ipl-logo

Jane Elliot's Classroom Experiment And The Civil Rights Movement

586 Words3 Pages

It is almost unfathomable to understand that racial segregation took place for so long in
America. After the murder of Martin Luther King Jr, the civil rights movement was as big and controversial as ever. In an attempt to teach kids about racial segregation and how to stray away from racism, third-grade teacher in Iowa, Jane Elliot created a classroom experiment in which she segregated her students based on eye color. For two days, children with a specific eye color were treated inferior to the other students during the school day in an attempt to demonstrate to white children how black people are treated on a daily basis. Elliot performed this experiment several times over the years and eventually, this experiment led to her being known as …show more content…

Their rights to do things, such as play on playground equipment and get second helpings of food at lunch were taken away, and they were informed that they had to drink out of the water fountain with a paper cup. Elliot told the brown-eyed children that they were cleaner and more intelligent than blue-eyed children as well as encouraged them to cause physical harm to and belittle the others.2 This led to brown-eyed students ganging up on the children with blue eyes and beating them up, degrading them, and making comments that were conforming to the stereotypes that Elliot enforced on the children. The next day, Elliot switched the roles in the experiment and made the children with brown eyes inferior. After the experiment, children were
2 Bloom, S. G. (2022, BLUE EYES, BROWN EYES: On Race and Jane Elliott's Famous Experiment on Prejudice.
Skeptic, 27, 34-41,78. https://login.proxy.tamuc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/magazines/blue-eyes-brown-on-race-jane-elliotts -famous/docview/2719738562/se-2
1 Bloom, S. G. (2022, BLUE EYES, BROWN EYES: On Race and Jane Elliott's Famous Experiment on Prejudice.
Skeptic, 27, 34-41,78. …show more content…

This experiment picked up a lot of traction and Jane Elliot took this experiment globally.
She went around the world and taught people in prisons, universities, and even in militaries the importance of ending racism. During one of these performances with a group of adults, Elliot had the blue-eyed group wear collars while the brown-eyed group ridiculed them. She also had both groups take a fake IQ test in which the students with brown eyes outscored the students with blue eyes.3 After the experiment was over, the adults talked about it and a lot of the discriminated against adults reported feeling uncomfortable and emotionally low during the experiment.4 A TV show, books, interviews, and appearances on national and appearances on nationally famous shows were what Jane Elliot received from this experiment. Although it is successful, it is also criticized a lot due to its ethical issues. On one hand, this experiment opened up people’s eyes to the corrupt nature of racism and segregation and inflicted change on

Show More
Related

Review Of Diane Ravitch's The Troubled Crusade: American Education

1982 Words | 8 Pages

In the book, The Troubled Crusade: American Education 1945-1980 by Diane Ravitch it shows the fight to have equality in education especially in the chapters of Race and Education: The Brown Decision and Race and Education: Social Science and Law. Ravitch shows the injustice in which blacks were treated and the segregated system seemed impossible to escape, especially in the South. Ravitch shows the change in the idea of “color-blindness” (that all are equal despite race, religion, color, etc.) and how that was the goal until the pursuit for “color-blindness” was considered to be “racism in a new form” (p. 114). Ravitch explores the policy transformation from a “color-blindness” policy to a “color-consciousness” policy which were used when implemented

Read More

Prejudice In Matshona Dhliwayo's The Essential Blue Eyed

1217 Words | 5 Pages

This simple nine word quotation from Matshona Dhliwayo summarizes much of what Jane Elliot has spent her entire career trying to get people to understand. Watching the film, The Essential Blue Eyed, gave me an entirely new perspective on racism and in truth, showed how ignorant I had been. Jane Elliot is able to give study participants and viewers a completely new perspective on the social construction of race. According to the University of Minnesota, race refers to a category of people that share physical characteristics such as facial features and skin color (UMN 1).

Read More

What Was The Impact Of The Port Royal Experiment

1463 Words | 6 Pages

Thomas Jefferson, though writing long before the civil war, endorsed a gradual emancipation and colonization of the slaves, rather than outright freedom, concerned with their ability to peacefully coexist with white Americans. One of the more progressive ideas came in the form of giving the former slaves land, wages, and freedom equal to that of any other free man. This, however, was not a popular plan among many of the people of the time, believing that African Americans are inherently inferior to white Americans. If this assumption was true, then obviously we couldn’t integrate them into society, as they wouldn’t work or contribute to society in a meaningful way. The Port Royal Experiment sought to prove the validity of this claim, one way or

Read More

Instant Decisions In Malcolm Gladwell's 'Blink'

990 Words | 4 Pages

I also agree with the experiment because it is common, especially in North Dakota, for Caucasians to view those of a different race differently from themselves. It can be very disheartening to witness as they may be very intelligent and friendly but are looked down upon because of how they look or

Read More

What Ethical Principles Were Violated In The Tuskegee

1492 Words | 6 Pages

Tuskegee Film Reflection Allison Elliott California Baptist University HSC210-B Ethics in Healthcare Professor Lindsay Fahnestock April 4, 2023 What ethical principles were violated in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study? The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment violated ethical principles of Fidelity, respect for rights and dignity, coercion, justice, integrity, beneficence, benefits, and burdens. The experiment was conducted without the informed consent of participants, who were largely poor and uneducated African American men.

