Reference no: EM131510343

Classroom

Jane Elliott, an elementary school teacher in 1968, sought to teach her third-grade students about prejudice after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Her students lived in a rural town in Iowa that lacked ethnic diversity. Instead of attempting to teach the power of prejudice through a rote memory lesson, Elliott decided to use strategic thinking. She divided the class into two groups: blue eyes and brown eyes. On the first day, she told the class that the brown-eyed students were superior. An immediate delineation fell upon the group with old friendships severed and shocking comments from the children in both groups. The following day, Elliott told the students that she had made a mistake and that the blue-eyed children were superior. Suddenly, the blue-eyed children were scoring higher on tests than the day before and the brown-eyed children were earning lower scores. Fifteen years later, when the PBS series "Frontline" conducted a reunion for the students, they spoke of how profound the experience had been. In fact, studies conducted 10 and 20 years after the lesson reflected Elliott's students to be "significantly less prejudiced" than their peers did.

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