A Class Divided

[Rui]

I found this excellent encore presentation of a classic documentary named A Class Divided in the comment section on another blog and thought it was great resource to share in this forum. In it shows an experiment a north American teacher conducted on third-grade kids to show them the experience of discrimination. She divided the class in two groups, one were the blue eyed group and the other the brown eyed group. After establishing these two groups, she claimed that the blue eyed group were superior to the brown eyed group, they were smarter, better behaved, and so forth, and with the brown eyed group, she claimed that they had faults, they were inferior to the other group.

Kids that were good friends, co-operative and harmonious in their dealings with one another, started to believe in their superiority and started being aggressive with the inferior group.

The next day she said she lied, that it was in fact the brown eyed kids that were superior to the blue eyed kids, and their behaviours changed, those who were “oppressed” in the day before now were oppressing the “oppressors”.

This experiment was even conducted with adults, and the results were similar.

I really recommend watching this documentary, it shows how easy it is to discriminate others based on silly things especially if persuaded by a figure of authority. It really is an eye-opening documentary.

[ZephyrusX]

Sounds interesting. I'll watch it after work. Thanks for posting.

There was a similar high school experiment awhile back where the teacher wanted to know why a group of people would actually go along with a person like Hitler. He created some group and supposedly the membership got out of hand. They made a movie out of it. I think it was called The Wave. Interesting film!

Originally Posted by Rui

I found this excellent encore presentation of a classic documentary named A Class Divided in the comment section on another blog and thought it was great resource to share in this forum. In it shows an experiment a north American teacher conducted on third-grade kids to show them the experience of discrimination. She divided the class in two groups, one were the blue eyed group and the other the brown eyed group. After establishing these two groups, she claimed that the blue eyed group were superior to the brown eyed group, they were smarter, better behaved, and so forth, and with the brown eyed group, she claimed that they had faults, they were inferior to the other group.

Kids that were good friends, co-operative and harmonious in their dealings with one another, started to believe in their superiority and started being aggressive with the inferior group.

The next day she said she lied, that it was in fact the brown eyed kids that were superior to the blue eyed kids, and their behaviours changed, those who were “oppressed” in the day before now were oppressing the “oppressors”.

This experiment was even conducted with adults, and the results were similar.

I really recommend watching this documentary, it shows how easy it is to discriminate others based on silly things especially if persuaded by a figure of authority. It really is an eye opening documentary.

[SnerpGoodWord]

I'm not a big fan of running these sorts of experiments with kids because they're so malleable. Adults can get young kids to do nearly ANYTHING because they're so eager to please, especially in groups.

[Rui]

Originally Posted by ZephyrusX

Sounds interesting. I'll watch it after work. Thanks for posting.

There was a similar high school experiment awhile back where the teacher wanted to know why a group of people would actually go along with a person like Hitler. He created some group and supposedly the membership got out of hand. They made a movie out of it. I think it was called The Wave. Interesting film!

No problem.

I have to thank you as well, I never heard of The Wave experiment before but after doing some research on the web, it definitely seems very interesting. Definitely another eye-opening experiment like the Class Divided experiment.

Originally Posted by SnerpGoodWord

I'm not a big fan of running these sorts of experiments with kids because they're so malleable. Adults can get young kids to do nearly ANYTHING because they're so eager to please, especially in groups.

I agree, but the teacher never said directly to discriminate one another because of differences of eye colour. She just stated the “facts” of the superiority of one group over another and what privileges they had that the other didn't have.

I think this experiment is good in some ways because it shows that even kids who were probably never exposed as a recipient or giver of discrimination and probably had no reasons to discriminate, did it nonetheless. After even told by the teacher before the experiment began, the dangers of discrimination, and all agreed how bad it was, discriminated one another.

The kids, adults when the encore presentation was filmed, said this experiment changed their lives and made them more closer with one another.

Later in the documentary, she did the same experiment with adults, and the result was very similar.

I really recommend watching this documentary, it is really worth the time spent

[SnerpGoodWord]

Originally Posted by Rui

I think this experiment is good in some ways because it shows that even kids who were probably never exposed as a recipient or giver of discrimination and probably had no reasons to discriminate, did it nonetheless. After even told by the teacher before the experiment began, the dangers of discrimination, and all agreed how bad it was, discriminated one another.

And no kid ever does anything because the adults told them it was bad... oh wait!

I think these studies are inherently flawed when done with kids. Kids would vivisect one of their own screaming on the table if the adult said you got a gold star if you did it fastest. All it proves is that kids have no innate moral compass and a strong desire to please.

[Rui]

Originally Posted by SnerpGoodWord

I think these studies are inherently flawed when done with kids. Kids would vivisect one of their own screaming on the table if the adult said you got a gold star if you did it fastest. All it proves is that kids have no innate moral compass and a strong desire to please.

I disagree with this, but for the sake of the argument, let's assume you're right. This still doesn't explain how adults in a same experiment, carried years later in a workshop, had the same behaviours of discrimination towards the “inferior” group. Let me repeat that again... I'm talking about adults, they had the same behaviour, people with a developed moral compass and that should now better, discriminated against the other group because the teacher, who came up with experiment, convinced them the other group was inferior.

[SnerpGoodWord]

Originally Posted by Rui

I disagree with this, but for the sake of the argument, let's assume you're right. This still doesn't explain how adults in a same experiment, carried years later in a workshop, had the same behaviours of discrimination towards the “inferior” group. Let me repeat that again... I'm talking about adults, they had the same behaviour, people with a developed moral compass and that should now better, discriminated against the other group because the teacher, who came up with experiment, convinced them the other group was inferior.

