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For nearly half a century, people have been gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia to try to achieve something that is so audacious it doesn't even seem possible.
We're talking about world peace.
And these people have actually been pretty successful, a fact made all of the more remarkable since they're in the fourth grade.
Sometimes world peace game feels like, you know, the weight of the world on your shoulders.
This is exploding over here, this is firing over there, this is spilling oil.
And I just look at the board and I say to myself, oh my gosh, I need to fix this.
Okay, so we are talking about a game here.
It's called the world peace game.
Students are divided into made up countries.
They're each given a specific role, like Prime Minister, Secretary of the United Nations.
And then they're presented with a series of very real global problems.
And they have to try and solve them.
Our country is just getting hit and hit.
And we're the weakest country, we're being attacked by the second strongest country.
Oh my gosh, how are we going to deal with this?
There were tsunamis, sub -zero cold snaps and a sandstorm, and it seemed like each country was bothering us on a different level.
You go to the problem and there's a problem inside the problem, and you try to solve that problem, but then that brings you back to the main problem.
You, Mr. Hunter, you are always saying, there's only one thing I'll say when you make these decisions, know the consequences.
I think that's actually pretty fair and that should apply in real life, too.
Mr. Hunter is John Hunter, a public school teacher who created the game 46 years ago.
And as we continue this season of the podcast called Stepping Up, we'll hear how John Hunter's vision has inspired generations of kids to see world peace as a real possibility.
I'm Michael Garofalo.
And I'm Jasmine Morris.
It's the StoryCorps podcast from NPR.
I'm John Hunter. I'm an elementary school teacher, and I invented the world peace game.
I was just starting out teaching, and this was in 1978, and I thought, I don't want to be a boring teacher.
Let's see if we can work our way out to teach social studies in a fun way.
And, of course, a game came to mind, where you said about solving the problems of the world.
That's really how it got started, nothing really magical, just the necessity of a teacher who didn't know what else to do.
I am Ms. Anderson. I'm an MOD, which stands for Minister of Defense for the Country of Hibernia.
Some politician leaders wouldn't do the same thing kids who were playing the world peace game would do, because the point of the world peace game is everyone to win.
And in the real world, I think people are just trying to win it for their countries or themselves.
Tell me, what do you think about what your prime minister is doing so far to deal with the crisis situations?
I think that, well, he's...
I'm Mr. Everett, Prime Minister of Hibernia.
So, you're finding the world peace game a challenge, are you?
It's a bit of a challenge, yes.
You really had a lot to deal with the first day.
I saw you put your head down at one point and smack your forehead.
Oh, my gosh. Sometimes it makes me nervous that I make a bad choice and my country doesn't do so well.
And it also makes me feel proud for talking for my country.
And you thought about being maybe a world leader someday before this game?
No, I hadn't really.
I've always wanted to be a herpetologist.
I never really wanted to be a president.
That might change quite a bit, because normally in school, it's really easy for me.
So when I get something that's actually challenging, I get very engaged in it.
It makes my brain work harder.
I love it. Is that what's happening in this game?
Yes, it's very fun.
Hi, my name is Julie Antswope.
I'm 11 years old, and I'm a player in the world peace game.
It's called the world peace game, but I want to know, when is war really okay?
Hmm. I don't know the answer, actually.
I'm hoping maybe by you and your classmates trying this out, you'll figure out maybe some good answers.
Maybe there's a best answer, I don't know, but adults haven't done so well at it.
Yeah, why don't you get real grownups to play this game?
Some grownups have asked to play, but to tell you the truth, I'm not really sure they would do as well as you.
I kind of think that they might be more like sometimes grownups are and get...
Cussing and stuff. Well, I think they might be more about their own developed opinions.
I think it would be actually more interesting they have a developed opinion.
Maybe that's better to play with grownups because they have one opinion on things, and I think it'd be better if they understand that you can't have one opinion.
It'd probably help them maybe.
Fascinating idea. What do you hope we learn from the world peace game?
I think how to make people not suffer so much.
Yeah. I think I now hope the game also helps people be more compassionate and kinder.
That's what I've learned, that no matter where you're from, your background, you can still connect with someone else that you've never even met before.
I'm Irene Newman. I played the world peace game 10 years ago, and now I'm studying peace, war, and defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Third grade, I thought I was gonna be president of the United States.
