blue eyes brown eyes experiment ethical issues blue eyes brown eyes experiment ethical issues

Zimbardocreator of the also controversial 1971 Stanford Prisoner Experiment, which was stopped after college student volunteers acting as "guards" humiliated students acting as "prisoners"says Elliott's exercise is "more compelling than many done by professional psychologists. That's what it feels like when you're discriminated against.". She was a standing-room-only speaker at hundreds of colleges and universities. On the second day of the experiment, Elliott switched the childrens roles. Cookie Settings, Kids Start Forgetting Early Childhood Around Age 7, Archaeologists Discover Wooden Spikes Described by Julius Caesar, Artificial Sweetener Tied to Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke, Study Finds, Rare Jurassic-Era Insect Discovered at Arkansas Walmart. And they are smarter than blue-eyed people." The brown-eyed children got to sit in the front of the room, to go to lunch first, and to have more time at recess. Proceeding with the experiment, Elliot divided the children into two groups each with nine pupils. The results are mixed. Given the long-term results of the experiment, the controversial study could not have taken place in today's society despite its significant insights on matters racism. Once indoors, the brown-eyed group was then treated to coffee and doughnuts, while the blue-eyed group could only stand around and wait. "Well, what do you expect from him, Mrs. Elliott," a brown-eyed student said as a blue-eyed student got an arithmetic problem wrong. She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of colors shoes. She says that its shocking how children whore normally kind, cooperative, and friendly with each other suddenly become arrogant, discriminatory, and hostile when they belong to a superior group. ", 2023 Smithsonian Magazine The results were the same. he asked. Knowing that her experiment would have consequences, Jane remained committed to her course. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. 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. SpeedyPaper.com 2023 All rights reserved. "We just want to peek in," I volunteered. The following are some of her most insightful quotes on these issues. Although actions from the experiment show lack of respect towards subjects it has widely been recognized in the study of human behavior in social and cultural context. "How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" Her bold experiment to teach Iowa third graders about racial prejudice divided townspeople and thrust her onto the national stage. The experiment known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. Is it even possible today? She asked the other teachers what they were doing to bring news of the King assassination into their classrooms. Yes, the children felt angry, hurt, betrayed. (Byrnes & Kiger, 1992). If you are the original author of this essay and no longer wish to have it published on the Jane Elliott's Blue-Eyed versus Brown-Eyed Students experiment was conducted to determine whether racism was a learned characteristic. Back when she introduced the experiment to her Iowa students more than five decades ago, at least one student had the audacity to challenge Elliotts premise, according to those who were in the classroom at the time. Select from the 0 categories from which you would like to receive articles. How do you think the world would change if everyone experienced the perils and setbacks that come with prejudice and discrimination? The act of treating students differently was obviously a metaphor for the social decisions made on a larger level. She asks them if they have ever faced treatment like the type that blue-eyed people would experience in the following two and a half hours. Jane Elliott, an educator and anti-racism activist, first conducted her blue eyes/brown eyes exercise in her third-grade classroom in Iowa in 1968. Children with brown eyes were forced to wear armbands that made it easy for people to see that they had brown eyes. The nonstop parade of sickening events such as the murder of George Floyd surely is not going to be abated by a quickie experiment led by a white person for the alleged benefit of other whites as was the case with the blue-eyed, brown eyed experiment. ", Elliott says the role of a teacher is to enhance students' moral development. Despite the adaptation of the experiment in psychological studies, Jane has been widely criticized for her unethical conduct and promotion of discrimination among children. The contents of Exploring Your Mind are for informational and educational purposes only. Jane Elliott has done a lot of reflection about the consequences of the minimal group experiment. The study also violates the American Principles of Psychologist codes of conduct making its replication or further investigation unethical. According to role theorist Erving Goffman, emotional and cognitive experiences in such experiments as the Blue-Eyed versus the Brown-Eyed can have a long-term influence on behaviors and attitudes of participants especially when they are made to play the role of a stigmatized group (Biddle, 2013). To begin with, Jane Elliot's experiment involved deception in which the children were made in believing that change in eye color influence intelligence. It has since evolved into an online blog and YouTube channel providing mental health advice, tools, and academic support to individuals from all backgrounds. Words are the most powerful weapon devised by humankind. She was a local girl and the other teachers were intimidated by her success. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features NFL Sunday Ticket Press Copyright . Thousands of educators across the United States folded the experiment into their curriculums. Outside, rows of corn stretched to the horizon. . Not a day goes by without me thinking about it, Ms. Elliott. On April 4 1968, King was killed by the single . The idea was simple but profound. Two education professors in England, Ivor F. Goodson and Pat Sikes, suggest that Elliott's experiment was unethical because the participants weren't informed of its real purpose beforehand. Jane Elliott (ne Jennison; born on November 30, 1933) is an American diversity educator.