Die Driet Welle

in mr smith's lesson we learnt about the Third Wave collective Identity

we were given class rules:
1. sit one seat apart
2. must stand up to ask or answer questions
3. stand up whenever a member of staff enters the room
4. answer or ask a question in 3 words
5. before speaking you must always say 'Mr Smith'

we were told that from now on we were no longer unique, we were all the same and there was to be no individuality within the class.

Areas of colective identity

gender
sexuality
religion
nationality
age
class
ethnicity
disability
celebrity

a collective identity is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together on a specific project to achieve a common objective.

after doing this lesson, we then found out that Mr Smith had simply done an experiment on us and had not really gone crazy in thinking the class had to be one. he had done a much more simper version of an experiment held in America.
The Third Wave was an experiment to demonstrate the appeal of fascism undertaken by history teacher Ron Jones with sophomore high school students attending his Contemporary History class as part of a study of Nazi Germany.The experiment took place at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, California, during the first week of April 1967.
Jones, unable to explain to his students how the German populace could claim ignorance of the extermination of the Jewish people, decided to show them instead. Jones started a movement called "The Third Wave" and convinced his students that the movement is to eliminate democracy. The fact that democracy emphasizes individuality was considered as a drawback of democracy, and Jones emphasized this main point of the movement in its motto: "Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride".
The experiment took on a life of its own, with students from all over the school joining in: on the third day the class expanded from initial 30 students to 43 attendees. All of the students showed drastic improvement in their academic skills and tremendous motivation. All of the students were issued a member card and each of them received a special assignment (like designing a Third Wave Banner, stopping non-members from entering the class, etc). Jones instructed the students on how to initiate new members, and by the end of the day the movement had over 200 participants. Jones was surprised that some of the students started reporting to him when other members of the movement failed to abide by the rules.
On Thursday, the fourth day of the experiment, Jones decided to terminate the movement because it was slipping out of his control. The students became increasingly involved in the project and their discipline and loyalty to the project was astounding. He announced to the participants that this movement is only a part of a nationwide movement and that on the next day a presidential candidate of the movement would publicly announce existence of the movement. Jones ordered students to attend a noon rally on Friday to witness the announcement.

it was quite scary to think how easy it had been for Mr Smith to change the class in the space of just one lesson the way he did and to make us follow the rules. and just like the kids in America, could we have become a group of crazed facists by the end of the week?

we then watched a film that had been created on the basis of the experiment.











at the moment i dont really see what collective identity is going to be in our film, as we only focus on individuals.