You're ignoring all sorts of meta effects here - any adult with an IQ over about 85 will figure out what you're "experimenting" on here. Their behavior from that point on will be based entirely on their desire or lack there of to mess with the experimenter. Plus of course any rewards they expect to receive from the experimentation. Point being, psychology experiments are VERY difficult to control and rarely test what you think you're testing.

[Rui]

I see now that I misused the word experiment. Sorry about that, should have used another word instead...

This was not a scientific study or experiment, this was a lesson plan created by a teacher named Jane Elliot, with the objective to teach her third grade students what discrimination feels like, and what it can do to people.

The whole story begins when Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, and her students, confused and upset, came to class asking why did he get killed since they studied him and he was their “Hero of the Month”. She thought an explanation wouldn't be enough hence she created this controversial lesson plan.

In the next year she repeated the lesson a second time and in 1970 a third time and this time, it was recorded.

About the workshop with the adults... There were no rewards and they were there with the intention of learning about human relations but instead had an experience in discrimination. They probably had no idea what was going on until the end when they were debriefed and talked about their reactions to the experience.

[Michael Chui]

Re: The Wave, others may read about it here:
The Third Wave, 1967, an account - Ron Jones | libcom.org

I'd recommend looking up the Stanford Prison Experiment and reading The Lucifer Effect. It's the same thing, except that it lasted a week, used college students, and has more shock value. The book has reflections and discussions by the psychologist who ran it.

And finally, since all this cynicism is depressing, read this, by the same psychologist:
The Banality of Heroism | Greater Good

[Rui]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

Re: The Wave, others may read about it here:
The Third Wave, 1967, an account - Ron Jones | libcom.org

I'd recommend looking up the Stanford Prison Experiment and reading The Lucifer Effect. It's the same thing, except that it lasted a week, used college students, and has more shock value. The book has reflections and discussions by the psychologist who ran it.

And finally, since all this cynicism is depressing, read this, by the same psychologist:
The Banality of Heroism | Greater Good

I actually found out about the Stanford Experiment and Milgram experiment years ago when I was in college while doing a research trying to understand a certain phenomenon that was happening around me.

In most of the colleges in my country, there is a tradition called “praxe académica”. This tradition has various facets. One of these facets happen at the start of the school year, where freshman known as “caloiros”, are received by older students called “Doutores” and are integrated in to this tradition and college life in a very peculiar way. Freshman have to obey the older students and are tasked in doing various activities ranging from funny to really stupid and degrading. In some colleges, the freshman can't even look or talk with these older students when they are being put through this process of integration. They must be submissive and obey.

This tradition can range from very soft where freshman do activities like, jump, do push-ups, kneel on the ground, be painted on, sing, try to have oral sex with an ant or scream at it, and so on, to degrading tasks, where for example, in one college, a group of freshman had to kneel in animal excrement. But this varies from college to college depending on the older students and their common sense or lack of.

I wanted to understand why this tradition exists, why would freshmen accept to blindly follow orders from older students. I wanted to understand why would they accept the crap older students “taught” them, like “noble” values as humility and equality that seems more rhetoric and romantic thinking than reality considering their situation. To this end I began scouring the web and found about the Zimbardo and Milgram experiments.

To be fair, this tradition could be much worse, like the hazing that happens around the world that I read about on the web, but I'm still baffled, how college students who should be equal to one another and posses critical thinking, have this hierarchy in place and accept it.

Here are two youtube videos about this. One showcases a soft activity in a particular college in the reception phase of the tradition, the other gives an overview of all of the tradition. The last has English descriptions so it easy to understand for English speakers.

As a final note about the experiments that revealed the dark nature of man. It's easy to fall to a path of cynicism after knowing about all these experiments, but the reason I shared The Class Divided exercise, was to learn from this and avoid these kinds of mistakes in the future. I read a book awhile ago that talked about a study that revealed that if you didn't believe in determinism, you would have less control over yourself, while believing in determinism, gave you more control. So cynicism is definitely not the way to go

Thanks Michael for posting the link about The Banality of Heroism, I had already seen it when you posted it in “The man academy” thread, but I thinks it serves as a great complement to this thread, and as you said, it needs to be shared more often.

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Rui

To be fair, this tradition could be much worse, like the hazing that happens around the world that I read about on the web, but I'm still baffled, how college students who should be equal to one another and posses critical thinking, have this hierarchy in place and accept it.

There is a difference between "this is how I think it should be", "this is how it actually is", "this is how the administrators think it should be", "this is what the administrators think the effects of their changes are", and "this is what the effects of their changes actually are".

I specifically recommend The Lucifer Effect because Zimbardo discusses his role as the administrator in the SPE and why that was so important. He condemns himself as having failed to maintain vigilance and control over his experiment properly.

But do recognize: it has never been a priority in the university systems to encourage equality between cohorts, or for that matter, to encourage critical thinking. There is a lot of propaganda and lip service paid, but ask anyone exactly how and why critical thinking or equality is inculcated or taught and you will not receive a meaningful answer.

[Rui]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

But do recognize: it has never been a priority in the university systems to encourage equality between cohorts, or for that matter, to encourage critical thinking. There is a lot of propaganda and lip service paid, but ask anyone exactly how and why critical thinking or equality is inculcated or taught and you will not receive a meaningful answer.

Despite what I said, I agree. I'm really sceptical as well of those claims of critical thinking. What I said about this was more a provocation of my part than something else. What baffles me, is the overt nature of the contradictions this tradition has in some universities, where what they preach is not what they do.

I'm definitely going to check the book out. Thank you for bringing it up.