Question

Directions

Follow the Written Assignment Guidelines in this and all other assignments in this course. Below are the directions specific to this assignment.

1. Jane Elliott created prejudice among the students in her elementary school classroom in one week. Watch the footage of her classic 1968 demonstration: A Class Divided (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. The study starts at about 3:20 minutes into the episode and runs until about 17:50 if you want to be selective in your viewing and not watch the entire 55 minute episode.
2. Write a brief essay in which you explain what what happened in what has come to be known as the Blue-eyed, Brown-eyed demonstration using the theories and terminology you have learned. Make at least five connections with the social psychological research on stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. Please bold or underline the concepts so you can be sure you cover the required amount. These concepts are often bolded or italicized terms in the chapter. Be specific. For each concept, you will need to define the social psychological concept in your own words and explain how it is seen in the brown-eyed, blue-eyed demonstration. In addition, you may include any other thoughts you have on her study.

Answer 1

To the teacher’s question as to what do we call them, one child replies ‘DUMB’, this is clearly prejudice.

They’re just 3^rd graders, but they already know the words Niger and Indians. This goes to show that they’ve heard these words from the social environment. The stereotypes are in use in active vocabulary that goes to show that these are ingrained in their passive vocabulary from a very early age.

The childrens’ understanding of the discrimination that exists shows in statements such as, “They don’t get anything in this world because they are different color.”

The interplay of attitude and behavior is noteworthy during the classroom exchanges. Behaviour does not always imply any particular attitude but attitudes do affect behavior. Their teacher is making statement about blue eyed and brown eyed people and thereby gives them reasons to change their beliefs by her statements; consequently their behavior. This is illustrated in the following examples:

1. There are murmurs of protest when she suggests that Blue eyed people are smarter than the brown eyed people. A blue eyed boy shakes his head emphatically to disagree, when the teacher makes a statement that blue eyed people are better than brown eyed people.

2. The teacher says that they are going to be getting less of playtime because they are brown eyed and that they are slower because they are brown eyed. There is confusion when the teacher says these things and one brown eyed girl shows her confusion.

The blue eyed people clearly start dominating and the brown eyed childrens’ performance dips in the card games. During recess there are scuffles because some blue eyed children call names. Some girls say that there teacher has taken away their best friends from them.

The teacher says “You may not understand how they feel, unless you have been through,” and the children agree with her.