At school today my son saw the movie based on Todd Sasser’s novel called “The Wave”. The movie was made in 1981, so it’s been out a while (I can’t believe I had never heard of it before. It sounds like it’s now a standard in high school/college classrooms). The story details an experiment in peer pressure that leads nearly an entire student body to unknowingly behave like members of a Fascist regime. The experiment comes dangerously close to running out of control before ending. The students are horrified to find out that the experiment mimics, and in part explains, the rise of Nazi Germany. My question is, the book and movie purport to be based on a true story—an incident in a Palo Alto, CA high school in 1967. I can’t find any reference to the real event, just links to the book and movie saying it was based on a real event. So was it? Anybody know anything about the true story, and could anyone provide some cites for it?
It sounds like something based on the Stanford Prison experiment
Yes, it’s based on a true story. It happened at Cubberly High School, and the teacher was Ron Jones, who wrote an article about it from which the book was adapted.
I remember seeing the movie on TV around '81 or '82 (when I was eleven) and it made a lasting impression.
http://www.vaniercollege.qc.ca/Auxiliary/Psychology/Frank/Thirdwave.html
http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/3145/wave.html
http://www.gym-kirn.de/iz3/welle/wave_story.htm
From a Time magazine article:
The ABC Afterschool Special which was based on the book is available for download (for free) from here
From what I recall from both experiments… “The Wave” has NOTHING to do with Zimbardo’s Prison Research. One focuses on two roughly equal groups [In number] that are by definition at odds with each other. The Wave has a bunch of people more or less converting to new ideology. Also, I think the movie for the wave indicates that the Experiment did not have to be cut short. Zimbardo’s got cut in half the time… the experiment was too sucessful, and in short that was the problem.
Also if the Wave senario isnt real… what it was um… fashioned… from was real. A telling scene;
When the students assemble in the Gym, at the end/climax to see their leader… Hitler
Since we know what that figure represents… we of rational thought can conclude that the concept did happen… if not with the same “pieces”.
A similar experiment is descibed in this episode of Frontline. Following the assination of Martin Luther King in 1968, a grade school teacher in a small, all white community in Iowa set out to teach her class what it’s like to be a victim of racism.
She divided the students into brown eyes and blue eyes. One group was treated as superior. Any time a member of the inferior group did something wrong, the teacher said something like “Well, he’s a brown eyed person.” Soon the students picked this up. Then she reversed the roles.
She now uses this sensitivity training technique for various organizations, such as prison guards.
Plus, there is lingering criticism of how Zimbardo ran the experiment and how objective the test really was. Zimbardo, for example, was the mock prison’s superintendent, as opposed to being an impartial observer, and the fake prison had policies not used at real facilities (prisoners were blindfolded and deprived of their underwear).
The Stanford Prison Experiment is an interesting event in its own right, but it isn’t an example of a well-run experiment.
Erich Fromm’s criticisms.
The Stanford Prison Experiment
In a side note, the German film Das Experiment (2001) was based on the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Actually, I think it was brown eyes and non-brown eyes, and non-brown was inferior. She was a guest on Oprah, way back when, and she did it with the audience. Oprah took calls back then, and there were mothers calling up in astonishment that the theory was true, that their brown-eyed child was much smarter than the non-brown eyed child.
In half an hour she had the audience convinced, and then when Oprah revealed the trick, there was a stunned silence.
The “novel” is actually a novelization of the screenplay for the TV movie, which was itself based on a article by the original teacher, Ron Jones. I never saw the TV movie, but I read both the book and article in high school.
IIRC the basics of the story as depicted in the movie are true, but the more dramatic elements were invented. Here’s the article, thanks to Google:
http://www.vaniercollege.qc.ca/Auxiliary/Psychology/Frank/Thirdwave.html
I’m sure any teacher pulling such a stunt today would be facing a lawsuit, and that’s probably a good thing. While his students may have learned a lot from their experience, they were unwitting participants in a psychological experiement that could have turned very, very ugly.
D’oh…Futile Gesture already posted the exact same link to the story. Guess his username is accurate!
I had to read “The Wave” for a HS English class. I don’t believe I ever saw the movie version. The sad thing is that I remember thinking “What is wrong with these kids? Why won’t they join the group?”
Regarding the “brown eyes vs. blue eyes” experiment, I had to sit through this video for work. (Something the HR manager made us do.) It was somewhat enlightening, although I think that the effects were exacerbated due to the age of the subjects.