administered the simulation . Essay Sample: Ethical Concerns in Jane Elliot's Experiment. Privacy Statement Back when she introduced the experiment to her Iowa students more than five decades ago, at least one student had the audacity to challenge Elliotts premise, according to those who were in the classroom at the time. Why was the Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment considered unethical in psychology? Not everyone appreciated Elliotts exercise. The test also included violation of consent in which participation of the children was made involuntarily. Initial Reaction to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Exercise. She compromised the APA's Code of Conduct and Ethical Standard because she lied, after that she recanted the lies and kept as they were justified because of her greater purpose. In the 60th year beyond Brown vs. Board of Education, Frontline is making available their classic 1985 documentary, " A Class Divided ," about the experiment and what happened later. Then a picture was taken to remember. On April 4 1968, King was killed by the single . Amitai Etzioni, a sociologist at George WashingtonUniversity, says the exercise helps develop character and empathy. Back in the classroom, Elliott's experiment had taken on a life of its own. In the most uncomfortable moments, Elliott reminds the students of violent acts caused by racism or homophobia. She split the class in two categories, according to eye color, and told the children that one group was superior to the others. One student answers, since the day I was born. Throughout the entire experiment, Elliott leads frank conversations about race and discrimination. They felt superior and had the support of the authority figure (the teacher). "Probably because they have been taught how they're treated in this country that they have to understand us. The idea was simple but profound. Elliott was even brought on The Tonight Show to talk about her experiences. The roots of racism and why it continues unabated in America and other nations are complicated and gnarled. Keep me from judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins. This is a Sioux saying. Blue-eyed students slumped in their chairs, as though . Jane Elliott and Dr. On April 5 1968 the day after the death of Martin Luther King Jr Elliott decided to show her students how easy it was to be influenced by racism. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. She has . Need an original essay on Essay Sample: Ethical Concerns in Jane Elliot's Experiment? To back up my statement Bloom (2005) says Jane Elliott's blue-eyes brown-eyes exercise encouraged children to mistrust authority figures. Everyone's tired of her. The hate and discrimination that we see in adults have their origin in their upbringing. On the second day, the roles were reversed, and those with brown eyes received special treatment, and the blue-eyed children were made to feel inferior (A Class, 2003). "Eye color, hair color and skin color are caused by a chemical," Elliott went on, writing MELANIN on the blackboard. ", 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. This was the smaller group. 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. At first, she cooperated with me. 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 experiment to demonstrate . The children were not aware of the experiment, and therefore they could not give their permission of involvement. "I understand this is the first time you've flown?" And Im only doing this as an exercise that every child knows is an exercise and every child knows is going to end at the end of the day., We learn to be racist, therefore we can learn not to be racist. The blue eyes brown eyes study was a study on group prejudice and discrimination conducted by Jane Elliot. ", We stopped on Woodlawn Avenue, and a woman in her mid-40s approached us on the sidewalk. "She could get kids to do anything she wanted them to," he says of Elliott. The corn grows so fast in northern Iowafrom seedling to seven-foot-high stalk in 12 weeksthat it crackles. 980 Words. She was hesitant to enroll in Elliotts workshop but was told that if she wanted to succeed as a manager, shed have to attend. Role Theory: Expectations, Identities, and Behaviors. She decided to continue the exercise with her students after lunch. Today, increased migration means more opportunities for people from different backgrounds to interact with each other, which is often a source of conflict. Jane Elliott was a third grade teacher in Riceville, Iowa when she developed the Blue Eyed/ Brown Eyed exercise to teach the effects of racism. ", Absolutely not. Today, she says, it's still playing out as the U.S. reckons with racial injustice. She has made statements about the increase in hate crimes and racism in recent years. You have the right color eyes!. Carson asked, grinning. Why'd they shoot that King?" "They can't forget me," she said, "and because of who they are, they can't forgive me. Abstract The effectiveness of a well-known prejudice-reduction simulation, "Blue Eyes-Brown Eyes," was assessed as a tool for changing the attitudes of ncnblack teacher eduction students toward blacks. 