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Jane Elliot's Classroom Experiment And The Civil Rights Movement

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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

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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”

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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