I remember you too.
I remember the pigtails, the brown and uniform, the glasses.
You were an intellectual, a third grade intellectual.
I had decided that we were gonna win the peace game, and the way that was gonna work was I was gonna take over everything, and I started on that path and quickly ran into a lot of problems.
I really began to understand as we're playing the game, we found peace more through cooperation with one another.
We played this game and we yelled at each other, and we battled things down, and then we left and went out to recess and played together.
I think that's what's really important to remember.
We were all working towards the same goal even though we didn't agree with each other.
Is that something you came up with on your own?
I mean, I don't know if I built that into the game that you would come to cooperation.
I hoped you would. How did you do that?
I don't know. Really?
Nobody handed us a list of problems and said, they're really hard, you'll never solve them.
You know, you can't do it.
We were just told, you know, think about it and try and find a solution.
And so you did. And so we did.
There have been students who come in with a set of beliefs, and what I find is the harder they hold to what they think the way things are, the harder, the more difficult time they have in the game.
I've gotten some not unhappy calls, but some probing questions about, Mr.
Hunter, did you teach them to question their parents?
Not really, but they may want to do that after they see how things work in the world.
I actually found the other day on my 13th birthday, you sent me these two pages of advice.
Oh, you caught me Irene, because I always claim to never give advice.
But here I see the evidence 22 pieces of advice.
What is wrong with me?
Oh, but they're all, they're all great.
You must have asked for this, right?
I would never force it.
Yes. No, my mom asked.
That's good. I'm really getting mad about starting to force advice on people.
No, it's great. Number 22.
Most problems are actually pretty simple to solve.
We superimpose so much on them that they become so complex.
What you like that one?
I do like that one.
What does that mean for you?
It does make you think that if a bunch of third and fourth graders can look at problems and find the solution, that sometimes world problems are more simple than we think.
We just let fourth graders and third graders handle things.
Our world could be in a different situation than it is now.
Sometimes I wonder, I'm almost afraid adults are playing the real world for this game.
But third graders and fourth graders routinely fix everything and make everything work okay.
I keep getting a boost of confidence.
I keep getting a boost of optimism.
If they can keep on solving all these crises every year in different ways, I start to wonder, maybe we can.
Maybe it actually is possible.
I started looking at every one of them as a chance for something to go right.
I have a room full of 30 every year of just one of them gets through 10 years, 15 years later.
They may save us all.
I'm kind of hoping that you may be in a position to do that someday.
We'll see. We will.
I'll be watching too.
That conversation was actually recorded in 2011, and we were curious.
What happened to Irene?
Turns out John Hunter was curious too.
So after the break, we'll find out.
We'll also hear how John Hunter's career in teaching took him from a classroom in the Blue Ridge Mountains to a briefing room at the Pentagon.
Stay tuned to hear about that top -secret conversation.
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Irene, it's so good to see you.
It's been 13 years since we last did this story court together.
And how are you? Hi, Mr.
Hunter. It's so good to see you.
How are you doing? Just fine.
Some of my warmest memories from elementary school come from your classroom and the way my parents would come away from a conversation with you and my dad would be like, I'm so jealous you get to be in the classroom with him every day.
You don't even know how good you have it.
You're 10. I remember saying to Irene, I wonder who she will become.
And now look, Irene, please tell us, what have you become?
Who are you now? Now, I am a historian of the white power movement and I study hate crimes and I study how we prevent the organization of racist violence.
So that's what the world peace game brought about.
I know Irene, you go far beyond that.
I cannot tell you how deep this touches my heart.
This work is the essential work for our country's survival right now.
Thank you, Mr. Hunter.
I'm the luckiest kid that I got to have you as a teacher.
And I'm wondering what you remember about your elementary school teachers and what those classrooms were like for you.
Of course, I came along in the late 50s, early 60s.
My fourth grade teacher was my mother because we were in a small segregated school system.
There was one school in our area and that was the one you had to go to.
Did your mom have like a teacher mode and then a mom mode or did you feel like she was the same person to you the whole time?
That's a great question.
Oh, definitely teacher mode, mom mode.
Absolutely. In the classroom, I got no slack.
I mean, I was just one of the kids and she was very firm in the classroom, but very warm.
That combination I think was also something I tried to adopt in my teaching.
Of course, integration came in 1967 to our area and that changed everything too.