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. Hundreds of viewers wrote letters saying Elliott's work appalled them. Blue eyes, brown eyes: What Jane Elliott's famous experiment says about race 50 years on. More than 50 years after her famous exercise, Elliott is still fighting. "Hey, Mrs. Elliott," Steven yelled as he slung his books on his desk. 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? Would you like to find out? Two students even got into a physical altercation. On Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, and the brown-eyed kids were told how shifty, dumb and lazy theywere. Ethics + Religion; Health; Politics + Society; . 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 . She was a local girl and the other teachers were intimidated by her success. Even family members can turn against each other if some authority suddenly decides that those differences are a problem. Jane would get invited to go to Timbuktu to give a speech. If brown-eyed children made a mistake, Elliott would call out the mistake and attribute it to the students brown eyes. Elliot wanted to show that the same thing happens in real life with brown eyed people (minority). It's the Jane Elliott machine. The Associated Press followed up, quoting Elliott as saying she was "dumbfounded" by the exercise's effectiveness. 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. I'm tired of hearing about her and her experiment and how everyone here is a racist. Subsequent research designed to gauge the efficacy of Elliotts attempt at reducing prejudice showed that many participants were shocked by the experiment, but it did nothing to address or explain the root causes of racism. 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. It has everything to do with power.. Charity is humiliating because its exercised vertically and from above; solidarity is horizontal and implies mutual respect.. And what she did caused an uproar. She told her students that she had made a mistake the previous day and that brown-eyed students . ABC broadcast a documentary about her work. On the first day of the two-day experiment, Elliott told the . Blue-eyed children got five extra minutes of recess. She told the students that the brown-eyed children were inferior and repeated the experiment. They are cleaner than blue-eyed people. Jane Elliott, Creator of the "Blue/Brown Eyes" Experiment, Says Racism Is Easy To Fix. 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. However, both Mary and Zeke have brown eyes. . ", The two hugged, and Whisenhunt had tears streaming down her cheeks. "He's a bluey! They wouldnt be allowed second helpings for lunch. Elliott was not. How do you think the world would change if everyone experienced the perils and setbacks that come with prejudice and discrimination? It makes you proud. "I think these children walked in a colored child's moccasins for a day," she was quoted as saying. Elliott and I were sitting at her dining room table. She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. Folks leave their cars unlocked, keys in the ignition. She traveled to corporations, banks, prisons, schools and military bases. When some of the . Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes 1968 - Jane Elliot, grade school teacher in Iowa conducted a classroom experiment to test whether racism was a learned characteristic Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes - an experiment to "create racism" Jane Elliot divided her 4th grade class into two groups based on eye color The Brown eyed group were told they were superior due . It is quite powerful to watch. Everyone looked at Mrs. Elliott. 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. Jane Elliott's Blue-Eyed versus Brown-Eyed Students experiment was conducted to determine whether racism was a learned characteristic. 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. "She taught in this school for 18 years." In this photograph from Sept. 13, 1965, Black children on their way to school in New York City pass by segregationists protesting integrated busing. hide caption. Is your time best spent reading someone elses essay? That same year, Elliott was invited to the White House Conference on Children and Youth to conduct an exercise on adult educators. Elliott's friends and family say she's tenacious, and has always had a reformer's zeal. From Elliot's highly controversial experiment it is clear that prejudice and discrimination can only be understood through experience. The ethical concerns arising from the experiment are consent and deception. The brown-eyed students also exercised a certain level of power over the blue-eyed students when they put the armbands on them. She could feel a chasm forming between the two groups of students. You can contribute to that positive change by watching the documentary. Jane Elliott, shown here in 2009, remains an outspoken advocate against racism. This time, the participants werent a bunch of elementary school children they were young adults. When she separated the class by eye color and announced that blue-eyed children were superior, Paul Bodensteiner objected at every turn.
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