He is shocked when his normally sluggish, sloppy students are exhilarated and energized by the exercise. He writes the words “STRENGTH THROUGH DISCIPLINE” on the board, institutes several new strict, militaristic classroom rules, and runs his students through physical and intellectual exercises like a drill sergeant. The next day, Ross begins an experiment with his senior history class. Ross’s wife Christy admires her hardworking husband and encourages him to search for the answers he needs, but secretly worries about his obsessive tendencies. Ross begins to wonder if, perhaps, an experiment that replicates the conditions of Nazi Germany is the only way to find the answer-so he begins devising an exercise for class the next morning. That night, Ross is determined to look through every history book on the second world war he can find to try and discern the answer as to how groupthink and coercion enabled the Nazis to gain so much indisputable power-but discouraged when he still can’t find the answers. Laurie and Amy’s moods lighten over the course of the rest of the school day, and they laugh and joke in the Grapevine offices with the class clowns Alex Cooper and Carl Block. David tells Laurie that he sees the Holocaust as “a piece of history”-something that can’t be changed, and certainly won’t be repeated. Ben Ross is intrigued by his students’ varied reactions to the film but perturbed when he finds himself unable to answer Laurie and Amy’s questions about how ordinary Germans could have turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the Nazi Party-or worse, could have joined their ranks.Īt lunch the next period, Laurie and Amy remain disturbed by the images from the film, but David Collins and his best friend Brian Ammon wolf down their lunches, immune to what they’ve just seen. The class “creep,” Robert Billings, even falls asleep midway. While some students-like the popular and bright Laurie Saunders, editor of the Gordon Grapevine, and her best friend Amy Smith-are moved by the film, other students like Laurie’s boyfriend David Collins, a self-centered running back for the football team, barely bat an eye. On an ordinary day at Gordon High, Ben Ross shows his history class a film about the Holocaust as part of their unit on World War II.
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