Study Guide For The Wave - CFI Education

had friends, but his newfound social status isnow worthless without The Wave. Mr. Rosshugs and comforts Robert, and they walk eferate/englisch/r0416t00.htm, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Wave (book),http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Wave (TV special)The experiment: The Third WaveRon Jones first wrote about hisclassroom social experiment in an essay in TheWhole Earth Catalog in 1972, under the title“Take As Directed.”In that essay, Jones writes that he startedthe first day of the experiment (Monday, April 31967) with simple things, such proper seating,drilling the students until they were able to movefrom outside the classroom to their seats, andtake the proper seating position in less then 30seconds without making a sound. He thenproceeded to strict classroom discipline,emerging as an authoritative figure andimproving efficiency of the class dramatically.On the second day he managed to moldhis history class into a group with a supremesense of discipline and community. Jones namedthe movement “The Third Wave,” after thecommon belief that the third in a series of oceanwaves is last and largest. Jones made up agreeting similar to the Nazi regime and orderedclass members to salute each other even outsidethe class. They all complied with this.The experiment took on a life of its own,with students from all over the school joining in:On the third day the class expanded from initial30 students to 43 attendees. All of the studentsshowed drastic improvement in their academicskills and tremendous motivation. All of thestudents were issued a member card and each ofthem received a special assignment (such asdesigning a Third Wave Banner, stopping nonmembers from entering the class, etc.). Jonesinstructed the students on how to initiate newmembers, and by the end of the day themovement had over 200 participants. Jones wassurprised when some of the students startedreporting other members of the movement whofailed to abide by the rules.On Thursday, the fourth day of theexperiment, Jones decided to terminate themovement because it was slipping out of hiscontrol. The students became increasinglyinvolved in the project and their discipline andloyalty to the project were astounding. Heannounced to the participants that their groupwas only a part of a nationwide movement, andthat on the next day a national candidate forpresident would publicly announce existence ofthe movement and that they were the localrepresentatives of the youth movement. Jonesordered students to attend a noon rally on Fridayto witness the announcement.Blurb from the Cubberley High School Catamount,April 7, 1967Instead of televised address of theirleader, the students were presented with deadair. After few minutes of waiting, Jonesannounced that they have been a part of anexperiment in fascism and that they all willinglyembraced a sense of superiority that Germancitizens had in the period of Nazi Germany. Hethen played them a film of the Nuremberg rally.Students left the auditorium quietly, some intears. The experiment tml/the wave.html,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Third Wave,http://www.thewave.tk/,

ControversiesRon Jones did not write about the ThirdWave experiment for a number of years. Therewas no media coverage of the event, which wasnot unusual for 1967 but would be unheard oftoday. There were two instances in which theThird Wave made it into the Cubberley schoolpaper, The Catamount, around the time of theevents. But it did not become a cause célèbre inits time.Bill Klink had the byline for the April21, 1967 article in The Catamount, entitled“‘Third Wave’ presents inside look intoFascism.” Klink reported, “One group reportedlyhad 500 parents backing a boycott to removeJones as a teacher because of ‘a movement theydidn’t quite understand.’ His fifth period seniorgovernment class launched the most successfulcoup d’etat on Wednesday, April 5, the last dayof the movement, as they kidnapped Jones andthreatened to deliver his lectures on democracyto his sophomore classes. However, hepersuaded them to let him go, telling them hehad planned to end the movement that day witha rally at lunch.”The story in The Catamount revealssome inconsistencies with Jones’s account of theThird Wave, such as stating that Wednesday,April 5, 1967 was the last day of the movement,but most notably, the article points out a reactionoutside of school, from parents. The degree ofthe reaction Klink reports is at odds with whatJones himself wrote in “Take As Directed.”Jones recounts, “In telling their parentsof the experiment they set up a brief chain ofevents. The rabbi for one of the parents calledme at home. He was polite and condescending. Itold him we were merely studying the Germanpersonality. He seemed delighted and told menot to worry. He would talk to the parents andcalm their concern.”Later, Jones remembers, “Wednesdayevening someone had broken into the room andransacked the place. (I later found out it was thefather of one of the students. He was a retired airforce colonel who had spent time in a Germanprisoner of war camp. Upon hearing of ouractivity he simply lost control. Late in theevening he broke into the room and tore itapart.[)].” Jones talked with the man about hisexperiences and they reached an understanding.Jones does not mention any more parents.Jones admits that he was fired fromCubberley, but it is only clear that his teachingmethods were controversial, and there is notevidence that the Third Wave was at issue.This has led some people to doubt thatthe events occurred at all, or at least not in theway that Jones claims they did. One man hasdevoted a Website to debunking the ThirdWave, and he put out a call to the country tohave the events confirmed or denied by studentsin Mr. Jones’s class.Third Wave protest poster, Cubberley High SchoolSome students have come forward totalk about their experience with the Third Wave,including Leslie Weinfield in 1991, who wrotean essay entitled, “Remembering the 3rd Wave.”On Ron Jones’s Website is a list entitled,“People to contact regarding The Wave or RonJones.” One of those is Philip Neel, and it’snoted that “He and others from the experimentare creating a documentary to tell theirexperiences in The Wave.”Other social psychology experimentsAnother controversy about theexperiment has cropped up occasionally in theyears since, especially after publication of ToddStrasser’s book, The Wave. Some schools havereportedly tried the own experiments, inspiredby The Wave. In 1999, an eighth grade class inChicago, Illinois, did a mini-recreation of TheWave experiment. In 2006, a middle school