Read More

The Challenges Of Racism In Jane Elliott's Blue Eyed

1425 Words | 6 Pages

Throughout this process, though, she has faced mounting backlash for her controversial tactics within her exercise, especially from her community. I believe that Jane Elliott’s “Blue Eyed”

Read More

Jane Elliot And Stereotypes

492 Words | 2 Pages

In 1968, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jane Elliot, a third grade teacher, decided to conduct an experiment with her students on race, discrimination and bigotry. She conducted this experiment by splitting the class into two individual groups, the blue-eyed group and the brown-eyed group. The first day of the experiment, Tuesday, Elliot suggested that the blue-eyed children were the superior group. They were allowed extra time at recess, seconds at lunch, drink right from the fountain and were not allowed to play with the brown-eyed children. The brown-eyed children were to wear a collar that identified them.

Read More

Harrison Bergeron Equality Essay

625 Words | 3 Pages

In “Harrison Bergeron” equality was taken to another level in my opinion. One way they showed equality was by using weights to bring down the people who were physically at an advantage compared to other people in the society. Also, people above average mentally were given a little mental handicap radio in his ear, which brought them down to average. This was tuned to a government transmitter, and would send out sharp noises to affect the use

Read More

Jane Elliot's Experiment

596 Words | 3 Pages

Jane Elliot was a third grade teacher that tried an experiment with her class to educate her students on the effects of discrimination. Elliot separated her class based on their eye color in order to explain how people are treated differently in the world. She tried to find a way to explain racism in the world in a way that third graders would understand. I was actually surprised when I heard there had been an altercation on the playground the day of the experiment. A blue eyed student teased a brown eyed student which resulted in the brown eyed student engaging in a physical altercation with the blue eyed student.

Read More

A Class Divided Summary

919 Words | 4 Pages

In the PBS documentary A Class Divided third grade teacher Jane Elliot tried an experiment to let a class of her third graders experience discrimination. For Jane Elliot’s third grade class in a small town in Iowa discrimination was unheard of because there was only white Christians living in the town. She separated her class based on eye color, so one day she made the kids with blue eyes be superior and the kids with brown eyes be inferior. She did multiple test to see if the way they were treated changed the way they learned. The next day she switched it, so the kids with blue eyes were now inferior and the kids with brown eyes were superior.

Read More

A Class Divided Documentary Analysis

1170 Words | 5 Pages

The documentary titled, “ A Class Divided” introduces us to the experiment made in an elementary school in Iowa by the schoolteacher named Jane Elliot. The documentary begins with Mrs. Elliot reuniting with the students who she did this experiment with the first time. The students are much older now, and they willingly want to watch the experiment that they were part of when they were elementary kids. The experiment was done days after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. Mrs. Elliot has always thought about doing the eye color experiment, but she was never sure of when to do it. She asked her third grade student if it would be interesting to see what would happen if they were judged by their eye color.

Read More

A Class Divided Analysis

667 Words | 3 Pages

However with the guards, she was more interested in creating empathy than the actual ethics of the experiment. Which was morally incorrect, because only so much can be done to build empathy and most empathetic people will be taught empathy at an early age so it becomes part of who they are. However, there was very little reason for it to be conducted with the guards in the first place and raises the question of when should it stop? To abide by the guidelines, Jane should’ve let the participants know that it was an experiment and that they were welcome to leave at any

Read More

What Is Jane Elliot's A Class Divided?

680 Words | 3 Pages

Jane Elliot conducted a revolutionary experiment in1968 termed ‘A Class Divided’, in which she segregated her third graders; insisting that those with blue eyes were much more superior to those with brown eyes. On the second day of the experiment she switched the roles around and declared that those with brown eyes were better. This investigation was put together with the aim of educating her students about discrimination to a large extent; as Martin Luther King was assassinated the day before the experiment commenced and her students could not comprehend why a King would be murdered. As the experiment progressed some ethical guidelines were breached.

Read More

Jane Elliot's Essay: The Eye Of The Storm

517 Words | 3 Pages

The Eye of the Storm Jane Elliot was a teacher for a class of eight year olds at a school in Riceville, Iowa. Racism was more of a problem in 1968 than it is today, and Jane was trying to demonstrate to her students what it felt like to be a black person in their society at that time. Her experiment was ran very successfully as her students physically felt how African Americans felt in their society during that time. She separated her class into brown eyes and blue eyes. The first day, the students with blue eyes were better than the students with brown eyes and the opposite the next day.

Read More

Ethical Issues In The Movie Miss Evers

456 Words | 2 Pages

The Tuskegee Experiment Study was a research experiment targeting a group of African American males who had syphilis in which they after failing to acquire the needed funds to continue the study decided along with the government to discontinue all treatments for the control and no-control males to determine ultimately whether or not it had the same outcome for white people as it did African Americans. The men participating in the study were informed by Nurse Evers that they were to be treated for "bad blood,” which was a localized term used by people to describe a host of

Read More

More about Jane Elliot's Classroom Experiment And The Civil Rights Movement

Related Topics

Open Document