---
created: '2025-08-01'
date: '2025-08-01'
description: Ron Jones's 1967 classroom exercise, read against contemporary reporting and later recollections.
id: The Third Wave
modified: 2026-09-11 09:21:35 GMT-04:00
published: '2023-04-05'
socials:
  source: https://www.thewavehome.com/1976_the-third-wave_story/
tags:
  - seed
title: The Third Wave
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slug: thoughts/The-Third-Wave
permalink: https://aarnphm.xyz/thoughts/The-Third-Wave.md
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full: https://aarnphm.xyz/llms-full.txt
---
In spring 1967, Ron Jones organised the Third Wave at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto to teach students about fascism. The school newspaper describes it in three sophomore Contemporary World classes and places its final rally on Wednesday, April 5. @klink1967thirdwave

The familiar five-day story comes from Jones’s later account, which follows a Monday-to-Friday sequence. The [participant-run archive](https://www.thewavehome.com/faq/) records disagreement about the duration. That leaves the often-repeated April 3–7 dates unsupported by the contemporary report.

## the exercise in Jones’s account

Jones began with posture drills and rules for answering questions. Students stood to speak, addressed him formally, and practised following commands quickly. He added slogans about discipline, community, and action, together with a raised, curved-hand salute. Membership cards made the group explicit. Students recruited classmates and reported breaches of the rules; Jones recalled receiving reports from more students than he had assigned to the task.

He then claimed that their classroom belonged to a national movement and called a rally to hear its leader. The promised television announcement never arrived. Jones disclosed the deception and showed film material about Nazi Germany. This sequence is the teacher’s retrospective narration, [first published nationally in 1976 as _Take As Directed_](https://www.thewavehome.com/print/). @jones1972thirdwave

## what the account supports

The contemporary report documents organised obedience and a staged political movement. [TheWaveHome’s participant summary](https://www.thewavehome.com/faq/) also records resistance, students who thought they were playing a game, and students who believed Jones’s claims.

These accounts supply no control group or independent measure of political belief. Jones introduced rules, rewards, symbols, and peer reporting together, while retaining his authority as a teacher. The episode cannot isolate the effect of a salute or establish a rate at which people become fascists. A student’s compliance could reflect belief, trust in the teacher, enjoyment of the activity, or fear of standing out.

Jones later said he would not repeat the exercise because it had put children in danger. @lipsett2008historyfirstperson

## aftermath

Jones was denied tenure two years later. The [participant archive](https://www.thewavehome.com/faq/) disputes the familiar story that the Third Wave caused his departure, so that causal claim needs separate evidence.

The classroom episode later became source material for the 1981 television film _The Wave_ and the 2008 German film _Die Welle_. Those adaptations are retellings; details from them need checking against the school reporting and participant accounts. @lee2016thirdwavemedia