Baby’s got blue eyes
In 1968 a teacher named Jane Elliot devised a sado-masochistic game called Brown Eyes / Blue Eyes. She divided her students by eye color and made the bright eyed kids slaves and the dark eyed kids masters. She took this program to the corporate world where it has become a favorite for companies who want “sensitive” employees.
Elliott once told an interviewer, “It was just horrifying how quickly they became what I told them they were.” She described how one of the blue-eyed girls changed from a “brilliant, self-confident carefree, excited little girl to a frightened, timid, uncertain little almost-person.”
You would think that any normal person would realize that she had just done an evil thing. But not Elliott. She repeated the abuse with subsequent classes, and finally turned it into a fully commercial enterprise, hawking workshops, lectures, books and videos.
Recently a 9th grade class at Peak to Peak Charter School in Lafayette was subjected to the Elliot treatment.
“The teacher made my son wear a blue card on a string around his neck. He was required to smile ingratiatingly, bow his head, and beg people to tie his shoes for him,” she wrote. “The teacher wore a yellow card, that of the superior race, and she petted and made much of the other yellow card students.”
In a particularly nasty wrinkle, the teacher told the students chosen for the subordinate group that they would all receive Fs for their work that day and that the failing grades would be on their final transcript. And she sent them home still believing that lie.
This program is absolutely reprehensible. It is touted as a “diversity training exercise”. Students who are subjected to it are supposed to gain an understanding of what it’s like to be a persecuted minority. What a load of rubbish. Kids come out of this either primed for bullying or emotionally devastated. It is not a tool to teach children about sensitivity and diversity, it is a primer in BDSM only without a safe word.
“Teaching children about abuse should never include abusing them,” the mother wrote. “Committing a hate crime should not be the way we teach our youngsters about hate crimes.”
I’m inclined to give the school an institutional pass on this; the exercise was certainly no part of official policy, though the teacher did it in more than one class, and school administrators didn’t know about it until the mother complained. Principal Tony Fontana said it is school policy to inform parents and get their consent for anything controversial, and if he didn’t know before that this is controversial, he does now.
But the teacher, and the counselor who aided and abetted her, should have their heads examined.
No, scratch that. They should have their heads handed to them.
It’s bad enough to do this to adults in mandatory corporate diversity training, who at least know it is an exercise and are partly prepared for it. Forcing it on children, with no warning that it is an exercise, is unconscionable.
I wouldn’t give the school a pass on this one. Since when does this teacher have the right to play mind games with her students, who really are just a captive audience mandated by the state to attend her class? Who does she think she is — Dr. Joyce Brothers? She’s a teacher, not a therapist. She should be sued for practicing medicine without a license.
Ms. Elliot now takes her blue eye/brown eye psychobabble nonsense on the road to various college freshman orientation classes.
President Bush wants to screen teachers and students in every public school in the country for mental illness. Might be a good idea to do the zero-tolerance/zero-brains administrators and teachers first.
I can see where attending public school can make kids mentally ill just from reading this website. Home schooling is such an attractive option.
I’d go along with this if it were, say, a two-day exercise, and switch the roles on the second day.
But I’d be far more enthusiastic about a program that explicitly teaches students how not to be slaves. I’d love students to come out saying, “I will do my level best to kill anyone who tries to enslave me.
Of course, no school would ever condone a program that turned out students who would forcibly resist abusive authority.
This conduct would violate international research ethics codes if it were performed on adult volunteers without their informed consent!!! For it to be done to children without ANY kind of consent or that of their parents borders on criminal, is almost certainly tortious (intentional infliction of emotional distress), and is definitely unethical. The school is culpable for not supervising its teachers better, and Ms. Elliot is politically correct crack-pot.
The North Vietnames called this “reeducation.” My employer tried to require something similar and I refused. They threatened various punishments, but ultimately backed off.
I can easily see this game be used to teach students about bigotry and racism. But using this to “program” individuals is just plan wrong…and scary.
To be fair, when this exercise is performed correctly, the students switch roles on the second day. I think this is an effective exercise simply because there is nothing like learning from experience. If people treat you like crap on completely invented grounds after one day, how will that impact how you treat people in the real world?
However, I would not recommend this for children too young - I would say sixth grade at the absolute youngest, because they need to be able to understand that while a brutal microsom of relaity, the exercise is not, in fact, real. That can become a danger when dealing wiht younger children.
