The Wave - what is it about?

In 1967, at the Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, World History teacher Ron Jones was asked about the Holocaust by a student. "Could it happen here?". According to the press release accompanying the latest retelling of the events that followed, "Jones came up with an unusual answer. He decided to have a two week experiment in dictatorship. His idea was to explain fascism to his class through a game, nothing more. He never intended what resulted, where his class would be turned into a Fascist environment. Where students gave up their freedom for the prospect of being superior to their neighbors.
Monday morning he straightened the classroom, dimmed the lights and played Wagnerian music. The word "discipline" was written on the blackboard. He then had the students sit up straight in their chairs with hands placed flat across the small of their backs. In this setting, he devoted the remainder of the class to the topic of discipline.

By the second day, Jones developed a special greeting, a wave. It became known as the Third Wave, and if students saw each other outside class, they were to use it. In his lectures, Jones went from "discipline," to "strength through community," and then to "strength through action."

By midweek, his "experiment" expanded to sixty students, and by the week's end, more than two hundred were participating. Other teachers and the school's principal stood by and watched.

The first sign of concern came when some students had taken it uponthemselves to report others who did not conform. After just four days, things got out of hand. Jones feared for the safety of a few students who refused to participate. To his dismay and alarm, the experiment was so blindly embraced by the students, that he cut the project short. "Initially I just wanted to show my students how powerful the pressure to belong can be, but the exercise got out of control. A momentum began to build that I couldn't slow, or even deter. I became frightened by the day-to-day happenings in class, and was forced to call it off," recalls Jones.

Overnight, Jones became the subject of national controversy, sparking discussion on the appropriateness of exposing young adults to life's realities. To some, he was an innovative hero and teacher; to others he was a Communist. Many people were shocked and embarrassed that the same mentality which led to the Holocaust could develop so quickly, in 1967, in a pristine all-American setting, and an academic town no less, home to the well-known Stanford University.

About this website.

This page is set up to document the many different appearances of 'The Wave'. Another recommended internet source of information is the Wikipedia entry on The Third Wave. Feel free to contact us with remarks or additions.

According to the original author of 'The Wave', Mr. Ron Jones, the story is no fiction. He describes how the story took place in 1967 at the Cubberley High School. The school which closed in 1979 was located in Palo Alto, California. Recently, however, some doubts have been cast as to the true extend and impact of the events. Apart from Jones' own recollections, not much documentation exists about the experiment. Brief mention of the events can be found in the "The Cubberley Catamount" which was the Cubberley High School student newspaper. Some former students have confirmed the existence of 'The Wave'.

On his website, Mr. Jones responds as follows to the many questions surrounding his story: "I’m not proud of The Wave but I can’t escape it! It is like a calling that just gets louder! For me The Wave is a story of ghosts. What we can be. The allure of good and evil. Choices. I’m sorry, but in the end I can’t answer your questions about The Wave."

• On the Geniebusters website people who actually witnessed the events are invited to respond in order to verify the story. Please note that there are some disturbing and blatantly wrong issues elsewhere on the Geniebusters website, which we do not endorse!
• Mr. Jones' full response to recent questions.

Ron Jones wrote of his "experiment" in a short story, titled Take As Directed, which was published in 1972 in an alternative publication called the Whole Earth Review.

• Mr. Jones has his own website. He works as storyteller, public speaker and workshop leader.
• Read "The Third Wave"

Norman Lear, an American film maker, made a television adaptation of Jones' original story, simply called 'The Wave'. The movie is described by the publishers as follows:

"A thought-provoking dramatization of an actual classroom experiment on individualism vs. conformity in which a high school teacher formed his own "Reich" (called "The Wave") to show why the German people could so willingly embrace Nazism. This unflinching yet sensitive 1981 Emmy Award-winner raises critical questions: When does dedication to a group cross the line from loyalty to fanaticism? Does power corrupt? What is the nature of propaganda and mass persuasion? Can something like the Nazi Holocaust happen again? Grades 7-12. Color. 46 minutes."

The Wave wins the 1981 Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program and the 1981 Peabody Award.

• Buy the 1981 film on VHS
• But the 1981 film on DVD though Amazon.com

You can watch a low-res version of the movie by clicking the below links:

Part One: Part Two:

You can also watch the movie (in two parts) on YouTube:

After the successful movie, a novel was published based on the teleplay, becoming a best-seller in Europe. To date, over 1.5 million copies have been sold, and the story is required reading in many German schools. Todd Strasser, a writer of books for children and young adults, adapted the teleplay into a novel. He did so under the psuedonym Morton Rhue. The book can be ordered at any major (online) bookstore.

