Summary Of Jane Elliott's Experiment

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In 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, a third grade teacher named Jane Elliott conducted an experiment with her class. This experiment helps others understand how people change when they are being treated unfairly. This experiment can help us better understand why and where Grendel went wrong and turned from good to evil. In the experiment, a third grade class was divided into two groups, one group with brown eyed children and one group with blue eyed children. On the first day of the experiment, the teacher told the brown eyed group that they had the superior eye color, which meant that they were smarter, more athletic, and better than the blue eyed group. Throughout the day, the brown eyed group teased the blue eyed children and called them names. They thought that they were better than the blue eyed…show more content…
In both cases, the power that was given to the people was abused, which negatively affected others. This happens in Grendel when the humans will not welcome him because he is different than them, and therefore, he should not have the same rights and power as they do. This also happens in the class divided experiment. The children that were deemed superior isolated the inferior children. In both cases, the person without power ended up feeling isolated and lonely. Another similarity between the two is that the person who was isolated and lonely was dehumanized by a "monster" and the affected person then went on to be a monster. In Grendel, the humans treated Grendel inhumanely, which lead him to become cruel and wicked towards others. The humans would not listen and did not bother to try and understand what he was saying. Instead, they attacked him for no reason. In the experiment, the inferior group of children were treated inhumanely and they became frustrated, which led them to be wicked towards the other group of
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