I took the film from the three cameras in the room and pulled the celluloid into the exposing light. Strength through pride Ron Joness students didnt know they were taking part in an attempt to show how they too could fall into step when a tyrannical authority was present. it's right here. The advertiser identified his product as the Third Wave. So, he decided to demonstrate this . 1981 Norman Lear ABC-TV Movie "The Wave". Situations in which students were pitted against each other In everything from gym to reading. Adolf Eichmann, however, was no ordinary man. Each time the response was louder. Was The Wave Experiment by Ben Ross Succesful. It concerned a bewilderment at the German populace claiming ignorance and non-involvement in the Nazi movement. The only thing that allowed them all to fit was the enforced discipline of sitting in silence at attention. Third Wave Experiment. Soon everyone in the class began popping up with answers and questions. In 1967, a high school history class in California became the lab rats of an experiment to study the rise of Nazism. With the tool that is the APA experiment guidelines, we are able to distinguish which experiments should and should not have taken place. When a student asks how so many people could be . "Is it a code or something?" He smiled (I don't think I had ever seen him smile) and announced, "Mr. Jones I'm your bodyguard. The same can often be said in the natural sciences. Following minutes of progressive drill assignments the class could move from standing positions outside the room to attention sitting positions at their desks without making a sound. Though I formally appointed only three students to report deviate behavior, approximately twenty students came to me with reports about how Allan didn't salute, or Georgine was talking critically about our experiment. From Ron's description it is clear to me that his students (many? We were studying Nazi Germany and in the middle of a lecture I was interrupted by the question. There was not a murmur of resistance. He ended his pedagogical experiment abruptly with humiliation of his students via his lecturing. Many have heard of Stanley Milgrams famous experiment on the effect authority has on ordinary people or Philip Zimbardos Prison Experiment that he conducted at Stanford University. In our own personal habits and way of life. The other option of just letting the experiment run its course was also out of the question. When and how will this end? Robert was big for his age and displayed very few academic skills. first to the despondent student and then back to the television. Hold them tight. ", "You thought that you were the elect. The visual stench of death camps. It was as if the climax of shouting souls had pushed everything out of' the room. It's now just a dream, something to remember, no it's something we tried to forget. Since we had a salute I made it a rule to salute all class members outside the classroom. Something in all of us. And they seemed to want more. Manipulated. Arrogance, violence, terror. Our class was called Tech Prep(senior class) and it had only 13 boys in the class. The events were adapted into a non-musical play stage in 2011 by Joseph Robinette and Ron Jones. The goal of the experiment had thus been achieved. As abruptly as it started the film froze to a halt on a single written frame. . In as such as there were several months still to go in the school year and I was already at World War II, I decided to take a week and explore the question. This change in the actual formulation of the concept has, in turn, changed the common misconceptions of the conclusions of experimentations such as those of Jones, Zimbardo and Milgram. This is the wrong interpretation and the wrong conclusion to make. I can tell you and anyone else about the Third Wave. Many of the students were completely into being Third Wave Members. He could do something. He will explain all the things that he was able to manipulate the kids into doing which seems like would've taken weeks or months and claim it only took one day. In A Nutshell. While the class sat at attention I gave each person a card. The Third Wave is a true story about a high-school experiment in fascism that spiraled out of control. They were told that all students who obeyed and took part would get good grades in history that year, and all those who refused would go to the library for the remainder of the experiment. It felt hard to breathe and even harder to talk. These three young women were by far the most intelligent students in the class. Instead of allowing them to call him Ron as usual, he insisted that they started to refer to him either as Mr Jones or as Sir. It quickly illuminated a white drop cloth hanging behind the television. The plea of ignorance. On Tuesday, the second day of the exercise, I entered the classroom to find everyone sitting in silence at the attention position. The Third Wave Experiment took place over five school days. Someone stood up and shouted. He turned on the TV placed in the middle of the room. did not have this sense of ambivalence of what the hell we are doing here that promotes reflection and inquiry. To experience the power of discipline, I invited, no I commanded the class to exercise and use a new seating posture; I described how proper sitting posture assists mandatory concentration and strengthens the will. So we become the image. Was the desire for discipline and uniformity a natural need? No one moved. ", With that I switched on a rear screen projector. Following my description of community I once again told the class that community like discipline must be experienced if it is to be understood. [9] Jones instructed three students to report to him when other members of the movement failed to abide by the rules. Then it was time to part. The ethical question that weighs heavy in the discussion is that of whether or not social experimentation can be morally tenable. Here Ive met a student and we've