WOI: News Clip 394

just about three years ago a special project was started in the third grade of the riceville Elementary riceville community elementary school this was started by mrs. Jane Elliott our guest today she is the teacher for this and this is was all started because of some of your reactions on the night of Martin Luther King's assassination yes I was frightened and I was disturbed and I was angry and I was appalled that this kind of thing could happen and had happened so often in the lifetime of my students my nine year olds at that time had lived through three assassinations that were important to them they wouldn't they didn't identify with the Malcolm X one but they three times in their lives this horror had taken place and I didn't know what I was going to do about it in the morning but when a little boy came in and said mrs. Elliott they shot a king last night why'd they kill that King I knew I had to do something and that was the day we began to learn about discrimination by discriminating against a [PICC?] group in my classroom now how did you set this up that we discussed black people and what these children knew about them which was very little because they have had no experiences with black people then we and they of course came up with all these things that they knew for sure about black people that they steal and milu and they burn and this kind of thing although they had never known a black person and then I asked them how they would like to know a little bit more about how it feels to be black and they thought that would be great and then they found out when it started that it wasn't great at all we just we split the room according to eye color the brown-eyed people were on the top and the blue-eyed people are on the bottom for the first day and we were to reverse the process the next day but they were not quite sure that it was going to be reversed and it was frightening the things that happened were absolutely terrifying to me to think that this is something the way these children reacted very secure very normal so-called white children in an all white community could be this upset after one day of this kind of treatment is ample proof that this kind of thing for a whole like a tenth of our population cannot be tolerated now how did it actually work and what sorts of things did you do to separate the group well the brown eyed children got to go to recess five minutes early they got to play on all the playground equipment take out the small playground equipment the balls and things they got to go first in the lunch line they got to use the new library books and go to the library and use the audio-visual aids in the room whenever they wanted to the blue-eyed children could do none of these things because everybody knows that blue-eyed children don't take care of things you give a blue-eyed child something nice and he simply wrecks it he can't be trusted he isn't trustworthy he isn't civilized he doesn't know how to do these things it isn't his fault he simply has the wrong color eyes and they have a terrible effect on a child's mental and emotional and physical growth we treated disabled he's just not capable it's not his fault he's just it's just simply the matter that he has the wrong color eyes and we did this for a whole day we discriminated against blue-eyed children for one day and the next day this happened not this was on a Friday so that they had the weekend to recover hopefully and on Monday we reversed the thing and discriminated against the brown-eyed people now was there any difference in the Monday group when that you could really observe when the children who had been on the dome took over the major role the monday group was much more tolerant than the brown-eyed children had been I don't know why I hope they learned something I think they did but it may be that they found out that you could live through it it may be that they had a weekend to get over it it may be that they learned and I think they did now did you play the role or were you completely separate oh no I was blue eyed on the first day I pulled down the map and it rattled around the thing and a little girl in the front row said well I said well see I've done it again there I did it again and she said well what would you expect you've got blue eyes haven't you and I was I was just furious inside for a minute and a little brown eyed boy a little blue eyed boy in the back spoke up and said oh Debbie you know she does that all the time she never has known how to do that right and then I kind was mad at him I didn't know which one I should be more angry at the child who was discriminating or the child accusing me of never having been too bright but the second day the second year we did it last year when we did it I told them we reversed this thing after the at the beginning of the second day and one little blue-eyed boy the blue-eyed children were on the top the first day on that that year and one little blue-eyed boy when he found out I was reversing it he said you lied to us and I said yes I lied to you what does that prove to you about blue-eyed people and he says you ain't any good and he was not joking he was he was absolutely furious you ain't any good and he maintained that attitude throughout the day that I was no good it was I said if I didn't have these blue eyes I'd be principal in this building I wouldn't be teaching in the third grade and one of the kids laughed and I said did you think that's funny and one of the little boys spoke up and said no mr. Brownmills got blue eyes brown eyes mr. Bradmills got brown eyes and they just simply took it for granted that his eye color was the reason he was principal know you have with you some things that express some of the feelings of the before and after as the children actually depicted it yes the day we did we did a picture each child drew a picture of himself each day and this was the way one of them felt on the day when she was wearing this year they had to wear collars this was filmed this year for ABC TV and we had to wear a collar so that the difference could be seen but with the camera and this little girl when I asked her how the cam how she