I was very surprised by the level of awareness these children had of racism, even before the experiment. This might have been because they had talked about it before in school, or because they lived in a time of racial conflicts. One example was when the teacher asked about bad things that people do to blacks and he response was “Calling them {the N word}”. These are third graders, not high scholars.
I am a strong supporter of the mantra of teach by example, and this is the best example of the harms racism has on oppressive groups. Jane Elliot was able to teach these kids about racism first hand. I do however wonder if this would be as effective today as it was 40 years ago. Obviously she would receive more flack from parents and school officials (both in town and nationwide), also while I think that here motives fit the issues of the time I believe the issues we face today are different from those 40 years ago (though still and issues). I do think her curriculum could be modified to talk about some of the more discreet forms of oppression that we have talked about in this class.
One final thing I found was fascinating was the fact that Elliott (who was blue eyed) herself was not discriminated against during “brown eyes are superior day”. This could have been because she said (off-camera) “this is true except for me because I am the teacher”. She was forced to explain herself while working with Correction employees (her explanation was that she married a brown eyes person, had brown eyed person, and learned to live like a brown eyed person). I believe this shows that authority figures have a tremendous influence on peoples ideas on race and oppression, to the point of them being able to have people ignore the traits they them self’s are professing as evil.
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