Die Dritte welle: The Third Wave

In our recent theory lessons we have been looking at the German film 'Die Welle' (The Wave) which helped to explain why we were trying to be a collective identity, instead of a media class. The Third Wave is an experiment designed to highlight the appeals of facism, and was experimented in Germany by a teacher of contemporary history. He was trying to show his class how Germany had been so easily brainwashed by the Nazi's. He started a collective identity called The Wave and tried to convince them that democracy was not neccessary. The motto of the group was "Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride" The teacher started with making the students sit with people who they would not usually asociate with, he then proceeded to inforce a strict class room dicipline that included having to stand up when talking to the rest of the class - making them think that the purpose of this was to increase the bloodflow in their bodies. The name third wave came from the idea that the third in a series of ocean waves was always the largest and most powerful. The experiment ended on the fourth day instead of the fifth, as the teacher felt it had been taken out of his control, he then explained to the students that they had been part of an experiment to highlight facism. In the film a student that had become too involved in the project then took out a gun and shot a fellow member of his class and himself, in real life this did not happen.

As a class we were unsure what was happening when we all recieved an email from Mr Smith saying we needed to become a collective identity. There were 5 rules we had to abide by;

-Students must sit one space apart from one another and face the front.

- Students must stand up to ask or answer questions.

- Students must stand up whenever another member of staff enters the room.

- Students must answer questions in three words or less.

- All response must be prefaced with "Mr. Smith."

We were also told that any and each infringement of the above rules will result in a 5 minute detention.

In class we had to write down things that made us the same, rather than things that made us individual, after thinking about it it was clear that there were more similarities that we had than differences.

At the end of the lesson we had to write down something that made us individual and stick it on the board, next we each had to pick a different anonymous post-it and create a poster showing different images that relate to the person we had chosen, without including their name. I found this really interesting as it allowed us to see what other people think of us, and how we are viewed.