John Hunter and the World Peace Game

John Hunter engages in a TED talk in 2011 that can change the way educators and other adults see the world when they hear what he has to say. He begins by giving his background story and describing how he ended up where he is today. One focal point being the day he got his first educational job. When he was awarded a job as a teacher for gifted students, he asked his superintendent, 'What do I do?" To which she responded, "What do you want to do?" Hunter describes that this shaped the rest of his career, and he learned to carry with him the things he has learned from his peers; in turn, this has shaped who he has become.
He continues in his discussion by describing that during a class one day, he decided that he no longer wanted to lecture at them, instead he wanted them to be engaged and interact with each other. He created a game called the World Peace Game with a class of his fourth grade students, which has since evolved to something much bigger than he ever anticipated.
What started out as just a clever idea to get his students to interact, has turned in to a way to get them to think. The game involves many elaborate, and politically correct rules. Students own their own country and have a cabinet that works under them. To win the game, the students must solve a set of fifty problems that are intertwined within each other, and come out better off economically than when they started. John Hunter turns the class over to his students once the game has begun. He points out multiple instances where his students have shocked him with compassion and understanding towards each other, their greater goal is to make everyone happy rather than to create more issues and fight. One student quotes something he read in The Art of War by Sun Tzu, "Those who win battles will want to go back in to battle, and those who lose battles will want to go back and win." The young boy goes on to describe that he was shocked to be living through an experience of something that he read. He says that he has won multiple battles, and he wants to go back and win more. War never ends under these circumstances.
John Hunter wraps up his presentation by describing his experience with a specific class. There was only a minute left on the timer for the whole game, and although the students had solved all of the problems, one country was more poor than it had been at the beginning of the game. Hunter felt that he had failed his students and was beating himself down for not finding a way for them to come out on top, the game was going to be lost. Suddenly, one student jumped up and began collaborating with all of the other students, with less than 10 seconds on the clock, he convinced all of the other "countries" to make a donation to the poor country in order for everyone to profit. Without a second thought, everyone agreed and the game was won. John Hunter says that this is not something that he could have planned or taught, it just happened and he could not have been more proud.

This TED talk was such an inspiration to me, and provoked so many thoughts in my mind. How can fourth grade students make sense of and solve the problems of the world, but the leaders of every country struggle with it every day. The mind's of children are so simple and pure, what happens to that purity as we grow up and develop? Where does it go? John Hunter is a prime example of the impact that teachers can have on their students, and how we can teach them to think for themselves, rather than being taught what is necessary to pass state testing. We can make a difference.