felt when she had the collar on she said it felt like she had a chain around her neck and whenever she walked she was dragging that chain behind her now here we have the happy day don't we yes in the terms of yes I'm on top mm-hmm well in the terms of I'm happy again this was a terrible experience for these children this year particularly I have three little girls who are absolutely inseparable best friends and they were just shattered by this thing but how many of us are denied the pleasures of being with our best friends when we take our best friends home if they're the wrong color for a weekend mm-hmm this is so that it's a it's not unrelated to the total situation as far as society goes this was John who felt as though he were tied to a post he said he couldn't get away he said he felt like an animal that was tied up when he had the collar on now is he the one that took the collar off and then no no and I had another little boy who said he felt like he was going to throw up and I said why do you suppose that is and he said I think it's this collar it's too tight and I said all right you really think it's the collar he says well no maybe maybe it's my shirt and I said well why don't you take your collar off and see if that's what it is so he took his collar off and I said now does your shirt feel too tight he says no I said then what do you think is he I guess it must be that collar I said put the color back on and his face just fell like he thought when he took it off there that's over I said put the collar back on he put it back on and he said I said well what do you think it was nicest I guess it must have been the collar cuz I feel like I'm gonna throw up again now did it bother him when he had the other co the other color collar no they just wore a collar for the one day only on their day of inferiority so-called and this is the little boy who felt like he was going to throw up when he had the collar on the little boy who drew this picture that was his good one this was his good one and this was his bad one I asked him what all this was and he said well this is like fire and I said what's all this and he said well this is the way I feel like it is all around me today and he was he was very this is the devil on his head he was very very upset by this and if this is the thing that frightens me if these little children are this upset on a one day basis it's must be a horrible thing to live through this for a lifetime right and I want to continue talking with you tomorrow about about it our guest is mrs. Jane Elliott third grade teacher in the Riceville community elementary school and tomorrow we'll continue with this our guest today again is mrs. Jane Elliott third grade teacher in the Riceville community Elementary School yesterday we were talking about the project that was started about three years ago in the Riceville third grade school and perhaps before we go on today we you better just real quick like say what we're talking about and then we will go on with some of the children's interpretations because some people may not have seen yesterday's now this was this project that we did called discrimination day when we separated the children in the room according to the color of their eyes and then practiced discrimination against the child who was in the inferior so-called inferior group on each day one day the brown-eyed children were on top of the next day the blue-eyed children were and so that they actually they weren't role playing they weren't pretending because I think role playing has a very definite place but not when you really want to know how it feels you can't pretend to a feeling that you've never ever had I think it's important that these children learn to empathize with other people the sioux indians have a prayer that says old great spirit keep me from ever judging a man until i have walked a mile in his moccasins i think it's beautiful i think if every child could have the experience of walking in the moccasins of a child of a minority group that perhaps by the time we're grandparents we might be able to see a difference in the kind of thing that's happening now of course you never can be exactly in those shoes but you know you can get to know for a minute the horror mm-hmm at least it should prevent them from ever making that child that miserable themselves which is what i'm trying to do right now yesterday we saw some of the well the children doing their own pictures of how they felt it and so let's have another one each child drew his own picture on his day of superiority so-called and inferiority and this is the way this little girl felt on her good day and this is the way she felt on her bad day its a and you see she drew the collar this year they they wore collars the child who the children in the inferior group had to wear collars so that they could be identified readily so that even when they were on out playground they had to take the collar off and put it around the arm and pin it on so that you could see from a distance so that you would run no chance of bumping against this child or playing with this child without realizing that he was one of the untouchables so to speak now going on from there two things that happened but first you think that this had any long-term effect on the children do you think they remembered now this had been oh absolutely this has been three years yes I do in fact they did interviews ABC TV did an did interviews with some of these children who had been in my room last year and year before last and without exception these children said they not only remembered but they thought that every third grade teacher should be teaching this that every third grader should have to have this experience because they had learned so much from it during the year the last year when we did this we did this early in the year and it was marvelous the learning situations that came about as a result of it later on at Christmas time in our weekly news trails newspaper that you had in the third grade there was a question how could we have peace on earth how can children work for peace on earth and one little boy said I know how we can have peace on earth earth mrs. Elliott