The World Peace Game
"Knowledge, creativity, and wisdom: that’s what I try to foster in my students. I want to teach them what I believe is the ultimate point of education and everything else, which is simply to express compassion in the world. We can be smart and know how to fix things, and we can be wise and know how not to fall into holes, but what is the point of living if not to express the higher and deeper emotions? Why are we here if not to express compassion—and then to build the structures and relationships that allow the most and the deepest and the wisest compassion to be expressed?"--John Hunter, World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements, p. 5.
Hunter, John. World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
The World Peace Game plunges students into complexity—and then gives them the chance to find their own way back to the surface. The teachers support them, of course, with rules and structure and instruction. But we are also giving them the chance to fail, and by this failure to learn the skills to master this alternate reality by exploring it on their own.
Although the World Peace Game is played with imaginary countries, navigating it requires a great deal of real-life knowledge: how to calculate a national budget, how to craft a treaty with no loopholes, how to grasp the science behind an oil spill or climate changes.
It is designed as a game, but the goal is not to just entertain for the moment as a passing novelty in this increasingly digital age. We want it to be of lasting value, because students may use it to clearly understand past events and also understand future events given that, people being people, similar sorts of things will happen again. The game space is the birthplace of possibilities that don’t yet exist—but might.
Lake Carolina Elementary Upper Campus
ALERT (Active Learning Experiences in Resourceful Thinking)
4th and 5th Grade Students
Spring 2019
Lonnie B. Nelson 4th and 5th Grade Students
ALERT (Active Learning Experiences in Resourceful Thinking)
Winter 2019
ALERT (Active Learning Experiences in Resourceful Thinking)
Lake Carolina Elementary 4th Grade Students
Spring 2018
Spring 2018 Student Reflections
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About the Game
The book, the documentary, and the TED talk:
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Core Principles
Trailer to World Peace and Other Fourth Grade Achievements
The TED Talk
Planting the Seeds of World Peace
Miki Yamamoto
NHK World Tokyo covers the first World Peace Game to be held in Tokyo.
"The World Peace Game is the story of individuals confronted by overwhelming and chaotic circumstances. First they must learn to face the reality of the moment. Then they must grasp that moment’s deeper implications and interconnections.
Finally, they have the chance to organize themselves into a new entity: a collaboration, a collective, a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. This new collective can devise solutions far beyond the ability of any individual. We have the opportunity to be wiser, more creative, and more farseeing than any one person could ever be. Within this collective, individual members can tap into their deepest strengths, to become their best selves."--John Hunter, World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements, p.10.
"What I ultimately wish for my students—and for myself—is precisely that type of observation without judgment: to be able to hold different perspectives simultaneously in their minds—to view a situation from all angles—and then to decide, without judgment, what is called for."--John Hunter, World Peace and Other 4th Grade Achievements, p.126.