I would disagree with you Xar, 6th grade is still too young for this type of activity. Middle school age children are at a very fragile state of self-image as puberty wreaks havoc on their bodies.
If, and that is a very HUGE “if”, this activity is ever done, it must be done by a fully competent and trained individual. For a classroom teacher to decide that he or she wants to try this out is wrong by any standard.
Fire the fools involved in this - but then, that won’t happen. Thanks to useless teachers’ unions, they’ll have to give a meaningless slap on the wrist.
I don’t see what this exercise has to do with English class. Besides being dangerous, it seems a total waste of students’ time. What does it have to do with academic excellence? Absolutely nothing. But it does have a lot to do with PC indoctrination.
School administrators are always yammering on about “we need a longer school day, we need a longer school year, we need more MONEY!” No they don’t. Not if they bombard their students with useless psychobabble exercises done with or without parent’s express permission.
Schools have to wake up and decide what they want to be for their students. Political indoctrination centers or schools that impart academic knowledge. Parents have to decide what they want for their children also, and I would imagine the majority don’t want their kids’ time wasted this.
People like Jane Elliot and her imitators like the lastest one, a Lissa Thomas from Monroe Elementary in Santa Barbara, California’s school district are nothing but skinhead factories. Very basic psychology says that if we love ourselves we can love other people. The neo-Nazi movement was so predictable in this country that the only thing surprising is that it is not much larger. To tell any group, especially a minority within their own race, that they owe race relations a debt not shared by others is going to create racists where there were none before.
Before anyone here starts sluring me for saying what needed to be said and calling me a Nazi in a world where anyone called anti-racist and anti-Nazi is presumed automatically a very moral person, I want to tell you that my family was so devastated by the Holocaust that even older siblings died that way. Yet I sympathize with neo-Nazi skinheads fed up with the fact that whether or not an act is even considered racist depends on the race of the racist.
Sincerely yours
Mary L. Simas
Nat�rlich heiligt der Zweck die Mittel nicht. Ich kann auch verstehen,hinsichtlich der Gefahren und Last denen ein Kind ausgesetzt ist, dass das Experiment mit ihren Sch�ler ein Drahtseilakt zwischen Aufkl�rung und moralischer Verwerflichkeit ist.
Nichts desto trotz stehlt das Ergebniss, rein ph�nomenologisch, denn auf einer rein normativen Ebene m�chte ich hier keine Diskussion f�hren, ein Datum von besonderer Bedeutung dar. Menschen sind, wie Menschen sind, sie zu verstehen gilt es, um freihtlich, aufkl�rerisch und nicht manipulativ, dem im Menschen determinierten rassismus zu bek�mpfen. Jane Ellitot und jenes darf man nicht vergessen zeigt uns unverkennbar, wie schnell und in welcher Art und Weise, Menschen autorit�re Charaktere werden. Sie zeigt aber sogleich auch die Vorgehensweise des “F�hrers”, und mit welchen perfiden Mitteln taktiert wird um Menschen zu instrumentalisieren, und dies in verschiedener hinsicht. Dies ist f�r mich auch der Grund warum ich dieses Video, das ich gesehen habe nicht einseitig negativ betrachten m�chte.
Ich m�chte aber einr�umen, dass ich nicht sehr viel Hintergrungwissen �ber ihre Person und ihre Arbeit habe. Deshalb w�rde ich mich �ber weiterf�hrende Informationen (Fakten) dazu freuen.
Gr��e aus Germany
Jane Elliot did not use this exercise to abuse children. Her intention was to teach her class about the horrors of racism and discrimination overall after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. The second day she did the exercise, the roles were reversed. I thought it was very interesting how her third graders (and even adults today when she does these exercises) switch views so easily. I was recently at one of Jane Elliot’s speaking engagements where I found that her focus was on education and acceptance of diifferences, rather than making people feel hurt or even ashamed of who they are. She also encouraged the students present to stand up for their rights. I agree that many untrained, insensitive morons are out there attempting to copy Jane Elliot’s strategies and they fail, miserably. Personally, I believe that seeing life through the eyes of another person, and feeling the discrimination that they face every single day is important, even if for a few hours. It can change a life. Also, the video on Jane Elliot (a news piece, documentary, or something of the sort) that I watched had a reunion of her class that was taped. None of these people had a problem with what she did, and many were thankful, saying it changed their lives for the better. Jane Elliot said that there is a major difference between education and schooling. Schooling teaches you how to survive in the school environment, while education teaches you how to survive in life. So is it really that horrible to take two days time (while still teaching the required material) for something that can change how a person thinks? Especially when compared to the teachers who are “teaching to the tests” and not much else.