we can make all the grown-ups go through discrimination days then we'll have peace on earth and things like this came up throughout the year things that they would they would relate many things that happen to them on the bus right after we did this film last year we this was done and it was filmed it was filmed because we were doing it we did not do it because anyone was coming to film obviously that would there would be no sense in it that way but after we had done this thing one of the children several of the children children high school boys said to my students on the bus oh yeah you're the kids we got that nigger-lover for a teacher and those kids came in that day and they said look at us we know more than high school people do we know that you don't use that word and we know there's nothing wrong with being that kind of person we know more than they do and I was delighted I thought they they have learned something if that's all they've learned they've learned not to say that to another person I was I was totally thrilled by this and this kind of thing came up throughout the year now of course you've been filmed this year the now program is coming up on ABC mm-hmm but it was again the same thing this was you were doing the project and you were filmed in the process of the project we had planned the project for Brotherhood week and ABC contacted us and asked whether they would be allowed could be allowed to film it and it was it was done not to be filmed but it was filmed because it was being done now going on to something else you have to been of course with something like this invited to some adult groups who talked about it I'm sure that that was the intent I think that adult is kind of a funny word there because we did this with one adult group we instead of just telling them what had happened we discriminated against we segregated a group and discriminated against the blue-eyed members of the group and it was a luncheon and we made the blue-eyed people set up their own tables and get their own trays and a whole bit and when a blue-eyed there was one instance a blue-eyed man was filling his plate and a brown-eyed man not as well dressed and obviously a manual laborer came in and the blue-eyed tall stately man well-dressed man was pulling his plate and I said you'll have to back up and let this brown eyed man in ahead of you and he said lady what do you think you're doing and I said you have blue eyes it's not my fault please get out of the way and he said lady if my potatoes get cold while you're doing this messing around and I said don't blame your eye color on me talk to your mother and get out of the way please so that this superior individual can fill his plate was furious I can't understand why but he was just he was just quite angry and this thing went from bad to worse throughout the luncheon at one point they made a great white sign and put we protest on it at another when they were supposed to pick up their clean off their tables they picked the tables up and took them over by the cafeteria line and I said well you see they aren't as civilized as brown-eyed people and at that point they got up and walked out and they were they were only half joking and they had they were looking for someone to talk to a group later on in the year and they mine name was brought up and 20 percent of them voted never to have me back ever ever if it was it was rather non adult it was kind of frightening that they felt the pinch in this one hours time if they applied what they felt in that one hours time to how a fifth a tenth of our population in the United States feels every day then they learned something even those grown men learned from a discrimination day exercise right now going back to your students then and on the days that they were on the down days were they able to work up to their normal efficiency no on their down days this this was um one of the real problems was that they did not do as well on their down days absolutely not in fact I had three years ago the first time we did this I had this one child who had never made a mistake from the moment she came into my room she simply did not make mistakes and on that day she misspelled words that she should not have misspelled and she it was the proof was perfectly obvious thatthis has a terrible effect on a child they believed immediately what the power structure told them they were and they lived up to their image now did you have any they had ordinarily been sort of quiet children that that became different sorts of people on their up day they were practically all of them with one exception were vicious they discriminated on their up day even even the very except for well there were two who were very secure and didn't feel that it was necessary they were they simply didn't need to discriminate and we thank you this has been mrs. jane Elliott third grade teacher in the Riceville elementary school the Riceville community elementary school get the entire thing and the program now will be coming up soon and that was filmed in your classroom mm-hmm and so to be able to see more about actually how this functions they can watch that mhm right thank you very very much for sharing this with us. good afternoon we are again today at the Iowa sports and vacation show and today we're going to look a little bit at some things from the Eddie Allen boat discount boat company okay this is Larry Allen who is the son of the owner and we're going to first talk about the Cadoo so why don't you tell us what this vehicle can do the Cadoo is an all-terrain vehicle it's propelled by a 20 horse kohler engine and it'll go on land and water and just about any place you want to take it on land it'll run about 30 miles an hour in the water three miles an hour it's propelled in the water by just the tires and it's a pretty pretty much all around vehicle it'll go just about anywhere is this kind of thing very popular right now well it's picking up it's just a new thing in the last couple years there are a lot of companies started to make them now and I think they'll go pretty big what is the advantage of your particular model well our models are a little more deluxe than the