David breaks up with her and friends reject her. Laurie writes an exposé for the school paper. The next day, a pep rally has turned into a Wave event. David's girlfriend Laurie is unnerved and Ross's wife worries that Ross has introduced a concept he cannot control. By the end of the week, Robert has developed confidence and authority and reports unorthodox behavior to Ross and the other Wave members. With the popular football players now on board, the Wave's popularity spreads across the school. Robert, an unpopular student, is given the role of monitor over the other students, a position which fills him with pride.ĭavid, a student, thinks that the Wave's rules will help his football team. Ross continues the next day by introducing The Wave, which he describes as a youth movement with a secret salute and membership card. The students take up the rules with enthusiasm.

He begins in an innocuous fashion with advice on proper posture and a few classroom rules for better efficiency. Unable to explain the question for himself, Ross decides to find out through a social experiment. They question how the German people would have allowed genocide to occur. It starred Bruce Davison as the teacher Ben Ross, a character based on Jones.īen Ross, a school social studies teacher, shows his class a film about the Holocaust. It debuted October 4, 1981, and aired again almost two years later as an ABC Afterschool Special. The Wave is a made-for-TV movie directed by Alex Grasshoff, based on The Third Wave experiment put on by teacher Ron Jones to explain to his students how the German populace could accept the actions of the Nazi regime.

The waves 1931