09 December 2010

Lessons in Discrimination...

After watching the famous case study of "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" conducted by Jane Elliot it is clear that the people who have taken her class and her workshops have a better understanding of Discrimination. Think back to "Diversity Day" on The Office episode we viewed, do you think Michael Scott could learn a lesson from Jane Elliot? Could Jane learn from Michael? Which lesson is more powerful to people of your age bracket? Thoughts...

16 comments:

kdougherty said...

After watching both Jane Elliot's case study, and the Office.. it is clear who should be taking lessons. Michael Scott could take some lessons from Jane Elliot, considering he is very discriminatory. In the episode, Michael doesn't think the Chris Rock comments he made were wrong, but funny. If Jane Elliot was there I think she would be really upset. I think that Jane Elliots lesson is definitely more beneficial to kids my age. Jane uses the colors of your eyes to decide whether to be disciminative towards you or not. This is all so the blue eyed, or brown eyed people can see how people in America feel everyday when they are discriminated against. Michael thinks that the activity he uses is good, although he tells them to use full on stereotypes, which doesn't help the people at all. You'd think he realize that after Kelly slaps him, but no he doesn't. Michael Scott should go see Jane Elliot.

Timith J. said...

I think Michael Scott can learn something from Jane Elliot. Michael uses humor and satire to make people aware of discrimination and it is not very effective. But Jane Elliot uses a way that even friends who have known you for years can turn against you as seen in her classroom where 3rd graders turned against each other and blue-eyed children thought that they were superior on the first day and on the second day, brown-eyed children thought that they were superior. In the prison where she gave a presentation to the prison guards, we can see that the blue-eyed people are treated as the minority and the brown-eyed people in that room thought that blue-eyed people are bad. I think her way is more effective because people actually experience what discrimination feels like and they do not want to treat another person like that .Michael uses humor which can be very offensive to other people and they just forget about it after sometime but in the reunion of Jane’s kids, we can see that they still remember their lesson and they are passing it to their kids.

golfer4life47 said...

I believe Michael Scott could learn a valuable lesson from Jane Elliot's lesson on discrimination. Michael's techniques were flawed at best and I believe the co-workers left that day dumber than they came in. However this opinion is as if the episode was really happening. I believe the producers of The Office created a modern "A Modest Proposal" satirical piece. They implemented it by making the viewers witness how idiotic discrimination is. Although Mrs.Elliot's workshop was effective, I believe people of the 21st century learn things when satire is involved, including people of our age.

Sarah Riordan said...

After watching Jane Elliot’s case study I believe that Michael Scott could learn a lesson or two. The way Jane taught others about discrimination allowed a person to have a first hand experience at what discrimination really is. She made people who had never felt like they were a minority or that something was wrong with them feel like they were worthless. I believe if Michael Scott went through Jane Elliot’s version of diversity day he would leave a changed person who actually understands how his comments can affect people. Jane Elliot’s lesson on discrimination would be more effective for people of my age group. I believe this because her lesson put you in the shoes of a discriminated person, which is really the only way to understand discrimination.

Crystal Rose said...

Michael Scott could definitely learn something from Jane Elliot. Michael tried to teach his employees about discrimination with a sense of humor. Instead he made the lesson very demeaning. Jane Elliot taught her students in a manner that allowed them to somehow forget about reality; allowing themselves to be put in someone else’s shoes. She allows her students to connect with those who are discriminated against to actually be hurt or severely annoyed. She showed this with the prison guards. I think that if Michael was to teach a lesson to Jane it would be what not to do. Michael used his employee’s ethnicity against them. He pointed out how they might feel different from others. Whereas, in Jane’s lesson with the prison guards I found it ironic that she choose people with light eyes to be discriminated against because they were mostly Caucasian. Therefore, they had very possibly have never experienced as much discrimination. For teens, I think that a message that could be related to, would be most successful. Jane’s way of teaching gets peoples attention and really makes them think. I believe that anyone that goes through Jane’s lesson would always keep that lesson with them; as her 3rd grade students have.

Mike Daly said...

After watching the case study and the office, its obvious that Michael Scott can definitly learn a lesson from Jane Elliot. His methods of "teaching" about discrimination were outrageous and insulting to the workers in his office. He would make the workers discriminate against eachother and make racist jokes towards eachother as a game. Jane Elliot's study was genius. She was the perfect person to carry out the experient especially on the adults in the jail. She took it easier on the students and it still worked and showed that its so easy to join in on discriminating just because everyone wants to feel the power. Then it showed that its a completley different stroy when its happening to you. The kinds scored lower on tests and were sad and upset.

taylaurdempsey said...

The character Michael Scott can definitely learn from Jane Elliot. He is absurdly intolerant, and if he were to participate in one of Jane's workshops and was discriminated against, he wouldn't act like such a bigot. With "The Office", humor is used to expose how stupid discriminatory people are, but Jane does incorporate a bit of humor in her exercise already, so she doesn't need to learn anything from Michael. She uses satire, putting herself in the shoes of one who discriminates. Through this use of humor and caricature, she exposes the irrationality of discriminating people for such insignificant things as your skin color or, in this case, eye color. I strongly believe Jane's lesson is more powerful regardless of the age bracket. The best way to help people understand discrimination is to make them feel it themselves, no matter their age, what time period it is, or anything else. Michael could learn a thing or two from Jane, and Jane's demonstration is the more powerful of the two lessons.

soniaG93 said...

