Sunday, May 26, 2013

Discrimination blue eyes and brown eyes
 In 1968, a time when racism and discrimination was spread around the United States and right after the death of a great man Martin Luther King; a 2nd grade teacher from Iowa, named Jane Elliot made an experiment on her students to teach them about discrimination, and she taped it on video camera.

Elliot made the blue eyed and brown eyed experiment for three days. In day one she divided her class students into two groups, those with the blue eyes and those with the brown eyes. She started with favoring the blue eyed and herself, being blue eyed, over the brown eyed children in class. She gave the blue eyed extra time at recess and having to leave first for lunch, before the brown eyed. She even made the brown eyed children wear blue collars around their neck to recognize them from a distance. She also kept referring to them as brown eyed for any slack at work and treated them differently. At the end of the first day you can clearly see that the blue eyed felt superior over the brown eyed children.
The next day Elliot gave the brown eyed a privilege over the blue eyed. And the effects from the first day appeared almost the same but in reverse! The blue eyed felt inferior this time, their score dropped and they were slower in solving problems. Jane Elliot wanted to show both students how it feels to be discriminated against.

The experiment showed that children were willing to discriminate against their own classmates and even their friends. 15 years after the experiment Elliot made a reunion with the same students to show them the video and to talk about the experiment and their experience of it; the students said that it helped them to be less prejudiced as teens and young adults because they know the feeling.

No comments:

Post a Comment