Jane Elliot was a grade school teacher in 1968. Following the death of Martin Luther King, she felt called to teach her class about racial prejudices, unlike any one in her time; through interactively teaching her students. To accomplish this task, Ms. Elliot divided her third-grade class by eye-color. The first portion of the experiment she told the class that all blue-eyed children were far superior to the brown-eyed children. The blue eye students were given special privileges such as; extended play time, being able to drink from water fountains and continuous praise from the teacher that they were smarter than the brown eye children. The social experiment in its early stages showed the children showing overt signs of prejudices from the blue-eyed children towards the brown-eyed children.
A Class Divided, Frontline, 01/18/19
I was not surprised that the experiment did not take long to see clear signs of prejudice. Children are susceptible to information given to them and any one thing that explained as truth can develop as their truth. Phycologist Gordon Alport established the theory that prejudice views stem from stereotypes that are designed to categorize information to make sense of life (Katz, 1991). If one continues to stereotype something these patterns of thought become ingrained in ones thinking. To conclude, if society wishes to progress in social change of prejudice belief systems than we must teach children To mitigate prejudice beliefs from very early, and mold society to use interactive empathy training from a young age to treat others with differences with no stereotypes. Additionally, it is vital that children are taught empathy and understand the historical elements to social movements.
References
Katz, I. (1991). Gordon Allport’s “The Nature of Prejudice”. Political Psychology, 12(1), 125-157. doi:10.2307/3791349
Peters, W. (Producer). (1985). A class divided (Links to an external site.) Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.) Links to an external site. [Series episode]. In D. Fanning (Executive Producer), Frontline. Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/class-divided/
By