"Eye of the Storm" Reaction Paper

The teacher, Jane Elliot, was very courageous for trying to have the kids go through something as bold as this in their time. She did the experiment in the 1960’s in Iowa which was a rough time for minorities, especially with the Civil Rights Movement. Also, I can’t help but speculate that she might have had threats on her life for such an experiment and being a minority as a woman may have contributed to that. In her time this made her community upset at her, as I would imagine it might still make some communities upset in less accepting states. It is amazing how hasty people’s personalities can change based on their surroundings and what “authority figures” tell them. Within minutes of the kids with blue eyes being told they are superior and the kids with brown eyes are inferior, there were instant changes in the kids’ behavior. The “superior” (blue eyes) kids began to discriminate against the other kids by saying that they were not as smart and even began to call them names or hit them, even though all the kids in the class were friends prior to the experiment. The kids in the “inferior” (brown eyes) roles began to not feel as intelligent and did worse in the simplest of tests. Yet when the roles switched the very next day, the personalities of the inferior kids did a complete turn around - they became the oppressors just as fast as the previous group, despite the fact that they didn’t like being treated as trash.

Bibliography

"Psychology Social Reality EYE OF THE STORM" AOL Video Home. 7 September 2008.

Bibliography: "Psychology Social Reality EYE OF THE STORM" AOL Video Home. 7 September 2008. <http://video.aol.com/video-detail/psychology-social-reality-eye-of-the-storm/3718549920>.