‘No blondes allowed’: 50 years after a jr. high experiment..

[Tennesseer]

Similar to Jane Elliott's "Blue eyes–Brown eyes" exercise.

‘No blondes allowed’: 50 years after a junior high experiment, students say it had ‘a big impact’

Blond eighth-grader Jan Shipe Brown remembers getting off the school bus at her junior high school in Potomac, Md., on Feb. 17, 1969 — the start of National Brotherhood Week.

As she walked to the building in her matching turquoise sweater and skirt, she saw the first of many signs of bias. “Blondes use the side door,” read a sign hung over the main entrance. Dark-haired student guards blocked those doors to make sure blond students didn’t use them. After entering through the side entrance, she saw a giant “No Blondes Allowed,” banner strung across the staircase leading to her home room. Hall monitors jeered at her, directing her to the blonds-only stairwell. In class, her teachers didn’t call on her. At lunch, she was forced to sit at a separate table from her brunette friends, segregated based on the color of her hair.

“I have never forgotten that week, it was a seminal event in my life,” Brown said recently in a phone interview.

Brown and her fellow students at Cabin John Junior High were participating in an experiment with prejudice, a program so controversial that parents protested against it and national news media covered it. From Philadelphia to San Mateo, Calif., newspapers reported on the exercise — even Walter Cronkite devoted a segment to it on the “CBS Evening News.”

Complete article here: ‘No blondes allowed’: 50 years after a junior high experiment, students say it had ‘a big impact’

[irishpad]

I used the Frontline report on Jane Elliott's with my 8th graders.  There were actually two reports, one a few years after the first.  www.pbs.org/video/frontline-class-divided/   When I would show it to them, I would do a similar thing.   During the first report, brown eyes got best seats, snacks, etc. and then flipped it on the second report.   Even though it just gave them a taste, it was an effective lesson.