Take As Directed

I just got home from Back-to-School night, and I learned something in the 15 minutes I got of my sons English class. They're reading a book called The Wave, by Todd Strasser. Here's what I learned:

At a high school in 1967, a world history high school teacher, Ron Jones, decided to answer a students question about whether or not a Holocaust could happen here, by doing an experiment. He devoted the next days class to the topic of discipline, while having the students sit straight up in their chairs with their hands behind their backs. The next day he introduced a special greeting called the Third Wave, which the students were required to use if they saw each other outside of class. By the end of just one week, not only were these classmates all doing it, but 200 other students had joined in. The idea was to show how powerful the pressure to belong can be, and apparently it worked. It got out of control so quickly, to the point of fearing for the safety of those that wouldn't join, that it had to be called off.

Mr. Jones wrote an essay about the experience, of which Mr. Strasser loosely based his book. There's also a movie of the story, that you can watch here.

Amazing. Scary. Interesting.