DVD: Ron Jones Stories

DVD: Ron Jones Stories - The Wave

$30.00
DVD-WAVE

His video monologue recounting "The Wave" provides answers for all concerned students, teachers, Holocaust survivors (and relatives), religious groups and organizations on how something like the Holocaust could occur again...here...anywhere...now ...or in the near future.
In April 1967 at Cubberly High School, Palo Alto, CA, world history teacher Ron Jones is asked about the Holocaust by a student, and "Could it happen here?" Jones came up with an unusual answer. Ron 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 willingly ghave up their fredom for the prospect of feeling superior to their neighbors...
The book, "The Wave" has been printed in nine languages and sold over 1,500,000 copies, and is being performed as a play in sixteen countries. Many have seen the 1972 television dramatization based on this true story. But few have seen it told from the teacher who created it. This is a must-see and an excellent supplement to the made-for-TV version (available also from us, see below)
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. (this was in 1967 in the S.F. Bay Area, to put it into historical perspective)
By the second day, Jones developed a special greeting, a wave. It became known as the Third Wave, and if his students saw each other outside the classroom, they were to use it. The name "Third Wave" was derived from the common idea in the study of tides, that the third wave in a series that strikes the shore is the strongest. In his lectures, Jones went from "discipline" to "strength through community," and then to "strength through action."
By mid-week his "experiment" expanded to sixty students, and by the week's end, more than 200 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 upon themselves 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.

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 in an academic town, no less, home to the well-known Stanford University.

Jones wrote of his "experiment" in a short story, titled "Take As Directed" which was published in an alternative publication, "The Whole Earth Review". Norman Lear, an American film maker, made a television adaptation which won Peabody and Emmy awards; however, in the process, he dramatically changed Jones' original true story. Later a novel was published based on the teleplay, becoming a best seller in Europe. To date, over 1.5 million copies have sold and the story is required reading in German schools. The irony of the teleplay, the novel and some of the plays produced since the original publication of Jones' story, is that they fail to tell what really happened in the classroom.

Ron Jones' authentic story was essentially unknown until 1993 when he was invited by the German government to address anti-fascist rallies. While oin tour, he was escourted to the spiritual nerve-center of the Third Reich, Nuremberg – site of the famous rallies, and Hitler's private chambers, the Gold Room. In this space full of ghosts, Ron Jones told his story.

Witnesses learned of the "experiment" not from the various dramatizations, but for the first time heard the simple truth. It was a decisive moment for jones seeing the effect of the story on his audience and remembering an earlier encounter with Eva Mozes, a survivor of Dr. Joseph Mengele's horrific "twin" experiments in Auschwitz. Jones knew that he must share the truth with the world.

In his video, "The Wave," Jones' telling of his story is a vivid and riveting experience. Recounting his experiment in dictatorship, his meeting with Eva Mozes, and his presentation at Nuremberg. He warns of the destructive nature rooted in the pressure to belong or conform. Videotaped in San Francisco before a sold out Cowell Theatre whose audience included participants of the experiment (29 years earlier) as well as Holocaust survivors, the one hour narrative reveals the events that led to the "experiment" and what happened to the class during and after The Wave. The "experiment" illustrates how individual freedoms can be quickly abandoned and willfully repressed for collective goals and racism, as happened in the rise of Nazi Germany and the treatment of the Jews during that rise and throughout World War II.

The importance of The Wave's message cannot be underestimated, especially in lieu of the release of White House tapes revealing a past U.S. president, Richard Nixon, voicing hostility towards the Jewish people. "The uncovering of the tapes and the language," said Robert Strauss, Jewish activist, "coming out of the mouth of a president of the United States is more than I can really comprehend. It's sickening."

Jones' experiences and the release of the Nixon White House tapes are wake-up calls; reminders that, "We must never forget," a sentiment shared by Eva Mozes in her concern to protect future generations from the horror she experienced in Auschwitz.

All Americans can benefit from the issues raised in The Wave. Besides the entertainment value of Ron Jones' commanding performance, this sixty-minute video offers a valuable and creative tool for university and high school teachers to examine dictatorship, oppression and world history. Likewise, churches, temples and Jewish organizations nationwide have used this video to stimulate discussions on past religious persecutions, and reconcile and heal present day displays of racism.

An interesting 6 page article from The Whole Earth Review (Winter 1987) entitled, "Memetics: The Science of Information Viruses" can be found on the internet at: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_n57/ai_6203733/print
The article gives Ron Jones' classroom experiment as an example of how easily a dangerous "meme" (the concept that ideas can be viewed as a communicable, infectious disease, taking on a life of their own) can spread in an unsuspecting group such as a classroom of students.

• In March 2008, a film about Ron Jones' 1967 classroom experiment, transposed to present-day Germany, was released in theatres in Germany, entitled "Die Welle" (The Wave). It placed second highest grossing film opening that week in Germany. In its first week, it grossed 3.8 million dollars. It does not yet (as of 4/9/08) have a U.S. theatrical distributor. It is not yet available on DVD.