The Ripple Effect was a learning experience geared toward helping students to understand how Hitler's fascist regime took over Germany in the 1930's.
This learning experience was based on a similar experience called "The Third Wave," which was conducted in California in the 1960's and has since been replicated in schools around the world, including in Germany. This experience has also been documented in a book, a made for TV movie, and an independent film, titled "The Lesson Plan."
The purpose of the experience was to answer the recurring questions that students have each year about facsism: Why did people follow Hitler? Didn't they know he was wrong? Why didn't they try to stop him and the Nazi party?
Some of you immediately knew that the Ripple Effect was wrong, few of you took action, many of you were on the fence but did not take action, and several of you just went with the flow, some of you even grew to enjoy the superiority that came with your new found status as a Rippler.
Propaganda and Actions
Your posters, bracelets and bulletin boards were your propaganda
Your name tags were your arm bands
Your pledge replicated similar oaths that Nazis and Germans took to the Nazi party
Your commitment and devotion to the cause, willingness to initiate new members, and willingness to defend and believe in the Ripple Effect were similar to the commitment, devotion, and willingness of Germans to support, or go along with, the Nazi party
Just like the Germans, many of you recognized the damage caused by the Ripple Effect too late. You were already a part of, you were already in too deep and all you could do was keep going.
The Class of 2014
You are, of course, all awesome students that MHSHS is lucky to have, but the "DOE Data" and your "PSAT" scores do not demonstrate that the Class of 2014 is any better or worse than any of the other graduating classes of MHSHS. Our claim of you "high performance in comparison to other classes" was not based on truth, we never looked up your ARIS data, nor did we ever make comparisons across PSAT scores or the so-called "behavior index."
Acknowledgments:
Ms. Breen and Ms. Hanemann would like to thank the entire MHSHS community for your participation. We could not have done this without the support of the faculty, staff and administration and we are grateful that the students who claim to have known "what was going on" did not blow our cover before the Big Rally ;-)
