way too young to make that kind of point, in that way.

great sift....

^Concur

I remember this video from a psychology class in college. In the longer version, the teacher reverses the roles the next day with brown eyes being "superior" and blue eyes being "inferior." At the end of that day she tells the class the experiment is over and they can throw away the handkerchiefs they had to wear and you see the kids trying to tear them to pieces with their hands and teeth.

Great sift. Here is a longer documentary about this: http://videosift.com/video/The-Power-of-Prejudice-A-Class-Divided

Wow, that was moving. The head slung playground part was very moving.

i'd argue that it was time-appropriate, for any age capable of learning.>> ^gargoyle:

way too young to make that kind of point, in that way.

*quality sift

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by Tymbrwulf.

My my, what a way to screw with the innocent mind...

Seems you missed the very point the teacher was trying to convey. Instead of looking at it in an evil way to 'screw with innocent minds', maybe you need to see the necessity of the harsh lesson learned that day.

By that rational, we should never teach the hard/harsh lessons at all, because that would be 'screwing with innocence'. Instead, we should just "hope for the best" and let whatever may happen...happen. If you wait too long to teach these lessons, it's too late. Though this doesn't surprise me that you and others feel this way...as this seems to be the prevalent way to teach these days. Merely ignoring the harsh realities in life and teaching sunshine and rainbows 101.

Far be it for me to dispute the seeming popular opinions of VS, but, IMO, it's never too early to learn a lesson like this one, harsh or not.

Saw this in psych grad school. Fits in with mental *health.

Adding video to channels (Health) - requested by brycewi19.

I only wish that my children lived in an age where this kind of fundamentally important teaching could occur.

And then you have Fox news lying and distorting reality on a daily basis.
Millions of simple and believing people.
Not to teach a lesson but for pure and deliberate unethical reasons.

I think the teacher definitely had good intentions and arguably got good positive results; ie., her point was made and the lesson was learned, and learned in a much more weighty way than merely talking about it.

However, the margin of error and the slim chance that there could be long-term fallout from this approach (estranged friendships that would have been fine minus your involvement, etc.) make it seem like I'd have to agree with @gargoyle and say the kids might be too young for this method.

I should watch the longer documentary to see if the teacher herself had any regrets or would have made any changes to her methodology after considering it hindsight. Did she ever try the same thing with a different group of kids? As a teacher, I imagine that it would be very difficult to watch either the dejected "brown eyed" kids OR the smug "blue eyes" on the playground and not feel quite a bit of doubt about the experiment.

If you have an issue with the age of the kids in this video, maybe you should step back and actually listen to how they talk. They are MORE than capable of learning this lesson, I think people forget how switched on our brains are at that age. You'll also see they grew up just fine, why ignore that part when discussing how young they were.

That is disturbingly powerful stuff. The power to distort reality and create a new one so quickly and wholly - shows how malleable the human mind is. Amazing.

Must see companion to this video: http://videosift.com/video/Creation-of-Whiteness

narrator: Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D
more widely known for leading the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971, viewed as another "gone too far" social experiment. Potent and relevant, yes, however also crossing the lines of ethics and valid scientific inquiry.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'social, experiment, blue eyes, brown eyes, racism, martin luther king' to 'social, experiment, blue eyes, brown eyes, racism, martin luther king, jane elliott' - edited by rasch187

>> ^yellowc:

If you have an issue with the age of the kids in this video, maybe you should step back and actually listen to how they talk. They are MORE than capable of learning this lesson, I think people forget how switched on our brains are at that age. You'll also see they grew up just fine, why ignore that part when discussing how young they were.

I did listen to the kids. Many seemed highly uncomfortable with the experiment as it was happening (which is arguably the point), and their comments at the reunion as adults never really confirmed whether or not they were glad that they went through it in hindsight. I agree that young kids are often more clued in than we give them credit for, and also that this particular sample set "grew up just fine". I don't think that I ignored that in my original post - here's a snip:
>> ^MilkmanDan:

I think the teacher definitely had good intentions and arguably got good positive results; ie., her point was made and the lesson was learned, and learned in a much more weighty way than merely talking about it.
But to clarify, I still think that this particular methodology combined with this age group of students is a risky combination. If this was a standard teaching exercise probably most kids would go through it, benefit from learning the lesson, and have no real negative effects. But there would be a few for whom this experiment / lesson could potentially have long-lasting consequences; lost friends, confidence, etc. The consequences would probably not be severe, but eventually it boils down to a value assessment.

