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Nazis in our classes: The 50-year-old lesson about fascism still terrifying us today
In 1967, a teacher from Palo Alto radicalised his students into a fascist party in five days. Here’s what he taught humanity that week.
‘Why did the German people let the holocaust happen?’. This question is one often asked of history teachers by their inquisitive students. It’s a valid question and doesn’t have a simple soundbite answer. The reasons sit deep in the complexity of human psychology.
For Ron Jones, the answer was to show his students and not tell them. It was 1967 at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto California. Jones was a popular teacher, a recent Stanford graduate who ran engaging classes.
His students would frequently skip other classes to come and sit on his fun and imaginative lectures.
What transpired in this Californian classroom would resonate around the world. Jones would teach all his students and the rest of the world a very important lesson about fascism. It would later be called ‘The Third Wave’ experiment. Jones was clear, history can repeat itself, but sometimes it does under controlled conditions.
This is exactly what happened across one week in April 1967.
