From Wikipedia: The 1981 TV special The Wave, the 1988 book The Wave, The Wave – The Musical (2000), and the 2008 German film Die Welle were based on the experiment.
The Third Wave was an experimental to demonstrate the appeal of fascism[1][2] undertaken by history teacher Ron Jones with sophomore high school students attending his Contemporary History class[1] as part of a study of Nazi Germany.[3] The experiment took place at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, during first week of April 1967.[1] Jones, unable to explain to his students how the German populace could claim ignorance of the extermination of the Jewish people, decided to show them instead.[3] Jones started a movement called "The Third Wave" and convinced his students that the movement is to eliminate democracy.[1] The fact that democracy emphasizes individuality was considered as a drawback of democracy, and Jones emphasized this main point of the movement in its motto: "Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride".[1]
The experiment was not well documented. Of contemporary sources, the experiment is only mentioned in Cubberley High School student newspaper The Cubberley Catamount. It is only briefly mentioned in two issues[4][5], and one more issue of the paper has articles about this experiment, but without much detail.[1] The most detailed account of the experiment is an essay written by Jones himself some six years afterwards.[3] Several other articles about the experiment exist, but all of them were written after a considerable amount of time had passed.[2]
Jones writes that he started the first day of the experiment (Monday, April 3 1967[2]) with simple things like proper seating, drilling the students until they were able to move from outside the classroom to their seats and take the proper seating position in less than 30 seconds without making a sound.[3] He then proceeded to strict classroom discipline emerging as an authoritative figure and improving efficiency of the class dramatically.
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 initial 30 students to 43 attendees. All of the students showed drastic improvement in their academic skills and tremendous motivation. All of the students were issued a member card and each of them received a special assignment (like designing a Third Wave Banner, stopping non-members from entering the class, etc). Jones instructed the students on how to initiate new members, and by the end of the day the movement had over 200 participants.[3] Jones was surprised that some of the students started reporting to him when other members of the movement failed to abide by the rules.[3]
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