Photo: Charlotte Button
After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, school teacher Jane Elliott wanted to teach her third-grade class about racism. Rather than a lengthy discussion about it, she decided to show the 8-year-olds what racism is all about in a famous "experiment":
With King shot just the day before in Memphis, Elliott encouraged her third-graders to discuss how something so horrible could happen.
"I finally said, 'Do you kids have any idea how it feels to be something other than white in this country?' "
The children shook their heads and said they wanted to learn, so Elliott set the rules. Blue-eyed children must use a cup to drink from the fountain. Blue-eyed children must leave late to lunch and to recess. Blue-eyed children were not to speak to brown-eyed children. Blue-eyed children were troublemakers and slow learners.
Within 15 minutes, Elliott says, she observed her brown-eyed students morph into youthful supremacists and blue-eyed children become uncertain and intimidated.
Brown-eyed children "became domineering and arrogant and judgmental and cool," she says. "And smart! Smart! All of a sudden, disabled readers were reading. I thought, 'This is not possible, this is my imagination.' And I watched bright, blue-eyed kids become stupid and frightened and frustrated and angry and resentful and distrustful. It was absolutely the strangest thing I'd ever experienced."
Corina Knoll of the Los Angeles Times has the story: Link
It was a pretty neat experiment. Everything went as planned. Something I won't forget.
But no one has the heart to look at it for what it is...
Consider the fact that the kids were already on the bottom of a social hierarchy. They were order-takers and the teacher was an order-giver. Being at the bottom of a social hierarchy can adversely affect a person's mood, which can make it harder to learn and solve problems. The blue-eyed kids were placed in an even lower class, which made them even "dumber" than they were already.
On the other hand, being in a relatively higher class can adversely affect a person's empathy. Although the brown-eyed kids weren't elevated to a higher class, they did become a middle-class when the blue-eyed kids were demoted. As a result, the brown-eyed kids were happier and less empathic.
However, this experiment doesn't illustrate the positive effects of social equality. For that, we need to look at the Spanish Revolution. When class distinctions were abolished, the people became happier and more empathic, which increased their intelligence and productivity. The libertarian communes became freer, more prosperous, and more peaceful. Unfortunately, they were outnumbered by their fascist enemies and betrayed by their Marxist allies, thus leading to their defeat.
Compare the Spanish Revolution to the various Marxist revolutions that have occured, in which members of the lower-class replace the higher-class. This creates an even greater social hierarchy, which results in increased oppression, poverty, and strife.
Bear in mind that people have free will. Our position in society can influence our emotions, but it doesn't control us. If we treat people as equals, we can be happier and more empathic.
The objective of the experiment isn't all that clear, anyway. Wasn't she introducing a bias into her own science experiment here? Is the observer supposed to do this?
(The children never gave their consent to be used as the teacher's lab rats. Moreover, the teacher had no idea if there would be lasting effects.)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/
The real trick to doing well, though, is not to feel superior to others, but to view all as equals. Hitler & his thugs thought they were superior. But Gandhi cleaned latrines with untouchables, and Einstein once insisted that he not be exempt from handing over his wallet to an armed robber in a diner.
Children become what they are told they are.
People are sheep.
People like having power over other people.
1984 and Idiocracy are both true prophetic visions.
People will do what they are told to their own detriment.
People suck.
Then began to allow the blue eye children to talk among themselves while the non blue eye children had to be quiet.
Someone in the class protested about this and stated that it was illegal. They continued to protest till the teacher stopped the 'experiment' and told us the truth.
I spoke to someone later about this situation and they stated that the person protesting may have saved the teacher's job as the teacher did not inform anyone of the 'experiment' and did not obtain permission.
I remember this because I always wondered why the person protested about the situation. To me it showed that if you think something is wrong you need to stand up be counted.
This was NOT a lesson in how kids will treat each other differently based on eye color, or based on being separated. There may be things to be learned from that simple idea, but this was much different. This was an example of how kids will react when they are told they are inferior/superior by a trustworthy authority figure, someone they are asked to trust the judgement of every day, someone whom they must obey or be spanked at home. She, not the kids, equated the eye color to behaviors. They just reflected what she said. "Boy X is forgetful, what does that tell us about others with his eye color?" Girl X is stupid, etc. That was an experiment in propaganda and mind manipulation, not in being different. The kids were already different, and made no bones about it, had friends with different hair color, eye color, etc. This was an experiment similar to Nazi techniques. Very creepy. She told them they were stupid, and they performed more poorly, it didn't matter if she did it by groups or not. The kids didn't 'infer' any negative attributes, she overtly stated them as fact. Would it be considered acceptable teaching technique to tell kids they were stupid regardless of the eye color setup, and then make a video about how that affected them? That's what she did. The kids would have been happy to be friends across groups, but she forbade it. It's a lesson about the danger of media and public schools, both of which can promote a single approved agenda to every corner. Little else is more powerful than those two organizations in shaping culture.
KidReviewer
The use of statistics is well over rated, is poorly delivered and the biggest cause bias and discrimination. Reporting findings as fact is pure wrong.