Invitations to speak and to conduct her exercise eventually led Jane Elliott to give up school teaching and to become a full-time public speaker against discrimination.
24 Facts About Jane Elliott
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Jane Elliott has directed the exercise and lectured on its effects in many places throughout the world.
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Jane Elliott has conducted the exercise with college students, as seen in the 2001 documentary The Angry Eye.
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Jane Elliott was born in 1933 to Lloyd and Margaret Jennison on her family's farm in or near Riceville, Iowa.
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In 1952, after graduating from high school, Jane Elliott attended the Iowa State Teachers College, where she attained an emergency elementary teaching certificate in five quarters.
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Jane Elliott then decided to combine a lesson she had planned about Native Americans with a lesson she had planned about Martin Luther King Jr.
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At the moment she was watching the news of King's death, Jane Elliott says she was ironing a teepee for use in a lesson unit about Native Americans.
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Jane Elliott suggested to the class it would be hard for them to understand discrimination without experiencing it themselves and then asked the children if they would like to find out.
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Jane Elliott decided to base the exercise on eye color rather than skin color to show the children what racial segregation would be like.
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The next Monday, Jane Elliott reversed the exercise, making the blue-eyed children superior.
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The publicity Jane Elliott was getting did not make her popular in Riceville.
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On December 15,1970, Jane Elliott staged the experience to adult educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth.
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In 1970, ABC produced a documentary about Jane Elliott called The Eye of the Storm, which made her even more nationally known.
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Jane Elliott was featured by Peter Jennings on ABC as "Person of the Week" on April 24,1992.
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Jane Elliott is listed on the timeline of 30 notable educators by textbook editor McGraw-Hill along with Confucius, Plato, Booker T Washington, and Maria Montessori.
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Jane Elliott has been invited to speak at 350 colleges and universities and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show five times.
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In November 2016, Jane Elliott's name was added to the BBC's annual list of 100 Women.
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The Riceville school system granted Jane Elliott unpaid leave to conduct workshops and training that were based on her exercise to organizations outside of her school system.
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Jane Elliott left teaching in the mid-1980s to devote herself full-time to diversity training, redeveloping her classroom exercise for the corporate world.
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In only a few hours, Jane Elliott's treatment makes the blue-eyed workers become distracted and despondent, stumbling over the simplest commands.
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Dean Weaver, who was superintendent of Riceville schools from 1972 to 1979, thought Jane Elliott was an outstanding teacher who did things differently and made other teachers envious of her success.
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Two professors of education in England, Ivor Goodson and Pat Sikes, argue that what Jane Elliott did was unethical, calling the exercise psychologically and emotionally damaging.
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Jane Elliott was married to Darald Jane Elliott from 1955 until his death, and she has four children.
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On May 24,2019, Jane Elliott was awarded the honorary degree Doctor of Humane Letters by CSU Bakersfield.