How scary to think that in today’s society parents would rather home school than expose their children to meaningful lessons on the evils of discrimination by the likes of a teacher like Jane Elliot! Most teachers would be smart enough not to conduct this lesson on children today since no one but the teacher would be held accountable for any questionable behavior - on any topic. As for President Bush -he taught in what classroom and is qualified to determine how to evaluate a teacher’s ability with children?
The way this article presents Jane Elliot’s experiment does make it sound like a horrible thing. But guess what; this isn’t the whole story.
Do a litle research on the web and you can find a million places where the whole story is presented intact. Read those before you judge. Nearly all the kids involved in these experiments have come back and agreed that they hated the experiment while they were in it, but now they can see the big picture and are glad Mrs. Elliot taught them that.
I am an adult who has a very healthy understanding and dislike of racism and I am exceptionally thankful that I was never subjected to Elliotism. I was taught about human dignity without being traumatized by my elementary school teacher.
Which method is superior?
How many here are actually African-Americans, Asian-Americans?
HOw many here work- for a living?
How Many here have a low income job?
You can’t say that you know something until you’ve experienced it first hand. So I think Jane Elliot has a very valid and strong point. And I do agree with her.
I am a student. And all though i wouldn’t hate it for myself at the time, i can see that it is a valule point that Jane is making.
I mean really who out there has been discrimanated.
Not Many
I think Ms. Elliot should have stuck to the program.
So is degradation, sadism, and trauma the way to teach people about tolerance?
Actually, why the hell does anyone in a school be need to have their thinking altered? Your world view should be self-formed and taught by your parents, not tube fed to you by bloated government and schools. This Elliot woman can burn in hell.
You know, I wonder why it is that this was no in the news? Maybe because it wasn’t a MALE teacher who did this. If a MALE teacher had done this, World News Tonight, CNN, and other such news shows would be doing week long stories on it. Were there any girls with the yellow tags around thier necks? I bet not. Imagine that! U just gotta love it, first putting boys and girls into different classes, and now SLAVERY in our public schools! What next?
Great, only brain washed psychopaths can come up with such an experiment. So when you harrass and mentally abuse little children they wont like that and it will even influence their performance? Ha, never guessed that.
So, what is this experiment supposed to prove?
Jane Elliots aim is to fight alleged “white (instituational) racism”. Read her web-site. She collectively blames white people. I quote:
“Avoids White’s current responsibility for dealing with current racism. We are all(!) guilty for failing to take action and/or partaking of the benefits of a White racist society. ”
So, I guess the only aim of it, is to make the children ashamed of their white heritage, because they are, as quoted above, automatically guilty.
In other words, this experiment is nothing else then anti-white brain-washing. And its working. Ever tried to express pride in your white heritage? You will be blamed as racist, although there is astonishingly nothing wrong with “black prode” or “mexican pride”.
Fantastic, so white people have to go with heads down to not make other races feeling inferior.
Greetings from Germany
well whom or what racial group had started the segregation or descrimination against blacks or all of minorities??? well you tell me that and answer this as well, what race is the dominant KKK? i wonder!?!? and what color of skin is the Nazi’s? all have European features and are all racist, (historically)?
but this debate is about Jane Eilliot, and her idiotic bravery to be part of our historical sites… (not mine) but i agree with her ideas.!
For many people learning is best achieved through experience.
If you are to judge Jane’s work perhaps this is best done by review of what the outcomes were than by comment on the program from the outside.
I suspect reading the comments here that many of those making negative comments have not experienced the taunts that are part of being in a minority group at school.
It’s not a day of pretend, it’s years of abuse.
Was absolutly disgusted by some of the remarks found on this site. A person has dedicated her life to something she believes passionatly about and something she is not afraid to committ to. Not everybody can say that about there own life!
I have watched all of Janes vidios, followed her over many tv reports and internet coverage and would have to say that she has been one of the most insperational people i have ever known.
I have conducted many traning sessions around diversity and have always included one of janes vidios during the session. I have only ever heard praise and admoration for her and in everything she has done.
No matter how unplesent we find some issues, education of our children and futher education and re-education of ourselves has to be the most important part of life if we ever wish to co-exsist in peace. Jane has never used any of her trainng sessions to abuse anyone and has only been for the education of what is past, what is present and what hopefully we can overcome in the future.
There needs to be more like Jane in this world.