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Jane Elliott’s Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes exercise was a two-day classroom lesson about discrimination, conducted with her third-grade pupils in Riceville, Iowa, in April 1968. Elliott divided the children by eye color, treated one group as superior and the other as inferior, then reversed their positions the next day. The exercise made the immediate effects of unequal status and treatment visible in that classroom; it was a teaching demonstration, not a controlled study establishing how discrimination affects people generally.
Why did Jane Elliott create the exercise?
Elliott devised the lesson in April 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Her third-grade class was trying to make sense of the killing. According to PBS, the pupils had recently named King their “Hero of the Month.” Elliott wanted them to consider what discrimination feels like and what it can do, rather than discuss it only as an abstract idea. The setting and timing are central to understanding the exercise: it was a teacher’s response to a specific moment, created for her own class in Riceville, Iowa.
The lesson did not begin as a research study designed to measure a hypothesis. Elliott created a classroom experience in which children would encounter arbitrary group status and unequal treatment directly. The categories she used were visible eye-color differences, not racial groups. That distinction matters: the children’s temporary classroom categories served as a teaching device for considering discrimination, but eye-color grouping is not equivalent to racial discrimination or to its history and institutional reach.
PBS recounts the origin and classroom context in its account of one Friday in April 1968 and in the introduction to A Class Divided.
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What happened during the two-day exercise?
Elliott split the children into groups according to eye color. On the first day, she announced that one eye-color group was superior and gave that group higher status in the classroom. The other group was treated as inferior. On the second day, Elliott reversed the groups’ positions, so the children who had been favored were now targeted and the previously targeted group received the favored status.
The hierarchy was made concrete through everyday classroom rules and interactions. PBS reports that the favored children received a longer recess and went first in the lunch line. Children in the targeted group wore collars, and Elliott criticized their behavior and performance. The arrangement reached beyond a spoken claim of superiority: it changed who received privileges, who was singled out, and how the teacher treated the pupils.
In the documentary transcript, Elliott’s teacher character says: “Blue-eyed people are smarter than brown-eyed people. They are cleaner than brown-eyed people. They are more civilized than brown-eyed people.” The statement supplies the rationale for the arbitrary hierarchy within the lesson; it is not evidence that the claims were true. The point of the exercise was that a group could be labeled and treated as lesser on an arbitrary basis, and that the classroom’s authority figure could make that status consequential.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchThe reversal was an essential part of the design. The children did not remain in one fixed role throughout the demonstration: on day two, the status arrangement changed. This allowed the class to encounter both being favored and being targeted, instead of observing the hierarchy from only one position. The available accounts describe a two-day exercise, not a long-term program or a treatment whose effects were tracked over time.
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See PBS’s overview of A Class Divided for its account of the exercise and the documentary record.
What did the exercise show?
It showed how unequal treatment and assigned status could become tangible in the classroom. A 2002 research survey describes the children’s behavior as reversing when the groups’ roles were reversed. In the context of the lesson, the students’ changing positions coincided with changes in their classroom behavior. That reversal helped make the experience of being classified, favored, or penalized something the pupils could discuss from direct participation rather than from description alone.
The most careful conclusion is also the most useful one: Elliott’s demonstration illustrated the immediate, felt experience and classroom effects of discrimination in that particular setting. Privileges, criticism, and a teacher’s treatment gave the hierarchy practical consequences. The lesson made clear that social status in a classroom can shape how children are treated and how they behave there.
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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →That is a meaningful educational point, but it is narrower than a general scientific finding. The exercise was a historical classroom demonstration, not a controlled study that quantified the general effects of racism. The reviewed sources provide a historical narrative and qualitative description, not a representative sample, an outcome estimate, or evidence that a brief role-play reproduces the scale, history, or institutional structure of racial discrimination. It would therefore be inaccurate to cite the exercise as proof of a particular measurable effect on all children or as a direct model of what people experience under racism.
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The distinction between lesson and equivalence should stay explicit. Elliott used eye color as a temporary category to teach about discrimination based on race. That analogy gave pupils a classroom experience of arbitrary group ranking; it did not make eye-color prejudice and racial discrimination interchangeable. A teaching exercise can help participants consider exclusion and unequal treatment without reproducing the historical conditions or broader systems involved in racism.
