Social Psychology in Depth: Blue-Eyed and Brown-Eyed How can a teacher teach about prejudice in a...

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Social Psychology in Depth: Blue-Eyed and Brown-Eyed How can a teacher teach about prejudice in a classroom with little diversity? Jane Elliott, a third grade teacher in a small lowa town in the late 1960s, faced this problem and solved it. Shortly after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Elliott decided to teach her students about the dangers of prejudice and discrimination by having them experience it. Elliot said "We've all been told those things. We know them, at least in the sense that we mouth them at appropriate times. Yet we continue to discriminate, or to tolerate it in others, or to do nothing to stop it. What I had racked my brain to think of the night before was a way of letting my children find out for themselves, personally, deeply, what discrimination was really like, how it felt, what it could do to you. Now the time had come to try it." (Peters, 1987). She divided the class by the color of their eyes, blue-eyed versus brown-eyed students. On the first day the blue-eyed students were told they were smarter and better. Discriminatory policies were instituted for the brown-eyed children. Children with brown eyes got less recess time, were forbidden to use the drinking fountain, and could not play with the blue-eyed children. The next day roles were switched. The children quickly and easily joined in the game, and it swiftly became reality for them. A normally friendly, cooperative group of chil- dren were mean to one another and fought. The lower-status children became sad and withdrawn and angry. By the end of the second day the children had a taste of prejudice and a sense of what discrimination really feels like. Since her lesson, Elliott has traveled around the world giving lectures and doing the same exercise with adults. The adults' reactions are similar to the children's. Both the children in Elliott's class and the adults in her seminars reported a profound long-term change in their understanding of prejudice and discrimination. Elliott received multiple awards for her work and has been the subject of a number of documentaries. Social Psychology in Depth: Blue-Eyed and Brown-Eyed How can a teacher teach about prejudice in a classroom with little diversity? Jane Elliott, a third grade teacher in a small lowa town in the late 1960s, faced this problem and solved it. Shortly after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Elliott decided to teach her students about the dangers of prejudice and discrimination by having them experience it. Elliot said "We've all been told those things. We know them, at least in the sense that we mouth them at appropriate times. Yet we continue to discriminate, or to tolerate it in others, or to do nothing to stop it. What I had racked my brain to think of the night before was a way of letting my children find out for themselves, personally, deeply, what discrimination was really like, how it felt, what it could do to you. Now the time had come to try it." (Peters, 1987). She divided the class by the color of their eyes, blue-eyed versus brown-eyed students. On the first day the blue-eyed students were told they were smarter and better. Discriminatory policies were instituted for the brown-eyed children. Children with brown eyes got less recess time, were forbidden to use the drinking fountain, and could not play with the blue-eyed children. The next day roles were switched. The children quickly and easily joined in the game, and it swiftly became reality for them. A normally friendly, cooperative group of chil- dren were mean to one another and fought. The lower-status children became sad and withdrawn and angry. By the end of the second day the children had a taste of prejudice and a sense of what discrimination really feels like. Since her lesson, Elliott has traveled around the world giving lectures and doing the same exercise with adults. The adults' reactions are similar to the children's. Both the children in Elliott's class and the adults in her seminars reported a profound long-term change in their understanding of prejudice and discrimination. Elliott received multiple awards for her work and has been the subject of a number of documentaries.