Jane Elliot Analysis

In this time and now in American History this was crucial for people to understand differences between ethnic backgrounds. A lot of different things about this short movie surprised me. It was a different style of learning. Jane Elliott is pretty much a beast when it comes to being a teacher, diversity trainer, lecturer, and anti- racism activist. This experiment first took place is the 1960s with her 3rd grade class. She stated in the film that she has been thinking about doing this experiment for sometime. With the assassination of Martin Luther King she decided to give it a go. It was pretty interesting what little kids at the time thought about people from different races. A lot of kids made stereotypical commits about different races,
African Americans, Chinese, and Native Americans that now a days I hope doesn’t still happen, but sadly probably still does. This movie opens up with what the class thought about different races at the time.
Elliot decided to make the blue eyed children the superior ones on the first day and pretty much gave them extra privileges like an extra five minutes of so at recess. And the Brown eyed children can’t play with the blue eyed children at recess and must stay off of the playground equipment. The brown eyed students must also wear a type of a collar around their necks so they can be easily identified in the class room, at lunch, at recess, and anywhere else at school. It was interesting to see in the second chapter of the film how even being third graders and knowing each other for a while now how the blue eyed kids slipped into the role of being a bully at times. Also it was ridiculously shocking how some kids would just call each other “Brown eyes” which in the same reality was like calling an African American the N word or a Chinese person yellow. On the second day the roles were reversed and the brown eyed kids had the power and all the privileges as previously stated. Pretty much the brown eyed kids took control just like the blue eyed kids. Made the blue eyed kids feel as if they where like nothing. At the end of this day their teacher Mrs. Elliott showed them the lesson of the last two days of the experiment that whether eye, skin color, and nationality make up makes a person a good person of a bad person. Pretty much all the children then said
no. It seems to me that kid’s that are more privileged economically, by skin color, or by up bringing seemed to do better on test any other things rather than the people that are discriminated against. Mrs. Elliot came to find out that pretty much any kid that has been bullied or discriminated against interfered with their ability to preform socially and studiously. Pretty much from her class room stint being so successful she was then towards the end of the movie able to use it as kind of a training exercise for the Iowa Department of Corrections to train different types of employees. It happened pretty much just like the exercise with the third grade class, but a little more intense. A lot of the blue eyed employees feel like they where powerless, angry with Mrs. Elliott. This video affected me in the way that it was easy to not see past what’s right in front of you. Being from the small town of Auburn Nebraska there really wasn’t a whole lot of diversity in my school. I can see where the third graders where coming from for a bit, not being exposed to different races or just following the family norm. The implications of this information from this movie even though it was pretty old, still should play a big part of what is going on today. With different race riots that have been happening in this day and age people can learn from this type of experiment. People could learn not to judge people be skin, nationality, or any other type of predacious.