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. "He's a bluey! This meeting, along with other clips of the exercises impact on education, is featured in a PBS documentary called A Class Divided. Hire a professional with VAST experience! Perhaps because the outcome seemed so optimistic and comforting, coverage of Elliott and the experiments alleged curative powers cropped up everywhere. We use them to divide and destroy people., White peoples number one freedom, in the United States of America, is the freedom to be totally ignorant of those who are other than white. 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. That's not true. At the time, she was a third-grade . "Would you like to come on the show?" One of the ways Hitler decided who went into the gas chamber was eye color, Elliott said in a later speech. Problems with this research were that it went against a lot of ethical issues. When she went downtown to do errands, she heard whispers. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue-eyed kids to wear one. And StanfordUniversity psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo writes in his 1979 textbook, Psychology and Life, that Elliott's "remarkable" experiment tried to show "how easily prejudiced attitudes may be formed and how arbitrary and illogical they can be." You must get the parents first. The May 25 killing of George Floyd set off weeks of nationwide protests over the police abuse and racism against black people, plunging the U.S. into a reckoning of racial inequality. "I think third grade was too young for what she did. The textbook publisher McGraw-Hill has listed her on a timeline of key educators, along with Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Horace Mann, Booker T. Washington, Maria Montessori and 23 others. Elliott turned into Americas mother of diversity training. She gave the blue-eyed students an armband so other students could more easily identify them, and then she told her class that it was a scientific fact that people with brown eyes are smarter than those with blue because their bodies had more . 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 . Later, it would occur to Elliott that the blueys were much less nasty than the brown-eyed kids had been, perhaps because the blue-eyed kids had felt the sting of being ostracized and didn't want to inflict it on their former tormentors. The arbitrary division among the students intensified over the course of the experiment, so much so that it actually ended in physical violence. "She could get kids to do anything she wanted them to," he says of Elliott. "It would be hard to know, wouldn't it, unless we actually experienced discrimination ourselves. The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring . This was the smaller group. As a school teacher in the small town of Riceville, Iowa, Elliott first conducted the anti-racism experiment on her all-white third-grade classroom, the day after the civil rights leader was killed. From the moment the experiment begins, Jane Elliott uses a mean tone to speak to the participants. Or alternatively you may decide to keep them in ignorance of what is happening. Barbie had to have a Ken, so Elliott picked from the audience a tall, handsome man and accused him of doing the same things with his female subordinates, Pasicznyk said. Elliotts bullying rejoinder to any nonbeliever was to say that however much pain a white person felt after one or two days of made-up discrimination was nothing when compared to what Blacks endure daily. The students started to internalize, and accept, the characteristics they'd been arbitrarily assigned based on the color of their eyes. In her article, Peggy McIntosh compares the "white privilege" to an invisible set of unearned rewards and . The roots of racism and why it continues unabated in America and other nations are complicated and gnarled. . Basically, you establish differences between a set of subjects in order to divide them into separate groups. They felt superior and had the support of the authority figure (the teacher). She slumped. There is a way to avoid editing or writing from scratch! APA principles acknowledge that individuals rights to privacy, self-determination, and confidentiality is paramount to all psychological activities. Now 45, she had been in Elliott's third grade class in 1969. Jane Elliots work and experiences have made her an authority on education and anti-racism. "It's the same thing over and over again," Cross says. 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. "She got carried away by this possession she developed over human beings. They wouldnt be allowed second helpings for lunch. Now, almost four decades later, Elliott's experiment still mattersto the grown children with whom she experimented, to the people of Riceville, population 840, who all but ran her out of town, and to thousands of people around the world who have also participated in an exercise based on the experiment. A difference as simple as eye color, defined and established by the authority figure, created a rift between the students. Nevertheless, Elliott became as famous as a teacher could become in America. Yet what Elliott did continues to stir controversy. 980 Words. You've still got that same sweet smile. See Page 1. In this article, we'll explain what happened during the experiment and discuss its consequences. In fact, most of the initial response was negative. On Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, and the brown-eyed kids were told how shifty, dumb and lazy theywere. "They are cleaner and they are smarter.". Retrieved from https://speedypaper.com/essays/ethical-concerns-in-jane-elliots-experiment, Free essays can be submitted by anyone, so we do not vouch for their quality. Essay Example, Essay Example on Racism Towards Black People, Essay Sample about Developing a Campaign for School Intimidation, Essay Example on Therapist-Client Relationship Boundaries, Islamic Perspective on Euthanasia, Free Essay Sample. She also assumed that none of the children had interacted with black people and that the only place they could have seen them is on television. SpeedyPaper website, please click below to request its removal: Liked this essay sample but need an original one? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Facilitators should be aware that Jane Elliott's focus on white people can lead viewers to the wrong impression that people of color are passively molded by white people's behavior when, in actuality, people of color can and do respond to racism in a variety of ways. Would you like to find out? The exercise is "an inoculation against racism," she says. Carson asked, grinning. After recess that day, the brown-eyed children complained that they were . The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. The students who had blue eyes were told that they were better and smarter than their inferior brown-eyed peers. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. "Why?" They also harassed them constantly. All 28 children found their desks, and Elliott said she had something special for them to do, to begin to understand the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. the day before. Elliott was not. 4 Pages. Blue-eyed people. Children often fight, argue, and sometimes hit each other, but this time they were motivated by eye color. She told her students that she had made a mistake the previous day and that brown-eyed students . She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. Role Theory: Expectations, Identities, and Behaviors. A columnist at a Denver newspaper called it "evil. Through this study, Elliot demonstrated how easy it is for prejudice and discrimination to emerge from just a simple message that people with one eye color are superior to people with another eye color. The idea of white privilege is closely tied to Elliotts initial question to her students. "Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior, but white children, there's no way they could possibly understand it. This way, she successfully created two distinct groups in her classroom: The consequences of the minimal group became evident very quickly. Throughout the day, Elliott continued to give the children with blue eyes special treatment. In this article, we talk about leadership and female discrimination.. And you'll always have it. "We are repeating the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise on a daily basis.". I got to have five minutes extra of recess." "Because we might catch something," a brown-eyed boy said. "Things are changing, and they're going to change rapidly if we're very, very fortunate," she said. Not only were they fewer in numbers, but the authority figure was against them. Jane Elliot's 'The Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes Experiment' was unethical in that she created a segregated environment in a third grade classroom. The video . I'm tired of hearing about her and her experiment and how everyone here is a racist. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise continues to be relevant. Terms of Use those with brown eyes (or hazel eyes). She says its because racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and ethnocentrism are mean and nasty. ", "I've never forgotten the exercise," Whisenhunt volunteered. 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. Jane Elliott's experiment of dividing an otherwise homogenous group of school kids by their eye color. Need an original essay on Essay Sample: Ethical Concerns in Jane Elliot's Experiment? "Eye color, hair color and skin color are caused by a chemical," Elliott went on, writing MELANIN on the blackboard. On the first day of the two-day experiment, Elliott told the . In doing the research for my book with scores of peoples who were participants in the experiment, I reached out to Elliott. The anti-racism sessions Elliott led were intense. The corn grows so fast in northern Iowafrom seedling to seven-foot-high stalk in 12 weeksthat it crackles. hide caption. The more melanin, the darker the person's eyesand the smarter the person. Questioning authority The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. The people and cultures already present in a place often feel threatened by new immigrants. "Probably because they have been taught how they're treated in this country that they have to understand us. THE ANGRY EYE , a 35-minute video, features Jane Elliott conducting her Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed exercise with college students. Immediately after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Professor Jane Elliott used the minimal group paradigm to perform an experiment that would teach her students about race discrimination. Even family members can turn against each other if some authority suddenly decides that those differences are a problem. "We want to see Room No. "We'll just be a couple of minutes. Shermer and Bloom discuss: "Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes" Jane Elliott famous racism experiment reactions to it (in the classroom, locally, nationally, internationally) whether the "experiment" was really more of a demonstration public interest, from Johnny Carson to Oprah Winfrey the questionable ethics of the experiment what it reveals about tribalism, racism . "You know, sweetheart, you haven't changed one bit. The documentary has become a popular teaching tool among teachers, business owners, and even employees at correctional facilities. PracticalPsychology. Kids on top would tease the children who were deemed as the inferior group. 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 . In Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues That Teach Kids to Do the Right Things, educational psychologist Michele Borda says it "teaches our children to counter stereotypes before they become full-fledged, lasting prejudices and to recognize that every human being has the right to be treated with respect." The experiment, known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination. Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct.