'Lesson Plan' is a documentary featuring interviews of the original students and teacher of the 1967 Third Wave experiment. I had to stop for a minute to remember. We get or take an ascribed role and then bend our life to fit the image. Jones announced to the class that this movement was a part of a nationwide movement and that on the next day a presidential candidate of the Third Wave would announce its existence to the public. His students where attached to the order. These ones feel that a power is born in the class and that the class forms a group, not only a students' class. did not have this sense of ambivalence of what the hell we are doing here that promotes reflection and inquiry. 6. So we become the image. "Sit down." During the days of the experiment I was curious how they would respond to the equalitarian and physical reshaping of the class. It was the last time I would ask anyone to recite. The goal of the experiment had thus been achieved. The television won. Something in all of us. Human beings circling and holding each other. Neck muscles rigid. I reiterated the importance of this event and asked once more for a show of allegiance. I was now acting instinctively as a dictator. To accepting the Third Wave as a way of life. I have a question for you. Within this avalanche of reporting one legitimate conspiracy did seem underway . Three women in the class had told their parents all about our classroom activities. Third Wave banners hung like clouds over the assembly. At this point students stood without prompting and began to give what amounted to testimonials. Late Wednesday afternoon I found Robert following me and asked what in the world was he doing. First I would have two students stand and call back our motto. 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. Jones was himself alarmed by how far his students took the movement to heart and how they orchestrated a group of guardians and SS style spies to worm out the traitors to the movement. Whereas others jumped in, they held back, watching. To avoid the Hawthorne effect, Milgram told the volunteers that the subject was, in fact, the learner behind the screen, and not themselves. This would be a rally for Third Wave Members only. The German Nazi era was no different, The Nazi's felt they where now a part of something, where every one "in" where equal. Eyes strained and pulled at the light but the pattern didn't change. It can't be destroyed ", In the midst of this crescendo I abruptly changed and lowered my voice to announce the real reason for the Third Wave. 1981 Norman Lear ABC-TV Movie "The Wave". We did noise drills in which talking was allowed only to be shown as a detraction. He would talk to the parents and calm their concern. Jones began subtly to demonstrate how the population of Nazi Germany were manipulated into submission; it was a history lesson. Evil is not banal, and it cannot be found everywhere, but it is made banal by those who refuse to admit that they have been the perpetrators and performers of evil. Faces without eyes. To provide an encounter with community I had the class recite in unison "Strength Through Discipline." The power of the will. The project was adapted into an American film, The Wave, in 1981, and a critically acclaimed German film, Die Welle, in 2008. Ron Jones himself was, at the time, part of the Black Panther movement which was a far-Left activist organisation that was strongly opposed to the Vietnam war and the US government. The Third Wave was disrupting normal learning. Experiment in Palo Alto, California, proves that what happened in Nazi Germany was not unique to that time or place. To conclude, the Third Wave Experiment may have been unorthodox, but the Third Wave Experiment produced several insights and conclusions into the nature and mechanism of tyranny. Soon the image is the only identity people will accept. His role playing spilled out of the class into all of the school. Then in dramatic style I informed the class of a special noon rally to take place on Friday. I called it the Third Wave salute because the hand resembled a wave about to top over. Take this story with a considerable grain of salt. I hadn't planned such intensity or compliance. He then led them in shouting chants of "Strength through Discipline! Now the students do their homework to be able to answer Ben Ross questions. He created an authoritative dictatorship in his classroom. Asch found that people were willing to ignore reality and give an incorrect answer in order to conform to the rest of the group. He always ate lunch alone. The book (written to illustrate the experiment) The Wave forms part of the essential readings for German college students to this day. Jones, please?" 2008 German Movie "Die Welle". The students began to look at each other and sense the power of belonging. I called his wife and with the help of a neighbor walked him home. There must be a program. On Friday, the final day of the exercise, I spent the early morning preparing the auditorium for the rally. Pride Is something no one can take from you. He was holding on to me and shaking. The Third Wave experiment brought to light our creepy reverence for authority, shedding harrowing Milgram-esque insight into how easily we assuage moral conflict and diffuse responsibility when we . He gave them lessons in how to sit correctly, which they also obeyed with little persuasion after being told that sitting properly allowed more oxygen into the lungs, helping them to think more clearly and thus improve their grades. It was too late to step back. While Jones taught his students about Nazi Germany during his senior level Contemporary World History class, Jones found it . This last lesson is perhaps the one of greatest importance. I was in pretty bad shape myself. And I daily argued to myself on the benefits of the learning experience. The world misinterpreted her idea of the banality of evil; many believed that the phrase meant that within each of us there is evil and that the Nazi criminals were ordinary people simply following orders. That's how it all started. After the studies of Drs Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher, the common conclusions have been ditched, and Hannah Arendts words have been reanalysed to provide a new conclusion to the causes and nature of tyranny and evil. In speed drills the class learned to move from standing position to attention sitting in fifteen seconds. This conclusion falls flat on the hard ground, as many critics have concluded, including Arendt herself. In a high school in Palo Alto, a relatively bourgeois suburb of San Francisco, in Ron Joness history class in 1967, the young students were studying Nazi Germany, when Jones noticed that the students struggled to believe how ordinary people, like the constituents of Hitler Youth, could have allowed tyranny to reign over their