Discrimation Experiment

She told her students that the blue-eyed students were superior to their brown-eyed friends. Within minutes, the way the two groups of students acted towards one another changed. Ms. Elliot, their teacher, started calling the blue-eyed division of the group “better and smarter” than their brown-eyed equivalents. She continued this by giving them more opportunities than the brown-eyed students. For example, they recieved seconds at lunch, as well as, extra time at recess. A blue-eyed student also went on to say, “You better keep the art stick close, [Ms. Elliot] in case you need to use it.” He meant to use it to punish a brown-eyed classmate. Once the teacher changed her views, the students did too. The students did not want to be different, so they followed their leader's example. Even though this part of the experiment only took place for a day, it seemed like it had occurred for a while. This is a great example of how once a leader changes his/her point of view, it’s followers will do the same, so they will not be seen as different or an

She broke the kids up by brown, and blue eyes giving the kids with blue eyes special treatment over the brown eyes students. This allowed the brown eyed kids to feel how colored kids are treated. The teacher put the blue eyed kids on a pedestal while treating the brown eyed kids with disgust, and unfair treatment.

In a powerful experiment we were able to see through the eyes of a kindergarten children prejudice dynamics. In a famous experience by Jane Elliot she separated her class between blue-eyed and brown-eyed students. Professor Elliot had separated her students by making one eye group inferior to the other making them have certain benefits and better treatment than the other group of students. Eventually, the students were switched the following day. This experiment have showed this group of kindergarten students how colors and discrimination affected the minority population. After this successful experiment with the kindergarten student’s professor Jane Elliot had done many other experiments using adults using the a similar technique blue-eyed

The blue-eyed members are subjected to pseudo-scientific explanations of their inferiority, culturally biased IQ tests and blatant discrimination. When the inevitable resistance by a blue-eyes surfaces, Elliot cites the outburst as an example of

Mrs. Elliot divided her all white elementary class by eye color. There was a “brown eyes” and “blue eyes” group, which made each group superior or inferior to each other. Mrs. Elliot performed the experiment, because she wanted to teach her students about racism and discrimination that was going on in the county, which was a major responded to the shooting of Martin Luther King in April 1968.Since Mrs. Elliot already divided her student by eye color. I think another way she could’ve divided her class is by hair color and

Elliott, advising that she “better keep that on [her] desk so if the brown-eyed people get outta hand,” referring to a yardstick. The brown-eyed students were not in favor of such discrimination and a brown-eyed boy mentioned, “Russell called me names and I hit him..hit him in the gut,” Mrs. Elliott proceeded to ask “what did he call you?,” the boy replied, “Brown-eyed.” Later on, Mrs. Elliott decided to ask why being called “brown-eyed” was so bad, a student replied, “It's the same way as other people call black people ni**ers.” What previously started off as a Simply because a specific trait was given a negative connotation, it transformed into something the students revolved around and focused on. This is similar to modern-day society.

“A Class Divided”: When asked the question, “do you think you know how it feels to be judged by the color of your skin”, a few felt that they did. Initially the children were excited to participate in the blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment, until they realized they would be the people being judged. Once the teacher announced that the blue-eyed people are the “better people” than the brown-eyed children, immediately voiced their disagreement. One blue-eyed boy stated, “My dad has brown eyes and he’s not stupid.”

1. During the Angry Eye experiment, Stephanie was discriminated against because she had blue eyes. This experiment included both blue and brown eyes. Stephanie, one of the people participating in the experiment got very emotional during this. At one point, she stood up and left the room.

At recess, Elliott witnessed three brown eyed girls gang up on a blue eyed girl, they sneered, “You better apologize to us for getting in our way because we’re better than you,” the girl sullenly apologized and walked away. Then the next day the exercise was reversed and ended with similar results. However it was noticed that the blue eyed children were not as cruel perhaps because they had felt the pain of being ostracized and did not want to

Martin Luther King have to die”. Jane Elliott did not know exactly how to explain that to an 8 year old. That is when Jane Elliott had came up with the “Class Divided” experiment.The purpose of the “Class divided” experiment was to teach children about racism. Jane Elliott was convinced that the best way to tackle the problem was to divide her class into two groups. One group was just with blue eyed children and the other group was with brown eyed children. When it was the brown eyes childrens turn Jane Elliott told the brown eyes that they can take their colors off and put it on whichever blue eye

Anne was immediately confused by their presence because they seemed to be just like her except for skin color. On one occasion all the children were playing together in the lobby of a movie theater. Anne was with some local white children playing, but when it was time to enter the movie lobby the white children went in one direction and Anne went in after her friends. Her disapproving mother quickly stopped Anne and they left the theater. Before this instance Anne had never considered the coincidence that all the white children watched the movie from the bottom terrace and all the African America children from the top terrace. While thinking about the difference Anne realized that the bottom terrace and side entrance was much more luxurious than the raggedy top terrace, where she and her mother usually sat (38-2). After this the difference in skin color became much more apparent to her in everyday life. Anne was motivated to find the answers as to why she was treated differently because of the color of her skin.

Jane Elliot really put the manner in which social construction is formed in a simple yet understandable way, by creating such a hierarchy based on eye color the experiment was simple enough for children yet had so much of an impact that adults could take it seriously as well. All of the subjects got to take into consideration and use critical thinking to realize just how absurd judging someone for their skin color really was. Elliot would constantly point out the simple mistakes one eye color group would make, reinforcing that one eye color group was superior to the other. Thus creating a sort of ethnocentric classroom, such as “Oh Jimmies dad kicked him! Guess what eye color he had? Brown! A blue eyed father would never do that!” the children

Elliot’s actions to set rules, was a symbolic gesture that set the norms of her micro society. Some of the rules were “blue-eyed people get five extra minutes of recess… the water fountain was to be used by blue-eyed people and brown-eyed people are not to play with the blue-eyed people on the playground.” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/script.html. Elliot’s symbolic rules created a segregated society based on eye color. The emphasis of eye color, a symbolism of intelligence, was understood by all members of Elliot’s Third grade class.

The blue-eyed boy called a brown-eyed boy, “brown-eyes,” a term, or feature, that didn’t matter the previous day, was then used to hurt his friend’s feelings. One of the young girls stated that the way she was being treating made her not even want to try and learn. The test results when the children practiced the phonics card pack with the teacher was interesting as well. The children in the superior group that day, excelled, but did worse on the day they had to wear the collars. The day after the experiment, Ms. Elliot sat down with her students and asked them how they felt when they were in the inferior group and unanimously they responded with how horrible they felt. Then she asked them if the color of someone’s eyes should have anything to do with how you treat them. All the children said no. Then she asked if the color of someone’s skin should affect how you treat them, the children said no. The children had empathy after the experiment because they knew what it was like to be discriminated

During the second day of the experiment, the roles were reversed. The brown-eyed children being told and treated like they were the superior group (1985). The results of this experiment proved interesting as it revealed how quick and easily groups can be discriminated against based on differences alone. Not only did the in-groups and the out-groups start treating each other terribly, but the kids who were in the out-group developed low self-esteem which caused them to do worse on their class assignments, get temperamental, defensive and fought with the other group. The results during role reversal were the same. Jane Elliot later commented during the experiment she "… watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating, little third-graders in a space of fifteen minutes” (1985). The children’s academic performance greatly