h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I suppose this is a classic case to argue over whether ends can justify means.

While the value of the end is indisputable, I'm personally a lot more comfortable with adult participation in this kind of experiment than with child participants who cannot meaningfully volunteer and may be unduly traumatised. There is of course the downside that any adults who volunteer for this will not include the ones who most need it. It's also frightening to consider the behaviours that have already been absorbed at a tender age....


A good, thought-provoking entry.

Thanks for your comments.

I think you're quite right that it would never be done 'cold' on children of that age nowadays, but (a)people thought very differnt abotschooling then - just look at the way that attitudes to bullying have changed, and (b) as this type of thing was so new, no-one could have predicted the profound impact.

I also know what you mean about volunteering, but some in-service training is compulsory, and rightly so!

As someone not to far away keeps saying, let's change the world by degrees.

Tempus mutandis et nos mutandis in illis indeed

Oho! Don't get me started!

Gutta cavat lapidem, consumitur anulus usu


We wouldn't have got away with this in the active moderation days

I have seen two documentaries that cover this experiment, with the suggestion that Jane should not have subjected the kids to this experiement, and that parents were quite aggressive that she dared put their kids through it. She had some interesting come backs:

1. She emphasised at the beginning that this was a "game", and all kids were told it was for one day.
2. The kids were interviewed as kids after the experiment and later as adults, and they admitted that even though they knew it was a game and that it would end, they still felt helpless against the tide of persecution their fellow students and they themselves participated in when they were "on top". They admitted this hit home about how insidious racism was and that lesson stayed with them for life. Far more impressive than a lesson in theory.
3. Jane's comment to the parent (and all parents who recoil at what these kids went through for one day) was "imagine black kids, who are treated this way every day of their lives, with no hope of it being a game, and no hope of it ending - why can't they transfer some of that pity they feel for these white kids who went through it for one day to those kids who face it for the rest of their lives.

By the way, Jane recently came to Australia to conduct the experiment, and I felt a lot of people missed the point. They complained that as migrants, they too faced the same persecution. This is the same in the US. However, in both US and Australia, migrants are accepted after a few generations as mainstream Australians or Americans, but in both countries blacks and aborigines are still portrayed as criminals, lazy, etc, etc AS A WHOLE RACE!

How interesting. I wish I'd seen some of these programmes that other people keep talking about!

One positive aspect seems to be that the subjects are conscious of what is going on, and the experiment seems to have avoided ingraining the "cycle of abuse" phenomenon whereby victims go on to be perpetrators: over a day people can see themselves doing it.

You like to think you're a better person than that, but it ain't necessarily so.

You can try to convince the local "public" network to rescreen them - the two documentaries are called "Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes" and "Eye of the Storm". One focuses on just the experiment of the second lot of kids to go through it. The other follows up with them at two later stages in their lives. It also shows Jane putting prison guards through the experiment as well as another adult group (it's amazing to see grown ups reverting to a "child ego state" [as Jane puts it] so quickly!)

In Australia, they were shown on ABC (or was it SBS?) Anyway, I think you can actually buy the documentaries. If you're that keen, I think it's possible. Or search through some libraries that may have them for educational purposes?

I have both on a video tape, so if you want to send a blank tape to me I can dub them perhaps...(I'm on the Aussie format, which is different to US format, though).

And Advocatus Diaboli, I agree with you - we'd all like to think we'd act differently, but each experiment shows that precious few of us are able to stand up to behaviour, either as victims of it, or perpetrators.

Sorry - it's actually called "A class divided". I had a look for the videos on the web, and they're actually quite expensive (I guess diversity training is quite lucrative )

So convince your public network to re-screen them. They were produced by ABC News.

...sorry to carry on a one-sided conversation with myself, but I came across an interesting article that may help explain what I was trying to get across with my first post (which was in response to a comment that kids nowadays should not be put through something like this, I think)

http://staging.denison.edu/~warren_s/390paper.html

No worries, it's interesting stuff.

It's a shame ABS don't release the films on DVD for home consumption; I'm sure there'd be a market.

...and I can't remember how Aussie/UK vidoeing works! If it was shown in the UK, it would probably be on one of the sytems that I can't receive (stuck in the wilds of Scotland, with only four of the five terrestial channels...)

Poo.

if you guys are in the UK, then try the BBC (I know there are about five types of BBC to choose from - which one is in charge of documentaries?)

If any one is still interested, I remember a two program special on Oprah Winfrey on this very subject, loads of very angry studio audience members, etc. Was very thought provoking! Would perhaps be worth taking up requests for further info via Harpo, or possibly Viacom Try with your favourite search engine..

"While the value of the end is indisputable,"

In this case, no.

Professor Tracie Stewart of Georgia University USA found that the "Brown eyes, blue eyes" exercise can actually INCREASE divisiveness.

Radio 4 covered this in an excellent series called "The Business of Race"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4521244.stm

Which would be an argument that the means lead to an unanticipated end rather than the one intended...