‘Which explanations of prejudice help us to understand the behaviour of the children in Jane Elliott’s class? Discuss with reference to at least two explanations of prejudice’ Throughout the ages varying levels of prejudice and discrimination have been experienced and witnessed. This can occur for miscellaneous reasons, such as, a persons’ race, creed, disability or even their sexual preference. Difference of opinion is the main contributory factor and in worst case scenarios can lead to hostile acts including physical and verbal assault and violence.
To explain this behaviour in a psychological manner, two main approaches are recognised. They are the ‘dispositional’ and the ‘situational’. The first theory stems from Freud’s Psychodynamic approach and places focus on a prejudiced individual’s personality traits and how far these can be socially influenced during life, also known as personality conflict explanations. The latter, referred to as social conflict theory considers how far prejudice can spread and develop in social situations, particularly between groups who share a common interest.
On the Tuesday morning, following the day that race-activist Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, USA. One regular teacher named Jane Elliot, whom resided in Iowa and taught a third grade elementary class of twenty-eight pupils, decided the time had come to tackle the issue of racism in her own, unique manner. Despite her concern for threatening the harmony she had built up in class, she felt she had no other choice but to go ahead with a drastic action that would hopefully help towards preventing bigotry later developing in this young generation.
Following news of the assassination, the children had run in to class with confused queries regarding the murder of Martin Luther King, whom they had previously named as their ‘hero of the month’. They could not comprehend why someone would murder a ‘king’. Jane Elliott sat them down and asked what they knew about ‘Negroes’. Due to being from a small rural white Christian populated area and with little previous knowledge of black people, their responses were sure to be influenced by their relatives, friends, media and the education system.
It was noted that the children regarded black people to be inferior, for example, they believed that they were not as smart as white people and were less civilised. This representation which the children had voiced with no hate but just of common agreement appalled Jane. She proceeded to ask their definition of the key words “prejudice”, “discrimination”, “race” and “inferior”. These they had previously studied, and demonstrated some concept of their meaning. The teacher asked how they would feel if they were to imagine that they were a black child.
This led to a feeling of sympathy towards children of a different race. Rather than be satisfied that the children felt empathy for these other children and to stop there, she decided to take the lesson further. Jane Elliott wanted to try and leave such an impact on these children that they would later in life not display prejudice or discrimination towards others. With the class approval she divided the pupils by eye colour. She told the children with brown eyes that they were inferior to those with blue eyes, and as such could not expect the same treatment or reward.
For example, blue-eyed children were allowed a longer break and to queue first for lunch. The other children were made to wear collars so they could be easily identified and they were not allowed to integrate with their fellow peers. The teacher while treating the blue-eyed ones with positive regard, constantly criticised and belittled the brown-eyed group. Rapidly she saw the children switch from sweet, kind children to ones demonstrating hostility, derogation and even violent behaviour towards others just because they had different coloured eyes.
On the second day she told them that she had lied and it was in fact the blue-eyed children that were inferior to the brown eyed ones. Within minutes the situation and treatments experienced had reversed. To understand the behaviour of the children, there is a need to explore examples of prejudice which could have influenced their behaviour. One explanation of this could be personality conflict explanations. The authoritarian personality displayed when the children were asked what they knew about black people, showed they held no unbiased information and only repeated their parent’s negative opinions as their own.
Reference:
Connelly, B. (2008) Social Psychology – Prejudice and Discrimination
Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1132480 19/08/2003
Website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/