Жане Эллиот: Расизмге қарсы тәрбиеші және «Көкшіл көздер/Қоңыр көздер» тәжірибесі

American anti racism educator

Jane Elliott ( Jennison; born November 30, 1933) is an American diversity educator. As a schoolteacher, she 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 publication of compositions which the children had written about the experience in the local newspaper led to much broader media interest in it. 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". Invitations to speak and to conduct her exercise eventually led Elliott to give up school teaching and to become a full time public speaker against discrimination. She has directed the exercise and lectured on its effects in many places throughout the world. She also has conducted the exercise with college students, as seen in the 2001 documentary The Angry Eye.

Elliott was born in 1933 to Lloyd and Margaret (Benson) Jennison on her family's farm in or near Riceville, Iowa. She was the fourth of several children. In 1952, after graduating from high school, Elliott attended the Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa), where she attained an emergency elementary teaching certificate in five quarters. In 1953, she began her teaching career in a one room school in Randall. To tie the two lessons together, she used the Sioux prayer "Oh great spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I have walked in his moccasins." She wanted to give her small town, all white students the experience of walking in a "colored child's moccasins for a day". The next Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, making the blue eyed children superior. While the blue eyed children did taunt the brown eyed children in ways similar to what had occurred the previous day, Elliott reports it was much less intense. To reflect on the experience, she asked the children to write down what they had learned. As news of her exercise spread, Elliott appeared on more television shows and started to repeat the exercise in professional training days for adults. On December 15, 1970, Elliott staged the experience to adult educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth. This documentary was intended, according to the producers in their agreement with Jane Elliott, to create an awareness of the effects of racist behavior. After the exercise, Elliott said the result "wasn't as successful as I am accustomed to being", leaving journalist Andrew Anthony with the "nagging suspicion that she's more excited by white fear than she is by black success." Elliott was featured by Peter Jennings on ABC as "Person of the Week" on April 24, 1992. She is listed on the timeline of 30 notable educators by textbook editor McGraw Hill along with Confucius, Plato, Booker T. Washington, and Maria Montessori. She has been invited to speak at 350 colleges and universities and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show five times.

Elliott is considered to be the forerunner of diversity training, with the "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise as the basis of much of what is now called diversity training. She has done such training for corporations such as General Electric, Exxon, AT&T, and IBM, as well as lectured to the FBI, IRS, US Navy, US Department of Education, and US Postal Service. Companies found the idea of offering such training attractive, not only because in the 1970s and 1980s there were increasing numbers of people of color in their organizations, but also because of U. S. court rulings and federal policies to promote multiculturalism brought about by pressure from civil rights groups during the same two decades. Many companies at that time came to see diversity training as a way to ward off negative legal action and publicity. Elliott said, "If you can't think of any other reason for getting rid of racism, think of it as a real money saver." Elliott inspired diversity training has been used outside the United States. When the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000 passed in the United Kingdom, it listed 100 diversity training firms in the Diversity Directory. According to a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 70% of those firms have diversity policies in which diversity training plays a major role. Many of these courses follow Elliott's model in regards to understanding the issues presented.

Dean Weaver, who was superintendent of Riceville schools from 1972 to 1979, thought Elliott was an outstanding teacher who did things differently and made other teachers envious of her success. Ex principal Steve Harnack commented she was excellent at teaching academics and suggested she would have had fewer problems with the community if she had involved parents. Two professors of education in England, Ivor Goodson and Pat Sikes, argue that what Elliott did was unethical, calling the exercise psychologically and emotionally damaging. They also stated ethical concerns pertaining to the fact that the children were not told of the purpose of the exercise beforehand. In some courses, participants can feel frustrated about "their inability to change" and instead begin to feel anger against the very groups to which they are supposed to be more sensitive. It can also lead to anxiety because people become hyper sensitive about being offensive or being offended. There appears to be a lack of very good measures for determining the long term outcomes of these training initiatives.

Elliott was married to Darald Elliott (1934–2013) from 1955 until his death, and she has four children.