The Wave by Todd Strasser

From Goodreads,

"The Wave is based on a true incident that occurred in a high school history class in Palo Alto, California, in 1969.

The powerful forces of group pressure that pervaded many historic movements such as Nazism are recreated in the classroom when history teacher Burt Ross introduces a "new" system to his students. And before long The Wave, with its rules of "strength through discipline, community, and action", The Wave sweeps from the classroom through the entire school. And as most of the students join the movement, Laurie Saunders and David Collins recognize the frightening momentum of The Waveand realize they must stop it before it's too late."

Goodreads - The Wave

Awards:

• Preis der Leseratten des ZDF (1984)

When I first saw this book I saw the sticker that said "The classroom experiment that went too far" on the cover.  It caught my eye because I'm a teacher and I'm always intrigued by things related to my profession.  I read the back cover and was like "Wow!  This is based on real events and this teacher was able to fully engage his students in his lessons."  I was sold on the book and knew I had to read it and find out what the experiment was and how it went too far.  

This book starts with a foreword that states that this book is based on true events that happened in a high school history class in Palo Alto, California in 1969.  The book then begins following a couple students and getting a brief glimpse of what is happening before they enter their history class.  The teacher is trying to teach about World War II and Adolf Hitler.  Of course students ask questions pertaining to how something could go so far and how people could just give up their rights.  The teacher sees an opportunity to show the kids how they could just fall in with what the dictator said.  From there, the entire experiment spiraled out of control and took over the school until the teacher had to put an end to it. 

This book gave me lots of mixed feelings.  The experiment was completely out of line and should have never happened.  But at the same time he saw a teachable moment and he capitalized on it.  I've been known to take a moment like this and make it something where the students can learn something new.  But this went absolutely way too far.  I know I have personally asked myself how someone like Hitler could make so many people follow them and do what they say.  But after reading this I realized they were scared to leave because they were afraid that they would end up in a worse situation than if they just followed the leader.  This book is a super effective way to realize how easily and quickly someone can fall into a cult or powerful group.  

One thing that I don't like about this book is that Strasser wrote it based off of the movie that was created back in 1981.  After I realized this was based on the movie I was irritated because I felt like I should have just watched the movie and saved myself some time.  I would have enjoyed it more if Strasser had researched and wrote his own book.  I do understand that this is based on real events, and that makes writing a book much more difficult.  I think I would have really enjoyed it if this had been a complete work of nonfiction instead of just loosely based on events.

Overall, this book was somewhat boring and I was so excited when I finally finished it.  If you like books based on true stories then there's a slight chance you will enjoy this.  I give this book 2 out of 5 stars.