After watching both Jane Elliot's case study, and the Office.. I think Michael Scott can learn something from Jane Elliot because making fun of other people ethnicity is not a way of teaching others a "lesson" about not doing it infact i think it makes people miss the lesson and they focus on the "humor" jane Elliots lesson makes it clear that discrimination is BAD and should stop as soon as possible. michael scott should be a part of one of janes experiments. maybe he could learn something from her.

TaylorAnne said...

Jane Elliot's case study and the way Michael Scott handles discrimination are two very different techniques. Michael Scott is a fictional character who is used in different scenerios to get a point across. In the diversity day episode, he openly discriminates and bases his jokes off of the stereotypes placed on certain groups. He shows how rediculous you sound, and how rude and insulting it can be to other people, teaching the lesson with humor. Jane Elliot on the other hand uses first hand experience to show someone just how it feels to be discriminated against. I believe Michael Scott could definately learn something from Jane Elliot because her methods are much more effective and hands on. After her study people felt the humility and emotional pain that came with stereotypes, and learned more than if they had just talked about it.

amcorreia said...

I think that Michael Scott could learn a lesson from Jane Elliot because he takes the whole idea of "diversity day" as a joke. Michael's view on teaching people about diversity was to make people laugh and play off of stereotypes, while Jane had taught her students a lesson based on what she told them. And Jane probably could not have learned a lesson from Michael, other than how not to teach him students about discrimination. Surprisingly I think that Michael’s lesson would be more powerful to our age bracket because it would make us laugh, but it may not teach us the proper lessons. Even though Jane’s lesson would be more accurate, it would not be affective because our age bracket is more accepting than others and we would not believe the "Blue Eye/Brown Eye" experiment.

kristi x said...

Yes, I do think that Michael Scott could learn a lesson from Jane Elliot. That’s because his activity for “Diversity Day” was not an accurate way of teaching people about discrimination. Jane Elliot doesn’t need to learn from Michael because her way of teaching gave better meaning. Michael put cards on people’s foreheads and made people do different ethnic imitations so the other can find out what race they are, which is pretty discriminatory. Jane Elliot’s “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” lesson is more powerful to people of our age bracket because it’s a better way of showing how discriminate actions hurt the minority group, and it even puts you through the process of being discriminated.

kirstenraynock16 said...

I think thatafter watching the case study it's very obvious that Michael Scott should be takeing lessons from Jane Elliot. During the episode of The Office about Racism, Michael Scott was very racist and stereotypical. He wasnt really teaching anyone about how people shouldnt be racist. If anything, he was teaching them how to be racist. I think that Jane Elliot's lesson would be more powerful to people of my age bracket. This is because you actually experience how it feels to be discriminated against and you're basically being put in someone elses shoes. Then you experience how it feels to be the person discriminating the other group and it shows you how fast people can changed based on a leader of the group.

haileyG said...

After watching the case study "blue eyes/ brown eyes" and the office i believe that Michael could have learned some very valuable lessons from Jane Elliot. In the Office Michael was saying some very racist comments. I think that Jane Elliots experiment was a lot more worth while and taught a more vaulable lesson to her students. This is because the people on the office took the wrong approach, while doing the experiment they conducted. I think that high schoolers would learn a lot more by watching jane elliots case study than they can the office because the Office, in my opnion, was more comical than it was informational.

Briana Chantel said...

Both shows had good ways to show how diversity should be but in my opinion jane elliots case study was more affective for both adults and children clearly jane elliot knew that some people can actually buy into the whole one is better than the other which would make a good study to show everyone that people in this world still think that. if i had to choose to to one i would choose janes it was way better . the episode of the office only showed he funny in diversity the the principle.

Holly said...

After watching the case study and the office, it is clear that Michael Scott needs to take lessons from Jane Elliot. He tried to teach Diversity using humor which is not the way you should do it because it is a serious topic. His jokes were offensive and very rude making him out to be the bigot. The people he was “teaching” did not learn anything valuable and were annoyed by him. He used race as a joke and made a game out of it with the cards on the employees’ foreheads. Jane Elliot’s teaching methods were set up so that her students actually felt discriminated against. The children and even the prison guards were annoyed and some were very hurt. Her lesson even resulted in one child punching another which is like someone committing a hate crime in the adult word. If Jane Elliot taught this lesson to Michael Scott, then he would come to understand the concept of racism and how it affects people. After taking her lesson and then trying to teach his employees, he would do things differently. There is nothing positive that Jane could learn from Michael. To people my age, Jane Elliot’s lesson is more powerful because it would have a bigger, more positive impact on our lives, verses Michael Scott’s.

Gmilardo15 said...

I think that Michael Scott could learn a lesson from Jane Elliot. Michael's techniques didn't work and nobody really had an understanding on how it feels to be discriminated against. I don't think that Jane could learn from Michael because his experiment wasn't organized and valid. I think Jane Elliot's message is more powerful because she uses the color of our eyes to compare each other. In Michael's experiment he uses many stereotypes such as changing the his voice to having an accent when talking to an employee wearing a turban.