A Class Divided Experiment
In 1968, Jane Elliot a teacher in a small all-white Iowa town did a famous experiment that was inspired by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the inspirational life that he led. This 3rd-grade teacher came up with this exercise to help her caucasian students understand the effects of racism and prejudice. She divided her class into 2 separate groups: blue-eyed and brown-eyed students. On the first day, she labeled the blue-eyed group as a superior group. She made the brown-eyed group of students wear this blue collar to identify which students were brown-eyed. From there she let the blue-eyed group have extra privileges while she left the brown-eyed children to represent the minority group. For example, she only let the blue-eyed group play in the playground, she told her students the blue-eyed group was smarter than the brown-eyed and that the brown-eyed group couldn't play with the blue-eyed group. She also singled out individuals students to stress the negative characteristics of the children in the minority group. This exercise showed that the children's behavior changed almost instantaneously. The group of blue-eyed students performed better academically and even began bullying their own brown-eyed classmates. Due to this, the group of brown-eyed students began to experience lower self-confidence and worse academic performance. The next day she reversed the roles of the 2 groups and the blue-eyed students became the minority group. At the end of the experiment, the children were so relieved that they were reported to have embraced one another and they agreed they should not judge people by the color of their skin or outward appearances.
I found this really interesting when watching and reading about this experiment, the children who were told their blue-eyed was better than the brown-eyed students began to feel superior and even started to bully their own friends who had brown colored eyes in that classroom. Their self-confidence went up and felt like they were better than the ones who had brown-eyed or blue-eyed when the roles were reversed. What Jane Elliot taught, made them feel empathy towards black people or any other race that is viewed as the minority group. She taught them that it is not okay to judge someone by the color of their skin and she gave them a daring lesson in discrimination.
This experiment is amazing! The way that Jane Elliot was able to perform this experiment without upsetting people is really interesting to me. I think that it is a good idea to learn about discrimination early on, before it has a chance to form in children's minds. The fact that the students in the class were so willing to participate in the experiment surprises me because they must have already known what they were getting into. I think that it is interesting how their attitudes towards each other changed as the experiment progressed. Also, it was interesting to learn about how these children learned about discrimination, and how effective this experiment actually was.
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