Jane Elliott

Birth : 1933-11-30,

History

American diversity educator. As a schoolteacher, Jane Elliott became known for her "Blue eyes/Brown eyes" exercise, which she first conducted with her third-grade class on April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The classroom exercise was filmed in 1970, becoming the documentary The Eye of the Storm. PBS series Frontline featured a reunion of the 1970 class, as well as Elliott's work with adults, in its 1985 episode "A Class Divided".

Profile

Movies

The Angry Eye

Self

This documentary shows Jane Elliott's blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment set in a college environment with students from diverse racial and ethnic environments.

Blue Eyed

Herself

In only 15 minutes with some 30 people Jane Elliott manages to build up a realistic microcosmos of society today with all its phenomena and feelings. As already known from the ill reputed Milgram experiment, even participants who knew the "rules" are unable to remain uninvolved. What starts as a game turns into cruel reality which causes some participants' emotions to erupt with unforeseen intensity

A Class Divided

Herself

William Peters follows up on the 1970 TV documentary Eye of the Storm about Jane Elliott's experiment of dividing an otherwise homogenous group of school kids by their eye color. The episode intercuts footage from Eye of the Storm with new footage of the students, who are now adults. The film takes us through the journey of a young class learning the unfairness of racism. Elliot teaches the lesson through eye color and different treatment. All of the students admit that this is wrong. In footage of the students as adults, we are able to see how this shaped the experiment changed their lives.

The Eye of the Storm

Self

The very first documentary about Jane Elliott's educational experiment about discrimination, which was originally produced for ABC News, in which she conducts an unforgettable lesson with her third-grade class in Riceville, Iowa.

The Australian Eye

herself

Jane Elliott brings her brown-eye/blue-eye diversity training to Australia, where she explores racism between Aboriginal and white Australians.