Jane Elliot Experiment When Teacher Jane Elliot

¶ … Jane Elliot Experiment When teacher Jane Elliot decided to separate her class into two groups, those with blue-eyes and those with brown-eyes, and alternately deemed one of the groups as superior, she was not doing so simply to make young children feel bad. The first time she did the experiment, it was with the goal of answering a student's question about why any person would want to assassinate Martin Luther King, Jr. (CRG@CGP, 2011).

To the children in her third-grade class, the idea that anyone could hate another person, simply because of the color of his skin and how his vision threatened the racially-biased status quo was incomprehensible. Elliot's goal was to demonstrate how bias develops and why the privileged group would fight to keep that status.

However, she did not anticipate that the effect of the experiment would be so dramatic or pervasive; not only did the privileged group exercise that privilege, but the disadvantaged group demonstrated a lack of equality, despite the fact that the privileged groups changed on a daily basis. The results of the experiments were shocking. Not only did the children go along with Elliot's idea that one group was superior to the other for the sake of role-play, but they embraced the stereotypes.

Those in the superior groups embraced their superiority and became vicious and discriminating towards their classmates. Those in the inferior groups displayed subservient body language and took greater lengths of time to complete their tasks. Being assigned to the different groups impacted individual behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and moods. The children clearly internalized the labels, with children being labeled inferior acting inferior and children being labeled superior acting. One of the biggest changes is that the children learned that rewards were not based directly on behavior.

Therefore, the children experiencing discrimination seemed to acknowledge the idea of defeat and did not attempt to excel in the same way as the children in the superior group. The children in the inferior group seemed depressed and even frightened, while the children in the superior group quickly discarded social niceties when they realized that they did not have to use them with children from the inferior group.

The biggest factor that influenced changes in the individual's thoughts, feelings, moods, and behaviors seemed to be their assignment into the superior/inferior groups. Though other factors occurred in the classroom during the day, the reality for these children was that group placement impacted all of them in a profound way. This reminds one of the reasoning in Brown v.

Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court determined that separate implies that something is not equal; the mere fact that a group is singled out for exclusion means that the treatment is unequal, even if the factual treatment is equal. There are times when those scenarios occur naturally in society. First, people stereotype according to race and gender; bias still exists in society.

Racism has occurred across cultures in such a way that it seems ludicrous to suggest that human beings are not somehow hardwired for stereotyping, and that preventing racism does not mean simply not teaching hate, it requires teaching tolerance. However, it is important to realize that these scenarios do not simply occur with physical attributes. Social class, which is largely determined by social class at birth, is a significant source of discrimination. Showing.