29 Mar Women’s History Month: Jane Elliot
This Women’s History Month and we’re excited to share this post from Fluent’s Project Manager, Aeliya Ahemd, where she shares her admiration for Jane Elliot, a trailblazing educator.
A woman who inspires me is Jane Elliot, a powerhouse educator and anti-racist activist.
First coming across her work in a child development psychology course in college, I learned about her groundbreaking “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” classroom exercise with her third-graders to allow her students to see firsthand what experiencing discrimination could feel like. Fifty years later, her work is just as important as it was then.
Elliot’s ideas about race were not popular at the time, as they challenged the deeply ingrained attitudes of her small, predominantly-white town in Iowa, but despite criticism and backlash, Elliot didn’t shy away from being a tireless advocate for anti-racism education. She confronted injustice head-on — and continues to untill today, more than five decades later. Since her “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” classroom exercise, Elliot’s work has been dedicated to the pursuit of racial equity and justice. In 2019, Elliot gave a lecture at my college campus, and getting the chance to hear her speak ardently and witness her indomitable spirit was heartening.
Above all, I deeply admire Jane Elliot’s message on the transformative power of education. Through her work, she doesn’t just share knowledge; she instills empathy and compassion, shares meaningful actions we all can take to create a more equitable society, and challenges us to hold ourselves accountable. She’s teaching us how to be better people.