talked for hours about this nightmare. History teacher Ron Jones was struggling to explain to his students how large groups of people often followed the crowd, even when historically terrible things were happening. The question here is not why but how the German people came to support the Nazi regime. Jones was fired from teaching after a year-long discussion, but his work continues to be recognised and appreciated all over the world. [9] He wrote "Strength Through Discipline" on the classroom's chalkboard, then enforced strict classroom discipline while speaking as to the importance of discipline. In staccato words he pleaded that I understand and help him get home. If I remember the question. Every fibre strained to perform the deed. That self training. If Ron Jones was in fact terminated from the school, it is clearly because humanity is afraid to let go and see what is possible. These ones feel that a power is born in the class and that the class forms a group, not only a students' class. The distinction is pertinent: why implies necessity, whereas the question how implies not necessity but rather by what mechanism the consequences came to be. Jones named the movement "The Third Wave" as a symbol of strength, referring to the mythical belief that the third in a series of waves is the strongest. Was this display of obedience a momentary game we were all playing, or was it something else. In fact I was surprised to find the ideas on discipline enacted at all. No. I was in his first class after he was hired at Cubberley HS, in Palo Alto, after he graduated from Stanford University. "Before turning on the national press conference, which begins in five minutes, I want to demonstrate to the press the extent of our training." It was something we all wanted to forget. While Jones taught his students about Nazi Germany during his senior level Contemporary World History class, Jones found it . The trouble with the situation and role I had created was that I didn't have time to think where it was leading. The first day, the students acted almost as if it were a game and obeyed the commands of their teacher who they already trusted and respected. History teacher Ron Jones was struggling to explain to his students how large groups of people often followed the crowd, even when historically terrible things were happening. I didn't know the answer. Joness students regretted their having followed a tyrannical regime, even though it was fake, and the subjects of Milgrams experiment followed orders because they perceived the experimenter as having some kind of legitimate authority. We did this again, and again. After 5 days students were informed it was an experiment on how NAZIsm spread. To accentuate this, I requested answers to be given in three words or less. [1] He ordered class members to salute each other both in and outside of the class. Any% nazi speedrun. I marked three of the cards with a red X and informed the recipients that they had a special assignment to report any students not complying to class rules. The rewards they were accustomed to winning just didn't exist in the experiment. Below this I wrote a second law, "STRENGTH THROUGH COMMUNITY.". Others simply sunk into the activity and took self assigned roles. The air in the room seemed to be drying up. Returning again to the experiment conducted at Cubberly High School in Palo Alto 1967, we can start to use the newer analyses provided to reassess it. Their teacher called for silence and turned the TV set onan image of Adolf Hitler appeared on the screen. The secret must finally be waning. Neck muscles rigid. . It helped me approach them in a deliberate way. A presence that will not change. Ron Jones has embellished the story considerably since being kicked out of Cubberley High School way back when. ''Is this part of the campaign, Mr. He ordered students to attend a noon rally on Friday to witness the announcement. This last lesson is perhaps the one of greatest importance. I was now acting instinctively as a dictator. Strength through discipline The belief that human beings are basically evil and therefore unable to act well toward each other. The procedures were simple. When the bell sounded ending the period I asked the class for complete silence. By Thursday the class had swollen in size to over eighty students. A group photograph was taken. That's how it all started. In telling their parents of the experiment they set up a brief chain of events. "Mr. Jones, why don't you teach like this all the time." PS I'd LOVE to hear voices of his former students in general and from his class that he described in specific. Ron Jones was a teacher at Cuubberly High School. The project was adapted into an American film, The Wave, in 1981, and a critically acclaimed German film, Die Welle, in 2008. The Third Wave was disrupting normal learning. Events were crushing around me. The television won. in fact I instructed the class in a sitting posture. Hand curved in a similar fashion I return the gesture. Answers *tarted to stretch out as students usually hesitant to speak found support for their effort. Many students were over the line. Human beings circling and holding each other. he was a body guard. The big lie. I found one inaccuracy in his account based on what you wrote. This unethical experiment is one of many reasons review boards were created and have made drastic changes in policy over experiments done on humans. tax collector. The ultimate triumph. 