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 . Help, Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes: A Cautionary Tale of Race and Brutality, School of Journalism & Mass Communication, Distinguished Teaching in Journalism Award. 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 scorching impact of racism. Digging deeper, I heard complaints about Elliotts tactics in her later corporate trainings. Why does correlational research help us make predictions, yet not explain cause-and-effect relationships? Did it work? Mrs Jane has attempted to understand the discriminated group from the inside, which is why she did not intervene by any means. Why do you believe that researchers would want to see if there is a correlation rather than just fully testing each variable? With a couple of basic and arbitrary examples, Elliott made the case that brown-eyed people were better. On the first day of the two-day experiment, Elliott told the blue-eyed children that they were genetically inferior to the brown-eyed children. What factors do you think would influence whether individuals could use this technique? Why is altruism a problem for evolutionary theory? In 2001, Jane Elliott recordedThe Angry Eye,in which she revised and updated her experiment. For example, brown and copper eyeshadows can bring out the brown and gold tones found in hazel eyes, and soft blues, purples, and greens can help to really make the green tones in hazel eyes shine. The anti-racism sessions Elliott led were intense. What made the Aversion Project unethical? Explain why a social worker is faced with an ethical dilemma when they discover that the polices of the agency they work for are not ethical. (LogOut/ Soon, multitudes of teachers around the world, looking for a magic bullet to erase racism, adopted the experiment and imported it into their own classrooms. Elliott was featured on nearly every national news show in America for decades. When you study Jane Elliotts famous lesson on discrimination What is one conclusion you are most likely to make? Charity is humiliating because its exercised vertically and from above; solidarity is horizontal and implies mutual respect.. Jane Elliott first gave this lesson on April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Many still see the students and the town itself as victims of a human experiment to which they had not consented. 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. But Paul, one of eight siblings and the son of a dairy farmer, didnt buy Elliotts mollification. Why Did Jane Elliott Choose Eye Color To Divide Her Students? 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. Certainly, the experiment demonstrated how hungry Americans are for a silver bullet to cure racism. They didnt need to engage with a single Black person. Elliott first created stereotyping situation among the children by separating them into two groups by easily recognized physical traits as blue eyes and brown eyes. copyright 2003-2023 Homework.Study.com. If this arbitrary division that Elliott enforced for a few hours created so many problems in this classroom, whats happening on a larger scale? Psychological Realism. Elliots discrimination create no-win situations for those placed in the inferior group because everyone were placed in that position giving no one to feel as if they were picked on. Why might a charismatic leader exhibit unethical behaviors? Weve been here before, with unsettling and disturbing results. PracticalPsychology. She had never met me and she accused me in front of everyone of using my sexuality to get ahead.. b. Participants described her hurling insults at them, particularly those who were white and had blue eyes. She also made the brown-eyed students put construction paper armbands on the blue-eyed students. In trying to teach the insidious impact of racism, did the experiment itself damage students? What ethical standards did the Monster Study violate? If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. Elliott went after Ken and Barbie, drilling, accusing, ridiculing them to make the point that white people make baseless judgments about Black people all the time. This technique allows researchers to show how many different traits are necessary to create defined groups, and then analyze the subjects behavior within their groups. She manipulated us, recalled Sandy Juettner, another US West employee enrolled in a workshop. Given we can make causal claims from experiments and not from correlational studies, why don't we just experiment all the time? At recess, two boys fought when a brown-eyed boy punched a blue-eyed boy who called him "brown-eyes." In a day, somehow "brown eyes" became an insult worth fighting over for the children . This is the phrase that inspired one of the most well-known experiments in education. The students were surprised, but they didnt argue. Blue-eyed genes are generally recessive. In 1971, when Elliott was pitting blue-eyed students against their brown-eyed counterparts, Zimbardo was conducting his own contentious research, known as the Stanford Prison Experiment, to show how easy it was to make thugs out of college students once they were given an overdose of power. It was obscene.. They needed not acknowledge their privilege or reflect on it. One student said it was the equivalent of black people being called derogatory names. 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. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. 240 Schaeffer Hall Nobodys standing here. She left teaching in the mid-80s to speak publicly about the experience and the impact of prejudice and racism. Consequently, the brown-eyed children started using blue-eyes as an insult. For many, the experiment went horribly awry. Collectively, the experiments were called Project MKUltra and were officially sponsored by the CIA. 