Teachers don’t have ethical standards?
Hell, I’ll take the scientific dubiousness of “Eye of the Storm” over the ivory tower gobbledegook of the dissenting analysis.
And I’m still skeptical. The ethics question is a good one – it’s OK to potentially psychologically traumatize 3rd graders as long as, years later, a reasonable sampling of them claim the experiment “taught” them something…
Oh puleeezze, “phychologically traumatize” kids?? Only in this day and age could a one day grade school exercise in “real life” be thought of as traumatic. One thing that made me stay with the Jane Elliot show instead of flipping by was a strange feeling of dejavue… I remembered receiving (occasionally) very similar treatment in grade school that was just part of the every day experience. I clearly remember bunches of us boys being stood up in front of class by one particular East Indian man teacher and routinly snaughtily (is that a word?) being refered to as “dunces” and such, then being separated from the rest of the class when we couldn’t read his mind and give the particular answer to a question he was asking. The girls and a few of his favorites were ALWAYS right, and smarter, even if they were fooling around or not even paying attention… PERIOD. While I didn’t like it, I was in no way traumatized, and now just think of it as silly (even though I was and am rather sensitive). I almost feel embarassed by the trivial nature of my example, which seems a lot worse than anything in Jane’s seminar. (My apologies if this is too far into the “opinion” area)
Well, if that is your experience and memory, then that must mean that Jane Elliot’s whole premise is bogus – the fact that society labels certain types of people as inferior or less deserving is something that is easily dealt with when one achieves adulthood. In fact, one can look back and laugh at it.
That was in part my reaction to the film. The kids easily switched from feeling inferior (and scoring poorly on tests) to feeling superior (and scoring well on tests) after Jane Elliot told them their eye color was “better.”
Which would seem to be contrary to any contention about the long-lasting scars of racism. Which was one of my reactions to the film.
I guess my example was more to do with a short-term or periodical bout of unfair treatment, which I meant to use as an example of why a short seminar wouldn’t hurt kids.
I certainly never experienced real longterm racism or any other “ism”, so my particular reflections would be very different than those of someone who had a real problem with the general society being against them. I think Jane’s course/theory is designed to give people an idea of what that would be like. Since the time allowed is so short (a day), the treatment has to be rather feirce to get the point across.