Immediately following spring break, the entire 4th grade will begin to prepare to play the World Peace Game. We will play two to three times per week until the end of the school year. Hopefully, at that point, we will have solved all the problems that have been presented.
The World Peace Game board is a large Plexiglass structure that represents our planet. It is an imposing 4 level affair – undersea, sea level, airspace, and outer space – covered with submarines and ships, soldiers and cities, tanks and oil wells, spy planes and satellites. The 4th grade classes are divided into imaginary nations. In addition, there is a World Bank, United Nations, World Court, and Weather Gods/Goddesses who control the vagaries of hurricanes and tsunamis, determine the fate of the stock market, and guide us through the game by helping us stay organized.
The children are provided with national budgets, assets, stores of ammunitions and dossiers outlining twenty-three global crises. They learn to negotiate, conduct hurried last-minute deals, plot their battles, and draw up treaties.
The World Peace Game plunges students into complexity and then gives them the chance to find their own way back to the surface. We support them, of course, with rules and structure and instruction. But they are also given the chance to master this alternate reality by exploring it on their own.
The game is considered successfully completed when all 23 problems are solved, there is no active war that is ongoing, and all four countries end with more money in their national budgets than they had at the beginning of the game.
The focus of the game is the peaceful resolution of conflict. It is a game that rewards compromise and the ability to negotiate. At its heart, the essence of the game is cooperation.