Here is the link to Jane Elliot conducting one of her Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes prejudice education workshops. Do you think Jane Elliot went too far, or did she teach the students a valuable lesson using this method?
(http://www.upworthy.com/i-never-thought-id-want-to-high-five-a-teacher-for-yelling-at-a-student-but-i-was-wrong)
Jane Elliots approach is interesting but I personally do not think she went to far, maybe mean, but not to far. She gave that student an experience and a great lesson to all. What that student went through is something that many people of color have felt and live every single day. I understand that it can leave a negative impression, but being to nice and coddling people into understanding race is in my opinion why we things like the colorblind ideology becomes a problem in society.
I think that Jane Elliot definitely takes an interesting approach to try and teach students about what racism is like for minority groups everyday. But I believe her approach may be a bit too harsh, because like Lauren said, it may leave a lasting negative impression on the Students and they may be too shocked to take an interest in the subject in the future. However, I do think that all of the students will remember this exercise for the rest of their lives. And for the people that did not take the exercise too personally, and saw its importance, I would think that they would go on to further educate themselves on racism in today’s society. It was definitely a very powerful message when the girl came back into the room.
I think it is really hard to say if she went too far or not. The difficulty with this question is I think it is dependent on the audience. Some people can handle it and it is a really good way to teach a valuable lesson and get through to the audience. On the other hand, for the people who can’t handle it this experience could do more harm then good. It could cause some people to shut down and not go forward with educating themselves on racial inequalities. The girl in the video could have just walked out and never come back. I think this is one way of educating people on racism, but other approaches such as coming from a place of compassion is also a valuable way to educate people.