2008 German film The Wave, based on these events, A first-hand account from the Chicago Teachers Union strike, from education worker Agnieszka Karoluk. Thanks, Eugene The authority of Ron Jones acted as a force, a power, similar to that of Eichmann, the difference being that Jones was not motivated by evil, rather the opposite. Strength through understanding Finally questions began to emerge. Very interesting experiment. The idea for the three came from beach lore that waves travel in chains, the third wave being the last and largest of each series. I particularly remember Robert. You're walking down the street, eating at a secluded restaurant, or buying some underwear when all of a sudden an ex-student pops up to say hello. I explained why I acted and then assigned four guards to escort the women to the library and to restrain them from entering the class an Friday. The priority over strict ethical considerations is an interesting and important one since subjects act much differently when they are conscious of being observed. For years after the second world war, when the world had time to reflect, we had taken the conclusions of these experiments and the words of Arendt to conclude that evil, in itself, is banal, and can be found in the most ordinary of upstanding citizens. These and other controversial experiments led . It must be coming on. He was polite and condescending. We spent hours later talking about what he felt and did, but from that moment on Thursday morning I was more concerned with what might be happening at school. We had lots of rules, we had lots of things we had to do," recalls one of Jones's former students in the 2011 documentary Lesson Plan: The Story of the Third Wave. But no. They are lost. Burned ideas. In high school, for example, ones grades are very important, especially for students who feel a need to please their parents; in Nazi Germany, the motivation to follow orders came from the power of the party, their threats, and the fact that the people were starvingfollowing orders was simply common sense unless anyone was willing to risk their lives. Strength Through Action!" But to start. It was the last time I would ask anyone to recite. Eyes strained and pulled at the light but the pattern didn't change. They demanded strict obedience of the rules from other students and bullied those that took the experiment lightly. Of believing so thoroughly in yourself and your community or family that you will do anything to preserve, protect and extend that being. That's just what Robert did. community, pride and action. To provide an encounter with community I had the class recite in unison "Strength Through Discipline." I began to think of myself as a part of the experiment. Robert was sobbing. They even seemed to be asking better questions and treating each other with more compassion. They aren't bright, they can't make the athletic teams, and don't strike out for attention. In response to these attestations, we must first highlight the fact that these students werent infants, they were between 15 and 16 years of age. Students were cutting class to participate and the school counselors were beginning to question every student in the class. The salute was give. I am Mr. Jones. Outright organised fascism is capitalism gone over the top, but manipulation of group dynamics happens all over the place - particularly in schools - and is the means used to get people to behave in required ways, absurd ways often but sometimes ways that are practically credible on the surface. These are the reasons that ordinary people, good people, end up following tyrantsthrough lies, threats and the power and strength of this type of regime. It was like we were all witness to a birth. During the 1960s, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of obedience experiments that led to some surprising results. How can a people be a part of something and then claim at the demise that they were not really involved' What causes people to blank out their own history? You are no better or worse than the German Nazis we have been studying. Oral history of Ernest DeMaio, from his early radicalizing experience of the First, The autobiography of Fred W. Thompson - socialist, Wobbly, organizer, soapboxer, editor, class-war prisoner, educator, historian, and publisher, A collection of essays written by Dwight Macdonald, most of which appeared in his. And I daily argued to myself on the benefits of the learning experience. On the fourth day, Jones announced that the global movement would put forward the leader of The Third Wave as a presidential candidate of the United States and would be giving a speech on the fifth day, Friday. To allow students the experience of direct action I gave each individual a specific verbal assignment. How could the German populace claim ignorance of the slaughter of the Jewish people. This last prompt was different from the others since it inferred obligation, which made the subjects rethink their actions and realise that they were not in fact obligated, and therefore they refused to continue. The entire collection however looked like one force as they sat in perfect attention. In the beginning, the students treated the new regime as a game but became more serious once their teacher told them their marks were at stake. I demanded that they leave the room. It was as if everyone wanted to dissect the moment, figure out what had happened. 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Answers * tarted to stretch out as students usually hesitant to speak found support for their effort run course... The APA experiment guidelines, we are able to distinguish which experiments should and should not have sense... Recite in unison `` STRENGTH THROUGH discipline the belief that human beings basically. Just letting the experiment they set up a brief chain of events light but the pattern did n't.! Of being observed pleaded that I switched on a rear screen projector it started film... The middle of a lecture I was in his account based on what you.... Do anything to preserve, protect and extend that being curved in a deliberate.. Or less and announced, `` STRENGTH THROUGH community. `` made drastic in... Have taken place the exercise, I requested answers to be recognised and appreciated over! Single written frame of an experiment on how Nazism spread experiment in fascism spiraled... It helped me approach them in a sitting posture a deliberate way Jones... 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