history class in Florida attempted to recreate theexperiment with even younger children.The Milgram ExperimentThe Third Wave shares characteristicswith other social psychology experiments of the20th century, notably the 1963 Milgramexperiment, which measured the willingness ofstudy participants to obey an authority figurewho instructed them to perform acts thatconflicted with their personal conscience. Peopleparticipated in what they thought was anexperiment helping a researcher’s study ofmemory and learning in different situations,acting the role of teacher. Teachers were told topush a button and give increasingly strongelectric shocks to a learner who gave wronganswers when tested on his memory of wordpairs.Although the teachers knew that thepain increased with every shock, because theyheard the learners’ cries, they continued with thetesting. Only when they heard banging on thewall separating the teacher’s room from thelearner’s room—and heard complaining aboutthe learner’s heart condition did—the teachersquestion the experiment.The teachers did not know that theresearcher and learners were actors, and thoughthe button actually produced electric shocks, thelearner was not experiencing them. The teachershad been told that they would not be heldresponsible for any harm to the learners. Theywere also prodded, when they expressed doubtsabout continuing, with successively strongverbal prods: “Please continue,” “Theexperiment requires that you continue,” “It isabsolutely essential that you continue,” and“You have no other choice, you must go on.” Ifthey resisted after the fourth prod, theexperiment stopped.The conclusions of the experimentshowed 65 percent (26 of 40) of experimentparticipants administered the experiment’s final450-volt shock, though many were veryuncomfortable doing so. At some point, everyparticipant paused and questioned theexperiment, and some said they would refundthe money they were paid for participating in theexperiment. No participant steadfastly refused toadminister shocks before the 300-volt level.Test subject from the Milgram Experiment, 1963The Stanford prison experimentThe other relevant experiment was the1971 Stanford prison experiment. Thisexperiment dealt with group dynamics, like theThird Wave did. It was a study of thepsychological effects of becoming a prisoner orprison guard. The goal was to test the idea thatthe inherent personality traits of prisoners andguards were key to understanding abusive prisonsituations.Twenty-four students were assigned theroles of either prisoner or guard. They were toldthey would participate in a two-week “prisonsimulation.” The “prison” itself was in thebasement of Stanford’s Jordan Hall, which hadbeen converted into a mock jail. Researchersplayed the roles of warden and prisonsuperintendent.The researchers provided weapons—wooden batons—and clothing that simulated thatof a prison guard—khaki shirt and pants from alocal military surplus store. They were alsogiven mirrored sunglasses to prevent eyecontact. Prisoners wore ill-fitting smocks andstocking caps. Guards called prisoners by theirassigned numbers, sewn on their uniforms,instead of by name. A chain around their anklesreminded them of their roles as prisoners.The guards were told, “You can createin the prisoners feelings of boredom, a sense offear to some degree, you can create a notion ofarbitrariness that their life

experience convince him film was the career he wanted, and to know that he had a lot more to learn. After making several short films—mostly to impress the local girls—he got serious about film and attended the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen (University for Film and Television) in Munich from 1994 to 2000. Dennis Gansel Filmography