country. I saluted back. I graduated in 1967 and lost contact with Ron, But my mother worked at the school and kept me up to date as to what was going on with him. Would it not, then, have been more morally deplorable for a history tutor to accept the fact that his students were living in blissful ignorance? They possessed a silent confidence and took pleasure in a school setting that gave them academic and leadership opportunity. So, he decided to demonstrate this . This activity we have been doing has been practice for the real thing. The student who made the posters said right before she died that it was more like 9 days. Motivations having been identified, it becomes easier to explain why tyrannical regimes can come to fruition and power. Arrogance, violence, terror. It would be too painful and demeaning for Robert and the students like him to be twisted back into a seat and told it's just a game. Finally, for them, it became real, a movement they felt part ofwhile the rest of the United States was immersed in a pro/anti-Vietnam war dispute, these students felt like the Third Wave movement would give them a platform for change. 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. Two comrades had met long after the war. Our principal came into an afternoon faculty meeting and gave me the Third Wave salute. Indeed, people of all nations and races . Situations in which students were pitted against each other In everything from gym to reading. Students were cutting class to participate and the school counselors were beginning to question every student in the class. The tension and anticipation was beyond belief. The mystique of thirty individuals doing this strange gyration soon brought more attention to the class and its experiment into the German personality. In the study, an . Students from across the school joined in. There was not a murmur of resistance. Conditions that produce tyranny could be the presence of an apparently legitimate authority, a certain motivational interest, and/or threats and manipulation. It's one of those occasions experienced by teachers when they least expect. "It's your task to design a Third Wave Banner. "Everyone must accept the blame No one can claim that they didn't in some way take part.". 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. I walked up and down the aisles of seated students pointing out small flaws, making improvements. "Is it a code or something?" I just kept talking. Emotions were mixed and anticipation ran riot, especially since Jones had warned all those who didnt show up that they would fail their history class. On Wednesday, I decided to issue membership cards to every student that wanted to continue what I now called the experiment. TIL about the Third Wave experiment. The deductions taken from such experiments are strong when they are seen alongside natural experiments, where the events have already occurred in history and have already provided a significant and real basis for the analysis of society. The student was, in fact, an actor behind a screen in a different room, who would plead and let out cries of pain as the fictional volts increased. Adolf Eichmann, however, was no ordinary man. This article is about the social experiment. Third Wave Experiment. They even seemed to be asking better questions and treating each other with more compassion. Everyone was capable and equal. All of the questions probed at imaginary situations and sought to discover the meaning of this event. At twelve o'clock sharp I closed the room and placed guards at each door. The only light in the room was coming from the television and it played against the faces in the room. "Through the experience of the past week we have all tasted what it was like to live and act in Nazi Germany. "Can we bring friends?" "Yes.1' "Now listen carefully. The school cook asked what a Third Wave cookie looked like. We did this again, and again. He was surprised when around twenty of the students made such reports. Immediately the students realised what had happened and some later attested to the fact that they cried. Not knowing when and if you'd ever see each other again. Pledge allegiance to that society. The autobiography of Albert Parsons, Haymarket martyr, written from prison. They included . That you could extricate yourself at any moment. While the class sat in stern silence I began to talk lecture sermonize about the value of community. One-third of participants refused to do it, while another two-thirds complied, with a great deal of trauma done to them-and the rats. 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. Ordinary people will rationalise rather than be rational when they are in a threatening or difficult situation, in order to excuse themselves for being part of something that they fundamentally disagree with. I want you to remember and be able to recite by tomorrow the name and address of every Third Wave Member. After 5 days students were informed it was an experiment on how NAZIsm spread. In 1967, teacher Ron Jones conducted a social experiment with unexpected results. You are no better or worse than the German Nazis we have been studying. It would not be possible to analyse such experiments without comparing them alongside one another since it takes a comparative study to come up with trustworthy explanations in the social sciences. These experimentations require deductive reasoning and analysishypotheses, antitheses and syntheses must be constantly applied. He then apologized to them for how far it all had gone, and played them a film about the Nazi regime to conclude the experiment.[9]. Be meaningful. it was a good question. The room stayed dark as the final footage of film flapped against the projector. Everything rests with you and your willingness to take a stand.". In focus drills I concentrated attention on the feet being parallel and flat, ankles locked, knees bent at ninety degree angles, hands flat and crossed against the back, spine straight, chin down, head forward. In the next few minutes and perhaps years, you will have an opportunity to answer this question. When the bell sounded ending the period I asked the class for complete silence. I decided to find out. Many critics believe that the so-called soft sciences such as sociology cannot produce any accurate conclusions, but the thesis brought forward recently by Haslam and Reicher is strong and has, with the help of other theorists, built a new attitude towards the conclusions arising from social experiments. I reminded students of what it felt like being in classes where competition caused pain and degradation. By Thursday the class had swollen in size to over eighty students. The dedicated patience of a scientist in pursuit of an Idea. Turned our head as friends and neighbors were cursed and then persecuted. Yes, we would all have made good Germans. Their teacher called