The 2002 survey by Lisa R. Anderson, Roland G. Fryer, and Charles A. Holt discusses Elliott’s exercise in the context of experimental studies of discrimination. Its account supports describing the exercise and the reported reversal in behavior, but not turning that classroom observation into a universal statistic. No quantified outcome statistic for Elliott’s original class is identified in the reviewed sources. Claims about class size, score changes, or a numerical effect should not be added without a reliable source.
What does the documentary record show?
The original exercise was filmed for the 1970 ABC documentary The Eye of the Storm, according to PBS. The footage records the classroom demonstration, including the children when they were pupils. That makes it a historical record of the exercise, distinct from later accounts looking back on it.
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In 1985, PBS FRONTLINE’s A Class Divided revisited the students as adults and asked what they remembered. PBS lists its original airdate as March 26, 1985. The later program therefore adds a retrospective dimension: viewers encounter adults reflecting on a classroom experience they had as children, rather than only seeing the exercise unfold at the time. It is a revisit, not the original 1968 classroom event.
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PBS’s frequently asked questions also names later films about Elliott’s exercise: Blue Eyed, Eye of the Beholder, The Angry Eye, and Stolen Eye. Those titles belong to a wider documentary record, but their mention alone does not establish current streaming, broadcast, or purchase availability. PBS describes A Class Divided as in demand among educators and organizations; that indicates an educational audience, not where or whether a viewer can access it now.
If choosing material for further viewing, identify what kind of record you want. Footage from The Eye of the Storm documents the original classroom exercise. A Class Divided includes a later return to the students as adults and their memories of it. The other films PBS names are later works about the exercise. This distinction helps prevent a later adaptation or reflection from being mistaken for footage of the 1968 event itself. Availability should be checked with the relevant distributor or rights holder.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How should the exercise be understood today?
It is best understood as a vivid classroom demonstration with a specific historical purpose, rather than as a stand-alone scientific verdict on discrimination. Its enduring explanatory force comes from the structure of the lesson: an authority figure assigned an arbitrary hierarchy, attached privileges and penalties to it, and then changed who occupied each position. The two-day reversal let the pupils experience more than one role and made unequal treatment discussable within their own classroom.
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At the same time, an engaging documentary scene can invite viewers to overread what it proves. The exercise did not establish a general effect size, and the documentary record does not turn a single class into a representative study. It cannot substitute for research on racial discrimination, nor does the role-play recreate the real-world history and institutions that shape it. Those limits do not erase the lesson’s value; they define what can responsibly be inferred from it.
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For readers who want a contemporaneous account in print, the 2002 survey cites William Peters’s A Class Divided (1971) as an account of the exercise. That is a useful further-reading lead, though current editions and availability are not established here. The central takeaway remains bounded and clear: Elliott’s class experienced how status and unequal treatment could alter a classroom, while the lesson itself was not a quantified study of discrimination’s general effects.
Sources and further reading
- PBS FRONTLINE: “One Friday in April, 1968” — historical context for the lesson and its origin.
- PBS FRONTLINE: A Class Divided — account of the documentary and the classroom exercise.
- PBS FRONTLINE: Frequently Asked Questions — documentary context and other films about the exercise.
- Anderson, Fryer, and Holt, “Experimental Studies of Discrimination” (2002) — research survey discussing Elliott’s demonstration.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Jane Elliott’s best-known quote from the exercise?
PBS’s documentary transcript attributes to Elliott the statement that blue-eyed people were “smarter,” “cleaner,” and “more civilized” than brown-eyed people. In the lesson, those claims expressed the hierarchy Elliott had assigned; they were not factual descriptions of either group.
Was Jane Elliott’s exercise based on a published research experiment?
The sources describe it as a classroom lesson Elliott devised in response to her pupils’ questions after King’s assassination. A later research survey discusses the exercise, but that does not make the original demonstration a controlled study.
Who wrote the book A Class Divided?
William Peters wrote the 1971 book cited by Anderson, Fryer, and Holt as an account of Elliott’s exercise. No current editions or listings are confirmed here.
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