Jane Elliott - Controversy Surrounding The Exercise

Controversy Surrounding The Exercise

According to Elliott, the first reaction to her exercise (Elliott prefers not to refer it as an "experiment") was in the teachers’ lounge at lunchtime the day she did the exercise for the first time. When Elliott explained what she was doing in her class and why and how a number of shy and slow blue-eyed children were benefiting at the expense of the “brown-eyes", there was disbelief and confusion. One teacher responded that, "I thought it was about time somebody shot that son-of-a-bitch." Elliott was shocked and dismayed. Later, the compositions that the children wrote about the experience were printed in the Riceville Recorder on page 4 on April 18, 1968 under the headline “How Discrimination Feels”. This story was picked up by the Associated Press.

Because of the AP story, Elliott was invited to appear on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. After her telling of the exercise in a short interview segment, audience reaction to her was instant as hundreds of calls came into the show’s switchboard, most of the reaction being negative. An often-quoted letter states “How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children.”

Elliott has said that the exercise and the publicity that it was getting did not make her popular with some of the local citizens. When Elliott walked into the teacher’s lounge the day after being on the Johnny Carson show, several teachers walked out. Elliott claims that even her own children were taunted or assaulted by other students.

However, not all the reaction was negative. The mail that Elliott received after each television appearance was overwhelmingly positive, particularly from adult persons of color and educators. Most of the time that she remained in the Riceville school system, she had the support of her superiors and they gave her unpaid leave to pursue outside activities which were related to the exercise and its effects. As news of her exercise spread, she appeared on more television shows, and started to repeat the exercise in professional training days for adults. On December 15, 1970, Elliott provided the experience for educators, physicians, psychiatrists, social workers, and civic leaders at a White House Conference on Children and Youth, staging it for adults, but with the same reactions as those exhibited by her students, though much more violent.

In 1971, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) broadcast a documentary about her called “The Eye of the Storm” and made her more nationally known. After that, two books, “A Class Divided” and “A Class Divided: Then and Now” by William Peters were written about her and the exercise. “A Class Divided” was turned into a PBS Frontline documentary in 1985, and included a reunion of the schoolchildren featured in “The Eye of the Storm”. “Frontline: A Class Divided” is one of the most requested videos on PBS’s website. A televised edition of the exercise was shown in the United Kingdom on 29 October 2009 on Channel 4 entitled The Event: How Racist Are You?. This documentary was intended, according to the producers in their agreement with Jane Elliott, to create an awareness to the effects of racist behaviors by using UK citizens. In fact, actors who had been seen previously on UK programming and commercials were allowed to participate without Elliott's knowledge, thereby discrediting the entire presentation.

Among her honors was being featured by Peter Jennings on ABC as “Person of the Week” and textbook editor McGraw-Hill lists her on a timeline of notable educators along with Confucius, Plato, Booker T. Washington and Maria Montessori. She has been invited to speak at 350 colleges and universities and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show five times.

Elliott considers her greatest honor to be having Kenneth Clark write the foreword to the book "A Class Divided Then and Now" by William Peters in which he states, "...Jane Elliott's contribution demonstrates that it is possible to educate and produce a class of human beings united by understanding, acceptance, and empathy."