OBSERVATION:
• Jane Elliot was a older, white, third grade teacher. Looking in her eyes you could tell she was determined. The students were young, white, third grade children. They were very ignorant to the facts of discrimination.
• The young students were faced first hand on how it feels to be discriminated against.
• The experiment occurred the day after Martin Luther King was killed in April 1968.
• It took place in the third grade class room located in the city of Riceville, Iowa.
HOW THE EXPERIMENT DEVELOPED:
• The children were asking why someone would kill a king.
• Jane thought about the Indians and how we fought so much but still haven’t got anywhere as far as the discriminating went.
• She thought of the saying don’t judge my tribe until you have walked a mile in their moccasins.
• The children explained that if they seen a black or a Indian walking down the street the would not talk to them because they are bad, dirty people.
• Why do children discriminate?
• If we can get to the children at an early age, then we may be able to change their views on discriminating.
• Jane thought if she could just get to one child it would make a little bit of a difference.
• Because the children looked at Jane Elliott as a person of authority they listened to her.
• She split the class up, brown eyes and blue eyes. The first day the blue eyes were the better of the two. The children were told that the blue eyed children were better at listening, doing their homework, they were stronger, and smarter then the brown eyed. She made the brown eyed kids wear collars around their neck so they knew who was a brown eyed child. Then the next day she switched it, the brown eyes were “up” and they blue eyes were “down”.
• The children who wore the collar could not play on any of the playground toys. They weren’t able to have seconds at lunch and they were not allowed to drink from the water fountain they had to use little cups.
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