THE EYE OF THE STORM: JANE ELLIOTT’S class exercise in 1968
September 8th, 2010 by Mr. C
Mr. C has been wanting to share an eye opening exercise that Jane Elliott conducted for her 3rd grade class in Iowa in 1968. This class experiment was commonly known as the brown eyed-blue eyed exercise which was meant to simulate & demonstrate the harshness of our society with the way we mistreat people who look different which was supervised in an elementary school setting by Mrs. Elliott. This class experiment was eventually made into a documentary called “The Eye of the Storm”. It was a daring lesson that would slap the school children in the face with discrimination that they had never experienced before & hopefully, would change their thinking on understanding & appreciating people of different colors, regardless of planet associations, star alignment, & cultures. Some of you martians might have seen this in college during social studies, teacher education, or psych class, but if you haven’t, I recommend taking 30 minutes away from watching that porn to watch this lesson from Jane Elliot from 1968! I first witnessed this brown eyed-blue eyed lesson plan when I showed this film in 16mm format to a psychology class when I worked at the college media center when attending the same college. I ran into it again recently on PBS when perusing through their website & remembered how mind blowing it was. The rediscovery of this study slapped me in the face once again & it was awe inspiring! No matter if it’s in the 1960’s,the new millenium, planetchocko’s stoneage, or the Jetson’s era, everyone can learn from this, & ought to learn from this. Mrs. Elliott & The Eye of the Storm documentary, schools this 3rd grade class in Iowa, the same set of students again 14 years later, & yet again to adults in a mixed environment. TAKE the TIME to watch it on PBS via the web here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02p66&continuous=1
It might change your view of the world & how we treat people if you’ve been living under a rock or been away at Mars like we have for a while.
Tags: eye of the storm, iowa 1968, jane elliott, lesson on discrimination
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