In 1970, Jane Elliot addressed discrimination through her 3rd grade class. She divided them into two groups: Those with brown eyes and those with blue eyes. On the first day she told the blue eyed children they were superior – she explained all of the positive qualities of blue eyed people and all of the negative qualities of brown eyed people. She even made the brown eyed children wear collars so that they would be more easily identified. She repeated the exact same process the next day with the same children, only their roles were reversed. In those two days, the children's abilities had shown through their statuses.
The blue eyed children completed an exercise the first day, when they believed they were inferior, in 5 ½ minutes; On the second day they completed it in 2 ½ minutes. The brown eyed children's time went from 3 minutes on the superior day, to 4:18 on the inferior.
(The following links are to the follow up experiment done a decade later with adults)
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
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