Jane Elliot Reflection

In 1968 Jane Elliot a third grade teacher in Iowa, wanted to teach the children in her class about discrimination. To begin she asked the class, who were a mixture of white skinned children aged 8-9, about their opinions on people who are a different race and have a different skin colour. During this discussion, racial slurs and derogatory terms such as “Nigga” and “Dumb” was used (by the children) and the general consensus was that African American people and other ethnicities are ‘below’ white people. In order for Jane to teach her lesson she needed the children to “walk in someone else's moccasins for a day” she did this by separating them into two groups, brown eyes and blue eyes. “Blue-eyed people are smarter than brown-eyed people. They

Because Elliott was an authority figure the children accepted what she was saying as the truth “I watched what had been marvellous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating third-graders in a space of fifteen minutes”. The group dynamic of the class changed instantly. Blue-eyed children picked on brown-eyed ones, and banded together against them. It also affected their work, brown-eyed children's work was slower than normal and they forgot lessons they learnt the day before. One brown-eyed child said she felt “Like a dog on a leash.” They couldn't concentrate because all they was thinking about was the collar around their neck. Outside in the playground brown-eyed children became withdrawn and tended to isolate themselves from the blue-eyed children. ‘Browny’ was used as a insult “I felt like I was--like a king, like I ruled them brown-eyes, like I was better than them, happy.” Said one blue-eyed child. The next day Elliot switched the two groups around and said the brown-eyed children were the smartest today and that she was wrong yesterday (because she had blue