the group "The Third Wave," even going so far as to punish an improper sitting posture. Not a vacant seat could be found. The act of apology. Following the analyses of Israeli-German historian, Yaacov Lozowick, two British professors, Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher, have studied the experiments of Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo. Strength Through Community! He followed me every- where. Burned ideas. I glanced over my shoulder. This posture started with feet flat on the floor, hands placed flat across the small of the back to force a straight alignment of the spine. This lesson was the question that started our plunge in studying Nazi life. I turned it off. And as predicted we also shared a deep secret. My announcement unleashed a fervor. Afraid that if I stopped someone would laugh or ask a question and the grand scheme would dissolve in chaos. "Mr. Jones, for the first time I'm learning lots of things." In our own personal habits and way of life. There have been a number of famous psychology experiments that are considered controversial, inhumane, unethical, and even downright cruelhere are five examples. Evidently, experimentation in the social sciences is different. Jones." New people were speaking. The advertiser identified his product as the Third Wave. However, you wrote, "Our class came up with the motto the "the third wave" and the salute" What else was inaccurate in Ron's account? The roar of the Nuremberg Rally blasted into vision. Discipline. Do you remember the question? We can bring it a new sense of order. The only reason I came to know Robert at all is that I found him eating lunch in my classroom. He said that he invented the term "The Third Wave" and the salute for it. Performance in academic skill areas was significantly improving. 509-10) told his students in the . The same can often be said in the natural sciences. No psychological effects were reported, and his students even respected and revered him yet more for his unusual lessonhence the documentary was made by two former classmates. Who is this young man hugging me? 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. There was much more to see and try to understand. It also helps us understand further how the Holocaust could have happened. [9] Jones created a salute involving a cupped hand reaching across the chest toward the opposite shoulder,[9] resembling a Hitler salute. If I remember the question. Thirteen students had cut class to be a part of the experiment. No one moved. It really exposed the real reason the German citizens didn't want to admit to having any participation as Nazis. For a week in the middle of a school year we had shared fully in life. April 21, 1967. It's far more important than that. A new member had only to be recommended by an existing member and issued a card by me. Evil becomes banalised by human beings, but it is not in itself banal. I was exhausted and worried. Strength through community The events were adapted into a non-musical play stage in 2011 by Joseph Robinette and Ron Jones. I had a bodyguard. 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. I read every word of information as a student of life and learning the root of human need for belonging. The feeling being correct was more desired than being free. A slogan had been created throughout the first three days by Jones and his class, and banners were posted all over the school, reading strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action. Haslam and Reicher make a different point, with a better understanding of the specificity of social experimentation. For years I kept a strange secret. 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. This rally is for members only.". Others cried openly and then brushed away tears to carry on. Schoolteacher Ron Jones's personal account of his experiment which created a proto-fascist movement amongst his high school pupils in Palo Alto, California, which in 2008 was subject of the award-winning film The Wave. We learned what it felt like to create a disciplined social environment. [9] Jones instructed three students to report to him when other members of the movement failed to abide by the rules. You would be walking down the hall when all of a sudden three classmates would turn your way each flashing a quick salute. In fact I was surprised to find the ideas on discipline enacted at all. The rabbi for one of the parents called me at home. The room stayed deadly still. Things were already getting out of control. They, in fact, believed in change but were easily indoctrinatedif only for those five daysby what they believed was a superior cause. Lesson Plan: Directed by David Jeffery, Philip Carr Neel. Waiting. The maneuver took five seconds. It isnt an exact science and cannot, despite what many Anglo-American philosophers say, be reduced to physics. The trouble with the situation and role I had created was that I didn't have time to think where it was leading. Several friends of mine posing as reporters and photographers began to interact with the crowd taking pictures and jotting frantic descriptive notes. Our class came up with the motto the "the third wave" and the salute, but it stayed in our class and was not carried out into the school. The machine came to life producing a luminous field of phosphorus light. 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. This unethical experiment is one of many reasons review boards were created and have made drastic changes in policy over experiments done on humans. I wondered if this doesn't happen to lots of people. In telling their parents of the experiment they set up a brief chain of events. They had committed themselves in front of their peers to radical behavior. I sure do, it was one of the most frightening events I ever experienced In the classroom. I worried for students doing things they would regret. We would have put on the uniform. He normally let them call him Ron, and was much respected, charismatic and popular. The Third Wave Is a nationwide program to find students who are willing to fight for political change in this country. We know the fear of being left out. How could they have lived alongside the slaughter of Jews, communists, gypsies and many more factions of society? they asked. Steve turns and gives a quiet salute. You won't admit to participating in this madness. Students were expected to sit at attention before the second bell, had to stand up to ask or answer questions and had to do so in three words or fewer, and were required to preface each remark with "Mr. Jones". Based on his account, he did not question his students' experiences and reflections by careful listening to them and providing them with sensitive guidance. Robert is like so many kids in school that don't excel or cause trouble. 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