I'd concede the point that this technique teaches the lesson in a way that will have much more impact and be much more memorable than nearly any other (reasonable) approach. However I think that simply talking about discrimination at this age, asking the students to imagine how it would feel to be discriminated against on some arbitrary basis, etc. could have, say, 90% of the same positive effect. Follow that up with further contemplation, history, etc. when they are older and it might be 95-99% as effective. 99+% effectiveness with no risk of having things go too far seems most likely preferable to me.

I guess it is very open to differences in opinion, which is probably what makes it interesting. So, upvotes for the video and discussion!

I think this is from Zimbardo's "Discovering Psychology" series which is sadly not marketed to consumers. They charge like $380 for the dvd set because they expect only institutions to buy it, so it's either that or downloading it from TPB

I'm not terribly good with formatting these broken quotes, so excuse the cut off of your reply

There is definitely something to be said about standardising such a thing, I wouldn't be on board with a 2-day experiment as the norm, we don't really get to see if friendships were mended etc, so you have a point there. My comment was more about discussing the topic at that age level in a more serious way than just doing the old "ugly duckling" story.

There is something about discrimination that is hard to understand from just hearing it's wrong, it's horrible to wish the feeling upon someone but what I would try to aim for is the lighter more humbling discrimination. For example, if you come from a white dominant culture and travel to a different culture, you feel a little "reverse discrimination", it's not like a "I feel like crap for being hated" feeling, it's just more eye-opening.
>> ^MilkmanDan:

>> ^yellowc:
If you have an issue with the age of the kids in this video, maybe you should step back and actually listen to how they talk. They are MORE than capable of learning this lesson, I think people forget how switched on our brains are at that age. You'll also see they grew up just fine, why ignore that part when discussing how young they were.

I did listen to the kids. Many seemed highly uncomfortable with the experiment as it was happening (which is arguably the point), and their comments at the reunion as adults never really confirmed whether or not they were glad that they went through it in hindsight. I agree that young kids are often more clued in than we give them credit for, and also that this particular sample set "grew up just fine". I don't think that I ignored that in my original post - here's a snip:
>> ^MilkmanDan:
I think the teacher definitely had good intentions and arguably got good positive results; ie., her point was made and the lesson was learned, and learned in a much more weighty way than merely talking about it.
But to clarify, I still think that this particular methodology combined with this age group of students is a risky combination. If this was a standard teaching exercise probably most kids would go through it, benefit from learning the lesson, and have no real negative effects. But there would be a few for whom this experiment / lesson could potentially have long-lasting consequences; lost friends, confidence, etc. The consequences would probably not be severe, but eventually it boils down to a value assessment.
I'd concede the point that this technique teaches the lesson in a way that will have much more impact and be much more memorable than nearly any other (reasonable) approach. However I think that simply talking about discrimination at this age, asking the students to imagine how it would feel to be discriminated against on some arbitrary basis, etc. could have, say, 90% of the same positive effect. Follow that up with further contemplation, history, etc. when they are older and it might be 95-99% as effective. 99+% effectiveness with no risk of having things go too far seems most likely preferable to me.
I guess it is very open to differences in opinion, which is probably what makes it interesting. So, upvotes for the video and discussion!

If you watch the full documentary segment linked by DFT, you'll see that not only do they grow up fine, but they fully appreciate the experiment for what it was and it has changed their lives for the better. They were actually the third group to experience this as well, so it's not like she didn't know what was going to happen or how to properly administer the experiment.

You'll also see that the instructor mentions that the potential for messing things up is very great, and so she has been the only one to perform this experiment, although she mentions wanting to teach others how to carry it out properly.

I'm actually more impressed by the portion that covers the adult staff of the correctional facility. It doesn't take much to mold a piece of clay, but once that clay has set it's much harder to change it, and yet she seems to have succeeded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Elliott

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