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. One of the blue eyed even went to hit a brown eyed just for the fact that he was brown eyed. Then it was switched the next day. What Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? The brown-eyed kids would now be considered inferior. In response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, Jane Elliott devised the controversial and startling, "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise." This, now famous, exercise labels participants as inferior or superior based solely upon the color of their eyes and exposes them to the experience of . She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. Elliot wanted to show that the same thing happens in real life with brown eyed people (minority). Why was the Robbers Cave experiment unethical? It seemed to evince that all white people had to do to learn about racism was restrain themselves from an impulse to engage in made-up cruelty. Why or why not? God's Crooked Lines: Paranoia or Reality? Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. This procedure is sometimes so subtle that no one notices it happening. (LogOut/ He teaches magazine reporting and writing, and media ethics in a digital age. 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. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. While controversial, the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise continues to be one of the most well-known and praised learning exercises in the world of educational psychology. It also shows how arbitrary and subjective things can turn friends, family members, and citizens against each other. How do I install Adblock Plus on Internet Explorer 11? I just discovered that PBS provides the entire documentary "A Class Divided" online. Jane Elliot's 'The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment' was unethical in that she created a segregated environment in a third grade classroom. Youve probably heard different versions of it. Schedule a Visit Why are case studies used in qualitative research? But when she discovered that I was asking pointed questions of scores of her former students, as well as others subjected to the experiment, she made an about-face and said she no longer would cooperate with me. Mad Mod's cane. The blue-eyed children were told not to do their homework because, even if they answered all the questions, theyd probably forget to bring the assignment back to class. Brown eyed students who often struggled in school began doing better work, while blue eyed students who often did well in school began making mistakes in their schoolwork. These initial criticisms didnt stop Elliott. Is there a radio station that plays calm music? What kind of population was in the Milgram experiment? Pasicznyk joined 75 other employees for a training session in the companys suburban Denver headquarters in the late 1980s. On an otherwise deserted and isolated island, 200 perfect logicians . Terms in this set (7) To teach her students about racial discrimination in hopes of guiding them against it. The minimal group paradigm has shaped an entire methodology in social psychology. The students who had blue eyes were told that they were better and smarter than their inferior brown-eyed peers. There were more brown-eyed students in the room. Within a few hours of starting the exercise, Elliott noticed big differences in the childrens behavior and how they treated each other. At points, you are likely to feel uncomfortable. She traveled to corporations, banks, prisons, schools and military bases. What is the purpose of Jane Elliotts Blue eye Brown eye activity quizlet? But, if the experiment may teach us anything, its that no single classroom experiment, no one-day workshop, is equal to that task. Method. The blue eyes/brown eyes experiment, which could last one to three days, was at a glance similar to other human-potential-movement workshops of the era, including Werner Erhard's est training, in that it focused on changing basic self-perceptions and behavior. How will this affect the interpretations and conclusions you can/can't make from the research data? 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 divided her class into two groups - blue eyed people and brown eyed people. Why is it difficult to distinguish genetic from experiential influences? Racism is not genetical. What event triggered Jane Elliotts blue eyes brown eyes exercise? Very famous studies have used unethical methods to allow the experiment to run smoothly, as for example the "Stanford Prison Study". It also documents small-town White America's reflex reaction to the . Explain why or why not. To most people, it seemed to suggest that racism could be reduced, even eliminated, by a one- or two-day exercise. Learn about Jane Elliott's blue eyes vs brown eyes experiment. It remains an important reminder of the need to challenge and combat these harmful forces in our society. What is the blue eyes brown eyes experiment? Two months after trying it out, Elliott appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, followed by an appearance in an award-winning network TV documentary, and a headline-making White House conference on education. What ethical issues can arise when using a correlational research method? The brown-eyed children began to act aggressive and mean towards the blue-eyed children. She told them that people with brown eyes were better than people with blue eyes. As to conclude, Mrs. Jane has used deception for a good purpose in the experiment and ended up explaining the truth to the children. She selectively interprets behavior to confirm the stereotypes she had assigned by asking questions. Eye Color 319.335.2633 Explain briefly. The next day, the teacher convinced the children that she lied the day before and that brown eyed were better than blue-eyed people. 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