I've seen this video multiple times before, but it was interesting to watch it again during these current times. As I have a 5 and almost-3 year old, I want to think that they're beyond this type of behavior, but they're not. I had two main thoughts while watching the video. First, I wondered if this was an ethical activity to do with students, since it led to some student distress. Second, I started thinking about how all of Jane Elliot's messages were very overt. I wondered if there was anything in what she was doing that was more subtle and still impacted students' views and opinions. For example, during the part where she was highlighting that the student who had forgotten his glasses had blue eyes, while another student with brown eyes had remembered her glasses, she was very clear about the fact that this was related to eye color. What would the impact have been if she didn't point out these differences explicitly, but was still addressing some students more than others, as happens in our school systems today?
My school did this experiment in 8th grade when we studied the Holocaust. It wasn't just 1 class for a day or 2. It was all my classes. Because my school had teams of teachers, each of our 5 teachers kept the same bias for about a week. Brown eyed people had to sit in the back, we were rarely called on, and teachers and students made negative comments about us constantly. It was distressing for sure, but it did not impact me on the long term, thinking I was a lesser human because I had brown eyes. For that week, it was stressful, and I felt a lot of emotions for sure. Once the week was over, though, the experiment prompted a lot of helpful discussions about bias, and I'm glad that we did that experiment. It was just a taste, but I believe it helped us all remember that bitter taste all these years after.
What was most shocking to me about this video was how quickly the internalized shifts occurred. This is exactly what I continue to educate others and am constantly met with resistance and gaslighting. How can this be so apparent, yet people still chose to disbelieve it.