To be completely honest, I myself wish I was privileged to experience that Jane Elliot blue-eye brown-eye experiment. There is truly no other way to understand how a person feels unless you feel that way yourself, and even in this case the children still knew they were part of a lesson, therefore did not thoroughly obtain the benefits.
I was born and raised in New Hampshire and still live here to this day. It was not as if I had a particularly negative image of African Americans growing up, it was if I more often had no opinion at all. I went to a school in Southern NH that had about 5,000 students, and perhaps 3% of those students were African American.
Children are not born with any sort of prejudice. Therefore, it is their media and social experiences that cause them to form a particular opinion. Perhaps if children were taught what it feels like early, they would be more apt to grow in a society where they can suppress the negative stereotypes, and form opinions in a more constructive manner. It is sad we have to attempt to undo the bias beliefs, it should be something that is understood from the start.
I was born and raised in New Hampshire and still live here to this day. It was not as if I had a particularly negative image of African Americans growing up, it was if I more often had no opinion at all. I went to a school in Southern NH that had about 5,000 students, and perhaps 3% of those students were African American.
Children are not born with any sort of prejudice. Therefore, it is their media and social experiences that cause them to form a particular opinion. Perhaps if children were taught what it feels like early, they would be more apt to grow in a society where they can suppress the negative stereotypes, and form opinions in a more constructive manner. It is sad we have to attempt to undo the bias beliefs, it should be something that is understood from the start.
I would have liked to have been part of the experiment too. Ethically, I don't see anything wrong with it because the kids did know that this was an exercise, not real life. That being said, it had a real impact which says a lot. As white people we can understand what black people have to deal with is bad yet we never truly are put in their shoes.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that children are not born with any sort of prejudice, but i noticed in this video that most of the 3rd graders seemed to already have their parents opinions on certain matters...and that seems like a problem. I would like to think that this activity could be used at any age. I really thought Jane Elliot was smart to also perform an adult workshop of this experiment.
ReplyDeleteI think it would have been interesting to be part of this experiment as long as I knew that it was an experiment and not the teacher just being mean. The only issues I see with the experiment is the whole wearing the collar bit because that may have been a bit overboard.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that it had a significant impact on the kids is good and that they all learned that segregation is bad also shows how the experiment did work the way Jane Elliot wanted it to.
I totally agree with you, I wish that I was part of this experiment when I was young, as I also am from NH and didn't get to experience diversity until my sophomore year of college abroad. Any hurt I may have gained from be discriminated against would have been outweighed by the lessons learned.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that people are taught at a very young age certain beliefs, and at times misinformation about others. Therefore we must begin to acknowledge it from the very beginning of someone's education. I did find this experiment interesting, and the end results did work the way Jane Elliot wanted them too, however, I also agree that at parts the behavior of the teacher was to overboard.
ReplyDeleteI feel like the reality of the situation is so much more troubling than the way she treated them, I feel like people are babied way to much and need a reality check to wake and realize that the world we live in is not all well and good. We need to take responsibility for the way we are. Johnson said its not our fault and we didn't cause it but the generations before us didn't fix it so now we own it. I agree with that and believe that we need to hit the ground running to confront this problem.
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