The Jane Elliott Study


   
       A classic study which very clearly illustrates the cumulative impact of wrongful social definitions upon people was conducted in
1968 through 1971, by Jane Elliott. Ms. Elliott was a rather unlikely candidate for the authoring of one of social science’s most creative and
important studies. She worked as a third grade teacher in the small northeastern Iowa town of Riceville. Up until the time of her experiment
she had been a very motherly, highly respected teacher who had been well liked by all.
       However, upon the assination of Dr. Martin Luther King in March 1968, she became very distressed and upset. She wanted to teach
her eight and nine year old pupils the evils of racial discrimination, but did not know how to approach the problem in a way that would
prove incisive and thoroughly convincing. Eight year olds cannot be lectured to in the way that university students and adults are
commonly dealt with in educational settings. And aggravating the problem was the fact that most of her young pupils had never even seen
a black person apart from on television or in the movies. The children were all living in a very rural part of a state which has very few black
residents. Of our fifty states, only Wyoming has a smaller fraction of black residents than does Iowa.
       She finally hit upon a plan which she decided to pursue with enthusiasm and conviction. She entered her classroom one morning
with a large book which she claimed had been written by a very famous scientist who is extremely wise and knowledgeable. She proceeded
to tell her young pupils that this scientist had determined that brown-eyed people are naturally dirty, unkempt, uncooperative, incapable of
learning at a satisfactory speed, incapable of retaining knowledge, discourteous, unlikely to go far in life, etc. She proceeded to enumerate
quite systematically a whole host of ways whereby brown-eyed people were alleged by the scientist to be inferior to blue-eyed people. And
since her class was composed of nine brown-eyed children and nine blue-eyed children (and she herself was green-eyed), she had rather
fertile soil for her experiment.
       Again, Ms. Elliott had been well-liked, and there was a very strong tendency for these impressionable young minds to believe
everything that she said. And as she proceeded through her twenty minute sermon about the evils of brown-eyed people and the virtues of
those with blue eyes, she could see the brown-eyed children begin to slouch and to whereas negative behavior was always noticed and
punished with a rather coldly phrased comment such as: “1 guess this is what can naturally be expected from brown-eyed youngsters.”
       By the end of the school day quite remarkable changes had occurred in Ms. Elliott’s classroom. For example, the brown-eyed third
graders had regressed to first grade reading level, whereas the blue-eyed third graders were reading at or beyond the fifth grade level.
Arithmetic scores, vocabulary scores, spelling scores, and all other academic criteria employed to assess change in young children showed
that the blue-eyed pupils were all performing (1) far beyond what would normally be expected for third graders, and (2) far beyond where
they (these very same children) had performed just one week prior to the experiment. These same test scores similarly revealed the brown-
eyed children to be functioning at a level that was (1) far below what would ordinarily be expected for third grade youngsters, and (2) far
below the level of performance that they had displayed just one week prior to the experiment.
       Academic performance was hardly the only thing to be affected by the experimental design that Ms. Elliott had imposed upon her
pupils. After a mere six hours of their new experiences in Ms. Elliott’s classroom the brown-eyed children had all suffered serious blows to
their self- images. None of these children liked themselves anymore, and they displayed these self-disparaging attitudes in a whole host of
ways. Some of the children cried and sulked. Many began to behave in a sullen and disrespectful manner. Several of the nine brown-eyed
children spoke of how they didn’t want to come to school anymore. and about how they would find ways to play hookey. All began to look
increasingly dirty and unkempt. None revealed any interest in learning or in open, friendly socializing with their classmates.
       Contrariwise, by the end of the school day the blue-eyed children had begun behaving far more maturely towards their teacher and
visa-vis each other than they had ever behaved before. Each child displayed a conspicuously strong enthusiasm for learning and asserted
himself/herself in a friendly, courteous matter, except vis-a-vis their disparaged brown-eyed classmates. And this was as true for children
who just one day prior had been the class clowns, the “slow learners”, and the all-round “bad boys”, as it had been for the blue-eyed
children who had always performed well. The posture, grooming, and attitudes towards self that were manifested by these blue-eyed
children were nothing short of amazing.
       It is not necessary to summarize here all of the many interesting facets of Ms. Elliott’s experiment. Interested readers will find a good
coverage of the study in her book entitled A CLASS DIVIDED which I have listed in the bibliography at the end of this volume. Suffice it to
say that she ran the study on four different third grade classes: 1968 through 1971. And each year she reversed things on the second
day of the experiment. In other words, on the second day she advised the children that she had made a mistake, and that it was really
brown-eyed people who are “superior”, and that blue-eyed people are actually the inferior ones.
       It should be stressed that Ms. Elliott’s findings proved equally strong each time she ran the experiment. Similarly, immediately after she
turned the tables she found that the academic performance and the mental attitudes of the blue-eyed children slid downhill in an extremely
dramatic and precipitous fashion; whereas the performance and the mental attitudes of the brown-eyed children shot upward quite
drastically after only a very short period of time in the exalted role.