Dorcas Speer Interviews Jane Elliot (WOI News Clip 394)

Just about three years ago a special project was started in the third grade of the race Ville Elementary Roseville 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 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 9 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 say 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 pick 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 in Midland and they burn and this kind of thing although they had never known about 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 were 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 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 money 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 acceptance oh no I have was blue eyed on the first day I pulled down the map and it rattle around the thing and a little girl in the front row said well I said well I'll see I've done it again I did it again and she said well I expect you've got blue eyed how are you and I was I was just furious inside for a minute and a little brown eyed boy a little blue eyed boy and the back spoke up and said oh I mean you know she does that all the time she never has do that right and then I was mad at him which one if I should be more angry at the child was discriminating and the gentleman accusing me of never having been to breakfast 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 round the top the first day and 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 nice did you think that's funny and while the little boy spoke up and said no Mr. Brown Mills got blue eyes brown eyes Mr. Brown Mills got brown eyes and they just simply took it for granted that his eye color was the reason he was principal now 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 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 here we have a happy day though yes in the term so yeah 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 we had the collar on I don't see 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 we put the color back on and his face just felt like he thought when he took it off there that's over I said put the collar back on you put it back on 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 none day they're bothering when he had the other cut of the other color collar they just wore a collar for the one day they're 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 a little boy who drew this picture that was his good women this was his good and this was a fabulous I asked him what all this was he said well this is like a 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 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 too about it our guest is Mrs. Jane Elliott third grade teacher in the Riceville community elementary school and tomorrow will continue with us 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 practice 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 well played 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 in a minority group that perhaps by the time we're grandparents we might be able to see a difference and 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 it's 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 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 fell down her bad thing itself and you see she drew the collar this year they they wore collars the child who the children in the inferior group had to her collar so that they could be identified readily so that even when they were on out of the 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 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 you think they remembered now have some three years yes I do in fact they did interviews ABC TV did interviews with some of these children who had been in my room last year in 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 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 of the 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 you're the kids that 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 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 filming 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 fun because it was being done now going on to something else you have to have been a first with something like this invited to some adult group who talk about it I'm sure that that was the intent I think that an adult is a 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 labor 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 my name was brought up in 20 percent of them voted never to have me back ever ever it was it was rather rum non-adult it was kind of frightening that they felt the pinch in this one hour's 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 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 but this has a terrible effect on a child they believed immediately but the power structure told them they were and they lived up to their image now did you have anything had ordinarily been sort of quiet children that that became different sorts of people on their update they were practically all of them with one exception were vicious they discriminated on their update 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 yes the third grade teacher and the Riceville elementary school the rice fell community elementary school we had the entire thing and the program now will be coming up soon and that was filmed in your classroom and so to be able to see more about actually how this functions and they can watch that mm-hmm right thank you very very much for sharing this with us