other models but I guess everyone feels like that we've got the electric starter and the generator a large battery and lights it's just a little bit better how about the reveler is that what you call it Johnson reveler it's a 19-foot this is basically a ski model here it's got the 1 155 horse v six engine in it and it's made by OMC outboard marine and make Johnson motors what kind of features does it have well it's gotten the stern Drive OMC stern drive inboard outboard with it's got the basic economy of an inboard and the versatility of an outboard where the drive is capable of lifting up or putting down just like a regular outboard motor that's the main features of the OMC and the luxury model that you have is the cruiser so explain a little bit about this this is our 23 foot cruiser in the back it's completely self-contained and it's quite a boat it's got the stand-up head stand-up cabin it'll sleep 3 or 4 it's got a dining table inside it's got a stove and this particular model has a 210 horse v8 with the OMC sterndrive similar to the reveler now what other models have a different engine well there's several mix of stern drives there's the omc merc cruiser and chrysler are the big names but we handle mostly OMC and mercruiser how about the motors that you have behind us which can you tell us about that these motors back here are fishing motors basically we've got the one-and-a-half here and the six horse and the four horse these are our largest selling fishing motors because they're under six horse which six horse of course is the limit on Iowa State lakes for motors what about the other motor then this is not a fishing motor no the 20 horses used well mainly on larger boats as an auxilary motor or just on small rental boats so these are a few of the things you can see at Eddie Allen's boat company we've been visiting with Larry Allen and now I see something over here that we might want to look at so let's go over there this is what looks like a Volkswagen and this is mr. Roy Schneider from [SND?] enterprises in Ames what's different about this Volkswagen it is a regular Volkswagen it is a regular Volkswagen this is one of Jimi Manchester's used cars they spent about two hours taking the fenders off so that the tires would show better and it'd make a better display model actually it's different in the fact it has a high flotation traction tires in the rear the white rims of course and the front it has a ski attachment which our company makes now what do you call this contraption we call it the buggy ski and it's sold in a rear and a front kit so that if people already have the rear wheels and tires they can buy just the front set in other words they would buy the skis and the wheels and rims okay tires is this something they can install themselves yes it is it's just like changing a tire actually and after the adapters on the front they simply remove one bolt and slide the ski off of the adapter so they can drive with the adapters on all year round if they wish but other than that it's just a simple process of putting it on and taking it off again when you're like changing a spare tire if you have a flat tire what can this machine do where can it run what speeds this kind of we've had we've had enquiries from all over North America actually the oil companies that are exploring in the North on the North Slope in Alaska and in Canada the Canadian government has expressed an interest in it it's good for country like that where they they have a hard time building roads and a hard time getting around it's warm of course you can stay inside the car and travel over the snow ranchers and ski resorts of course and a lot of farmers have asked about it also we're going out to feed cattle and check on the cattle and so forth does this the ski itself and the tires change what the car can do speed wise or anything speed wise no with a standard Volkswagen they couldn't expect to go more than about 45 I suppose in snow it depends again on the snow conditions if they have a hard crusted snow I don't know that there would be a limit but with real soft gooey snow like we've tested in the most they could expect to be about 40 or 45 miles an hour with the skis on if they take the skis off of course then you're getting to steering problems and you start bogging down the snow so actually under those conditions it does improve the speed but comparing it to highway conditions that slows them down is there any way that the performance can be improved as you apply these things oh yes they can for instance for the performance minded man he can take the front wheels off mount the adapters right on the brake drum which is just the five bolts it's a very quick method of doing it that way you can eliminate the weight of the bulk of the front wheels and tires and you can also take out the spare tire and the equipment out of the trunk and if they're going to use this a lot in the snow for instance for an entire week or something there are just a few bolts holding the front fenders on and the front bumper and there's no reason to have them on there while the skis are on unless you're going to be running on the road so that again would improve the impor- the performance of the machine and of course they can buy performance engines from many different places many hotrod shops carry performance engines for Volkswagens is your company the only one that designs such a thing as far as we know the patent searches have turned up no one else there was a company I think in Indiana that had skis but they weren't a quick mount ski they hooked on with chains and so forth can this kind of a device be attached to other cars or is it just the Volkswagen right now we only have the Volkswagen skis in tooling however by this summer we will be we will be designing the the adapters to fit the Corvairs and Renaults also how much does this kind of a thing run the entire setup for the the Goodyear tires the wide rims from California and the skis and adapters and all the attaching bolts run five hundred and twenty dollars so this is one other thing that you might see when you come to the Iowa sports and vacation show and now let's look at some of the other exhibits