Neel, Philip and David H. Jeffrey, dir. Lesson Plan

Lesson Plan is a documentary on the events of the Third Wave, a highschool experiment conducted by teacher Ron Jones in 1967 in Palo Alto, California. The experiment was an exercise in the danger of obedience and authoritarian regimes. After a student asked during a history class on WWII how it was possible that the Germans could claim that they had not known what was going on in the concentration camps, Ron Jones decided to show his students how easy it is to fall for authority and disavow the truth about a totalitarian regime. Over the course of a week, he created an authoritarian movement, which escalated and had to be abandoned. Students became deeply invested in the movement, showing exclusionary behavior by shunning pupils who did not participate, and reporting observed disobedient behavior in other students. On the fifth day Jones ended the experiment by organizing a rally, during which he revealed the movement to have been fake, and showing documentary footage of Hitler during his regime to draw a comparison between the authoritarian rule in Nazi Germany and the authoritarian movement the students participated in during the experiment. 

The documentary is directed by Philip Neel, who was himself a participant in the Third Wave. It presents interviews with Jones and with students who were part of the Third Wave, interspersed with comments by other teachers and the school principle. Among the former students interviewed we hear from those who participated in the experiment, and from those who resisted. The film explores the experience of the students who were part of the experiment at the time and especially focuses on how they remember it and feel about it now: some are grateful for what the experiment taught them, others feel traumatized by it and explain how it still affects them negatively, and some discredit the legitimacy of the experiment, claiming they knew all along that it was just an experiment.

Overall, the documentary succeeds in revisiting this by now infamous experiment, and in assessing its importance and legacy (for example by also including scenes from and the making of the German movie version, entitled Die Welle (2008)). It also shows the deeply problematic aspect of the social experiment, raising important ethical questions. 

This documentary explores the question of conformity, authority, and complicity. Most importantly, it explores the question of pedagogy and how to teach about conformity and the critical engagement with ideology and authority. 

It is very well suited for teaching about these topics.

Author of this entry: Dagmar Nan

Lesson Plan. Directed by Philip Neel and David H. Jeffery, State of Crisis Productions, 2010.