Courtesy of the Missouri History Museum
The history of encouraging students to suffer in class in the name of understanding suffering is understandably controversial.
The two big “experiments” are probably Jane Elliot’s “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise, in which third-graders of one eye color were encouraged to treat those of another like worthless humanity in Riceville, Iowa in 1968; and the Stanford Prison Study, in which psychology prof Philip Zimbardo divided a group of college students into mock prisoners and mock guards in 1971, and observed the guards becoming sadists, and the prisoners internalizing their victimhood.
Both experiments are absolutely fascinating, and hugely controversial. It would seem it does not take much to turn on our impulse for cruelty—the buttons, as it were, are easily pushed.
(A short film feature on the very same subject, “The Wave,” utterly captivated me when I first saw it as a kid. It imagines a large group of high schoolers drawn ever deeper into a secret society that “rewards the strong and punishes the weak.” At the end of the film, the eager high-school bullies are gathered in an auditorium for a video presentation to finally unveil the group’s leader and purpose—it’s a video of Adolf Hitler delivering a speech. The horrified kids rip off their badges and armbands and start crying. It’s campy now, but I was too young to pick up on that at the time.)
Over at Ralph M. Captain Elementary School in the Clayton school district, the third, fourth, and fifth graders have read Henry’s Freedom Box, a children’s book written by Ellen Levine and illustrated by Kadir Nelson. The book tells the story of Henry "Box" Brown, who, in March of 1849, successfully mailed himself from Richmond, Va., to Philadelphia, Pa. in order to rejoin his family and to escape slavery.
Brown’s journey was a claustrophobe’s nightmare. He spent 27 hours inside a wooden crate, hauled by “wagon, railroad, steamboat, wagon again, railroad, ferry, railroad, and finally delivery wagon.” At various points he was upside-down, but was afraid passengers around him would hear if he tried to adjust his position, so he just bore it. It was terribly hot inside the box, he had little food, no sane way to relieve himself, and he could not be sure his plan would work, or if he would arrive alive, even.
The Ralph Captain kids took turns squeezing inside a wooden box the same size as Brown’s—just 3 feet long, 2 1/2 feet deep and 2 feet wide. (It should be noted that Brown was a grown, 200-pound man, who filled the crate much more completely than the kids, incidentally.) Dozens of photos, now on view in the lower level Bank of America Atrium at the Missouri History Museum, depict each child in the box, grimacing as he or she imagines spending more than the amount of time it took to snap the picture within the coffin-like space.
“In Henry’s Box” also features the kids’ insightful, sensitive comments on Brown’s ordeal under the photos, as well as in a booklet next to them.
Some of their sympathetic impressions:
“I would have to go to the restroom. I would be hungry”
“I would also be thinking about… staying quiet and not talking or coughing, that also includes sneezing”
“I hear people saying, ‘Hey Grant.’ ‘Yes Sammy?’ ‘Are your legs tired?’’Yes.’ ‘Let’s sit on that box over there.’ “I cried in my mind.”
“I would be so, so desperate”
“I feel sorry for Henry Box Brown. I am glad slavery is over.”
“I would be so anxious”
“Being in a box for 27 hours would be so, so awful. I would never ever forget that day.”
“BUT I JUST WANT TO BE FREE!”
The Ralph Captain experiment, if you will, did not pit the students against one another, as in the Iowa and Stanford experiments, but like those others, it did demonstrate, to some degree, the needless suffering we humans are apt to inflict on each other, and did arouse a measure of empathy. Some of the kids might just remember being asked to enter that little box for the rest of their lives.
In 2005, one of Jane Elliot’s former students who participated in “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” ran into her back in Riceville. “I've never forgotten the exercise," said the woman, who was 45 at the time. "It changed my life. Not a day goes by without me thinking about it, Ms. Elliott.”
An art exhibit by the Captain Elementary students who participated in "Henry's Box," opens this Friday, April 8 with a reception from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Missouri History Museum.
