A Review of Jane Elliot’s Experiment In, A Class Divided

In the video “A Class Divided”, Jane Elliot a teacher from Riceville, Iowa engages her third grade class into a brown eyed/blue eyed experiment. The experiment is to support the youngsters to realize about prejudice and discrimination. The exact same experiment was also employed a couple of years later with adults.

In the brown eyed/blue eyed experiment Jane Elliot told her third graders with blue eyes that they had been much better than the brown-eyed kids. The brown-eyed kids had to put on collars so that they could inform each group apart from a distance. Elliot told the blue eyed young children that they have been smarter, nicer and so on. than the other group, they also had special privileges. Whilst she told the brown eyed young children that they acting up not undertaking excellent, basically the opposite of what she would say to the other group plus they also had less time in the course of recess. Prior to the experiment started all of the students had been friends, cooperated with a single one more and got along with 1 one more, but in the course of the experiment they began to turn on one yet another. The students from both groups began to show discrimination the subsequent day of the experiment, during recess 1 kid from the blue group started to get in touch with a youngster from the brown group names. The purpose the students started to act this way is because they started to actually believe that their group was better than the other and the group that wasn’t began to really feel that they weren’t being treated relatively. The students even showed hatred towards the opposing group and hatred at residence, even displaying hatred towards their teacher because of what she made the other group believe and how they reacted. Elliot later changed issues about when she told the brown-eyed group that they had been now greater than the blue-eyed group. Whichever group was told they have been “superior” to the other achieved quicker and greater than the other. This was confirmed to be accurate when the brown-eyed kids completed a project the teacher had provided them in two and a half minutes when they have been the superior group compared to when they weren’t and completed it in five minutes. The students have been impacted by the experiment in their academic expertise also, this was showed when the students got lower grades when they weren’t superior, higher when they were and their grades went up all round when it was all more than. Following the experiment was over the teacher reassured her students that they are all designed equal and no one was much better than anyone else especially due to eye color. The students had been very content when the experiment came to an end due to the fact they felt a lot greater now that each groups had united again and everybody was acquiring along.

Jane Elliot asked her students to come back years later when they had reached adulthood and had families of their personal. Most of her students had taken the information that they had about confronting prejudice and discrimination and taught their kids not to hate other individuals due to race or colour. Even though they taught their little ones about racism some of Elliot’s students said that they have heard their little ones say some racial slurs, but whatever the children learned wasn’t from them and was probably picked up from other children in college.

When Jane Elliot did the experiment with adults she had the blue-eyed group wait outdoors for about half an hour and when they ultimately got in to the area, began to make the brown-eyed group think that the other group was tardy, rude, and not wanting to take portion in the lesson. The adults just like the students of Elliot’s first experiment started to think that they had been superior to the other and even started to choose out the negative traits about the other. There was one particular lady who began to get incredibly annoyed with Elliot due to the fact of how she was creating the brown group really feel superior and how she was degrading the blue group. Soon after the experiment was over the blue eyed adults told Elliot that they felt powerless, hopeless and totally uncomfortable for the duration of it.

Jane Elliot’s brow eyed/blue eyed experiment is a wonderful method to show folks how it feels to be discriminated. I have had been faced with prejudice in my life a couple of instances but none that have greatly affected me. I know how it is to be discriminated against, particularly being a minority, folks of yet another race may possibly really feel as if they are better than you but if they were in somebody else’s footwear they just may well not consider the exact same way ever once more.