About the novel: "The powerful forces of group pressure that pervaded many historic movements such as Nazism are recreated in the classroom when history teacher Burt Ross introduces a "new" system to his students. And before long "The Wave" with its rules of "strength through discipline, community, and action" sweeps from the classroom through the entire school. And as most of the students join the movement, Laurie Saunders and David Collins recognize the frightening momentum of "The Wave" and realize they must stop it before it's too late..."

Buy the book and read the story for yourself! Here are some online options to do so:

	"The Wave" through Amazon.com
	"The Wave" through Amazon.co.uk
	"Die Welle" | "Die Welle - Materialien zur Unterrichtspraxis" | "Die Welle - Der Roman zum 2008 Film" durch Amazon.de
	"La Vague" | "The Wave (en anglais)" par Amazon.fr
	"The Wave" via Bol.com

Tools for students and teachers reading the book:

• Penguin's teacher's notes on The Wave (PDF)
• Example guidelines for an essay on the book
        - Chapters 1 to 4 (PDF)
        - Chapters 5 to 8 (PDF)
        - Chapters 9 to 17 (PDF)
• A student page
• A student page
• A student page
• Dutch reading guide for highschool students (lesmateriaal)

A more recent movie adaptation of The Wave is 'Die Welle' (2008). Director Dennis Gansel relocated the story to present-day Germany. The movie was nominated for the 2008 Grand Jury Prize of the Sundance Film Festival. Watch the trailers below:

Die Welle is available on DVD in several countries:

	"The Wave" [DVD] through Amazon.com (English subtitles)
	"The Wave" [DVD] through Amazon.co.uk (English subtitles)
	"Die Welle" [DVD] oder "Die Welle: Das Filmhörspiel" [2CD] durch Amazon.de
	"Die Welle" via Bol.com (ondertiteld)

To help German students studying the story though the 2008 film, a lesson guide is available in German: Materialien für den Unterricht [3.7 MB PDF file].

Jones' authentic story remained somewhat underexposed. In 1993, when Jones was invited by the German government to address anti-fascist gatherings, he was escorted to the spiritual nerve of the Third Reich, the Nuremberg-site of the famous Nazi-rallies, and Hitler's private chambers, the Gold Room. In this place full of ghosts, Ron Jones told his story. Witnesses learned of the "experiment" not from the various dramatizations, but for the first time from the simple truth. This event was videotized. The video can be purchased, and shows Jones recounting the events that led to his "experiment", and what happened to the class during and after The Wave. The video was released by Dirksen-Molloy Productions. On their homepage, some background info can be found on 'The Wave', as well as other videos featuring Ron Jones.

One of the students who took part in the 1967 Third Wave movement was Philip Neel. Now a Los Angeles film editor, he recently decided to make a documentary about The Wave. Neel tracked down a dozen of his Third Wave classmates, plus their parents, the school principal and Ron Jones himself. Together, they reached out to the original Third Wave class, some of whom are still traumatized by it. The documentary, entitled "Lesson Plan: The Story of the Third Wave," is set to enter the film festival circuit in April 2010.

Stage adaptations.

Ron Jones' story has inspired stage adapations around the globe.

Musical adapation by Gerard Knap
In 1993, a Dutch highschool mounted a musical theatre production of 'The Wave', after having succesfully proposed the idea to Mr. Jones. Gerard Knap initiated and directed this musical version. The (Dutch languaged) production is now being performed by other highschools in the Netherlands. Licensing is through the Toneelcentrale (in Dutch)

Musical adaptation by Olaf Pyttlik
In 2000, Olaf Pyttlik composed and recorded a rock musical based on "The Wave. After a workshop and premiere in Canada (2000), the musical has been performed in the USA, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

• The site www.thewavemusical.com contains tons of information about the musical, including (instrumental) soundclips and the full libretto.
• Buy the cast album through CDBaby.com (worldwide delivery).
• Footage of a 2008 youth production in the Netherlands:

Musical adaptation by Ron Jones
After screening the German movie adaption, Ron Jones decided to write a musical stage adaption himself. He applied for a grant to produce it for the Marsh Youth Theatre teen troup at the Marsh, a theatre in the San Francisco area. It premiered in January 2010. Of the various theatrical adaptations, this is the only one written by Jones with input from the students who were part of the strange new world he created at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto.

Written by: Ron Jones
Directed by: Cliff Mayotte
Music by: David Denny, Kathy Peck, Emily Klion

• Interview with Jones as it appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle (January 30th).
• Review in the SF Bay Times.

Other stage adaptations

• In 2000, Jens Blockwitz and Margaret Gutmann presented a German adaptation of the Morton Rhue novel, entitled "Die 3. Welle" using English-langaged songs.
• A Belgian play based on the book was performed in 2003. In 2006, another Belgian theatre group presented "De Golf" based on Jones' story.