Astronomer

Anyone at all interested in the education system or who works in the education system might be interested in this... we watched it at uni today. I think what this teacher does is possibly morally wrong but at the same time, I love it and get emotional every time I watch the end. She also got fired from her school after this happened.

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CAPTAIN CAVEMAN

^ I saw that a few weeks back in my psych class. Didn't know she got fired for it... thats bull (but not completely surprising). I personally don't think she was wrong for what she did. It's not in any of those clips but they did a sort of reunion with the kids from that class as adults and they were all glad to have gone through the exercise; they all seemed to remember it quite well and it had a pretty good effect on them. The (essentially) same exercise has been done with teachers themselves and correctional facility staff.

Astronomer

Yeah I've seen the one where they reunite as well! I don't think what she did was wrong per se, but she did make some of the kids quite upset (you can tell from their faces) by the activity, and some might say she was using the children without their consent in a social experiment. She also didn't tell the parents/ school that she was going to do this either. Ultimately though you can tell from the end that the kids valued the activity and learnt so much from it. I think it's quite amazing. Also, I'm pretty sure this was done back in the 1960s, and in a fairly conservative town, so you can kind-of see why she got fired. I agree though, I think it's a bit of bull.

Anyway, once she lost her job at that school she never taught children again, but has been continuing to do this kind of stuff with adults.

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someonecompletelyrandom

Could somebody summarize it for me? I can't watch the whole thing at the moment.

CAPTAIN CAVEMAN

From memory: basically the teacher Jane Elliot takes her elementary school class (around 7-8 yrs old? not sure, but young) and splits them into those with brown eyes and those with blue. This is in the 60's in a small, conservative American town, so the parallel is obvious. First, the blue eyed children are given preferential treatment - more time at recess, more praise from the teacher, etc. - and the brown eyed children are treated worse, they are made to wear collars (out of cloth), are given negative attributions by the teacher in front of the class and generally made to feel lesser than the blue eyed children. Next, each group recieves the exact opposite treatment; the blue eyes are treated poorly and the brown eyes well. After all this Elliot asks the children if they learned anything about prejudice/discrimination based on something as arbitrary as eye colour. They did. Everyone is happy and the blue-eyed children make a big deal of ripping off their collars and throwing them in the trash.

someonecompletelyrandom

Oh, interesting. She was fired for that? From the sound of it everybody learned their lesson.

bungalow

well she first did the exercise in the 60s and she continued teaching into the 80s in the same school system i believe...

Astronomer

Really? Someone told me she got fired or was forced to leave... not straight away but soon after the school found out about the incident. Anyway, watching the end always makes me all fuzzy inside.

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