In 1970, a documentary about the exercise was released. She continued to conduct the exercise with her third graders. These initial criticisms didn’t stop Elliott. 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 caller complained that white children would not be able to handle the exercise and would be seriously damaged by the exercise. Many critics that the children were too young to understand the exercise. Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical? One even wrote a lipstick message with racial slurs. Elliott’s coworkers avoided her after her appearance on The Tonight Show. In fact, most of the initial response was negative. Not everyone appreciated Elliott’s exercise. Elliott was even brought on The Tonight Show to talk about her experiences. The story was then picked up by the Associated Press. Elliott asked her students to write about their experiences for the local newspaper. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise received national attention shortly after it ended. Why are we still talking about this experiment over 50 years later? Initial Reaction to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Exercise If you have ever heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy, these results may not come as a surprise. Students in the “inferior” groups were more likely to get a worse score. She gave all of the students simple spelling and math tests two weeks before the exercise, on the days of the exercise, and after the exercise.Įlliot said that when the children were given the test on the same day that they were in the “superior” group, they tended to get the highest scores. When Elliott conducted the exercise the next year, she added something extra to collect data. 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. Within a few hours of starting the exercise, Elliott noticed big differences in the children’s behavior and how they treated each other. The kids in the “bottom” group became timider and kept to themselves. Kids “on top” would tease the children who were deemed as the inferior group. It didn’t take long for the children to turn on each other. And the exercise continued in a similar fashion to how it was executed the day before. The brown-eyed children could take off their armbands and give them to the blue-eyed children, who were now taught that they were “inferior” to the brown-eyed children. The next day, Elliott reversed the roles. If brown-eyed children made a mistake, Elliott would call out the mistake and attribute it to the student’s brown eyes. Blue-eyed children got five extra minutes of recess. Throughout the day, Elliott continued to give the children with blue eyes special treatment. (In later versions of the exercise, children in the “inferior” group were given collars to wear.) Children with brown eyes were forced to wear armbands that made it easy for people to see that they had brown eyes. On the first day, she told the children with blue eyes they were “superior”: smarter and more well-behaved than the children with brown eyes. They killed hundreds of thousands of people based on eye color alone, that’s the reason I used eye color for my determining factor that day.” How Did The Experiment Work?Įlliott divided the class into children with blue eyes and children with brown eyes. “If you had a good German name, but you had brown eyes, they threw you into the gas chamber because they thought you might be a Jewish person who was trying to pass. “One of the ways Hitler decided who went into the gas chamber was eye color,” Elliott said in a later speech. The first thing that Jane Elliott did was divide the children into groups: those with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. Why Did Jane Elliott Choose Eye Color To Divide Her Students? The children said yes, and the exercise began. She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of color’s shoes. Even though some of the children said yes, Elliott pushed back. 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. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment? The experiment, known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. In 1968, schoolteacher Jane Elliott decided to divide her classroom into students with blue eyes and students with brown eyes. Where Is Jane Elliott Now? What Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment?
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