For the book by Alvin Toffler, see The Third Wave (book)
The Third Wave was the name given by history teacher Ron Jones to his unanticipated and highly-revealing recreation of Nazi Germany.
The experiment took place in Palo Alto, California during 1967. Jones, unable to explain to his students why the German youth allowed the Nazi Party to exterminate millions of Jews, decided to show them instead. Starting with simple things like classroom discipline, Jones managed to weld his history class into a group with a supreme sense of purpose and no small amount cliqueyness. The experiment, however, took on a life of its own, with students from all over the school joining in; Jones agonized over the outcome of the exercise before bringing it to a halt by claiming that "The Wave" movement had a world-wide leader, and then displaying a video of him: Time Magazine's 1938 Man of the Year himself, Adolf Hitler.
Despite the clear implications of this study on the malleability of young minds (of particular interest to both psychologists seeking to understand and prevent it, and would-be world dictators attempting to recreate it), little has surfaced on the subject; Todd Strasser , under the pen name Morton Rhue wrote a young-adult novel on the subject (entitled The Wave), which was later made into a movie and a play; later, Jones himself came forward with his own material. The experiment's 'fans' (to use the word loosely) have had some trouble in eliciting reports from any of the students involved.
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Last updated: 08-16-2005 03:55:34
