Tuesday, 29 October 2013

Ms. Jane Elliott in the 1960's

In class this week we talked about being born with privileges. A privilege is something is an advantage or an entitlement for a specific person or group. We talked about the ongoing issue of racism in today's society. Although racism is not nearly as brutal as it was in earlier generations, it is still a problem that society is working on erasing. 

We began our reflection on privileges by watching Ms. Jane Elliott's classroom experiment from the 1960's. The link can be found below :
  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeK759FF84s

This video had a powerful impact on me because I had never seen young children talk hatefully about someone of another ethnicity. Jane's exercise had an impact on her students because at the end of the two days they understood what their words and hateful actions were doing to the people who were minorities. I think that this video is a good example of nature vs. nurture because the children in the video were raised by their parents to discriminate against people who were minorities. After learning what a privilege it was to be born into a Caucasian family in the 1960's the children realized that it was not appropriate to discriminate someone for being different. Their human nature came through when they completed the exercise because they were ready to treat everyone as an equal. 

I found the exercise in this video so interesting that I went home and showed it to my boyfriend, Luke who was also impressed by it. We discussed the impact that the teacher had on those children and we were also able to identify teachers in our life who had a big impact on our lives.  

We also found videos of Jane Elliott working with adults which were equally as interesting and impactful. It was surprising to see adults' reaction to racism when confronted by Jane.

I really enjoyed this video and it is something that I will always keep in mind while I am working in the field as a Child and Youth Worker. 










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