I remember our superintendent of the black school system and talking to the seven of us who were hand chosen to be the first wave of integration, she brought up the astronauts who were preparing to land on the moon for the first time.
She said, you are like astronauts.
You're going into an unknown territory.
We've never done this before.
We don't know what's going to happen.
We don't even know if you will come back, but we hope you will and that you'll bring back everything you experience and learn to share with your family and community here.
But at that age, I took it all as an adventure.
I remember my high school teacher, Mr.
Rossell, who came from the west coast, which was to our small Virginia town, kind of an exotic thing in and of itself.
And he drove a motorcycle and he had long hair and a handlebar mustache.
It was fabulous. And he said, when he walked in, call me Larry, his first name.
Now coming from a Southern background of the 50s, that was like an earthquake, literally.
And I think I remember grabbing a desk going, oh, we're not in for the old times anymore.
It's going to be a different kind of ride.
But because he set the tone by making us peers, I began to understand teaching could be that way.
And so I came to understand that students are people.
They have to be shorter than me, and they haven't been here as long as I have.
But they're unique individuals who have a unique knowledge and oftentimes wisdom that I don't have.
So I was gradually understanding that I had to accept my students as peers.
You want to talk about the Pentagon?
Yeah, tell us about it.
Oh, man, well, the Pentagon invited us in.
You get a phone call.
Hello, Mr. Hunter, Pentagon.
Like to know if you could bring your students to the Pentagon so we could ask them directly how they do what they did.
And I thought, okay, this is going to be a nice photo op.
We're going to have pizza with the general or something like that.
No, from 9 to noon, they brought my 24 students in this room who got very dressed up by their suits and ties with little guys.
One of my girls had a nice poofy skirt with sparkles and rhinestones on it and sparkly shoes, and they had their top secret dossier under their arms that said in big letters, top secret dossier.
So we got in the conference room, and they grilled my students for three hours.
I remember General Santee, general in the Air Force, bending down to ask my secretary, General of the United Nations in her poofy skirt, what do you do when you have a supply chain?
Break down. And Sarah, she smoothed their skirts and said, well, I just had to deal with that last week, as a matter of fact.
And let me tell you what I did.
It was surreal. I'm a teacher of these children, four feet tall, talking to a six footer in a suit and tie who's going to be handling real world diplomacy, peer to peer, nose to nose with some of the most powerful military people in the world who are taking them seriously.
This is not a little pat the kid on the head moment.
So we're there for three hours.
But then before we leave, a door opens in the conference room, and a colonel steps out.
He says, Mr. Hunter, we're ready for your delegation in here now.
He's ready for you.
We go in, and there is Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense.
He takes off his coat.
He says, I got 10 minutes.
I got to go see the president.
He rolls up his sleeves.
What's your toughest problem?
He's serious. And in one voice they all say, well, climate change, of course, because it's affecting everything.
He says, you know what, what did you do about it?
And they talk for 25, 30 minutes.
He was late to go see the president.
It became even more surreal because Mr.
Panetta had an aid bring a little box up.
Leon Panetta pulls out some coins.
These are coins that are minted by a military commander.
And they're handed in a ritual handshake to a subordinate officer who's given a measure beyond and above.
And Mr. Panetta, in a handshake, coined every one of my students.
This is a high honor, most powerful military commander in the world, shows respect and honor to fourth graders who've lived through, sure in a fictional way, what he's living through every day.
And they came asking my students advice.
I don't know if it made a difference whether it changed any of their minds or thinking or not.
I don't know. But the fact that it happened at all, and they took it seriously, means an awful lot.
And this is why I'm the most optimistic person you will ever meet.
Of course, things are going to go wrong.
Of course, we're going to be on the brink of disaster.
But I'm so optimistic because I've seen children for almost five decades figure this out.
And Irene, thank you and all the students, thousands of you who have made me a better human being.
I've had so many of you as my teachers, and I stand on your shoulders now.
Thank you, Mr. Hunter.
I mean, it's still the best day ever when I get to talk to you.
I can't wait to go call my parents and tell them all about it.
Tell them I love them, please.
I will. John Hunter retired from teaching in 2014.
And more recently, he stepped away from leading the world peace game.
That game that he started in a Virginia elementary school has now been played in over 40 countries around the world.
And it will continue under a teacher whose own kid once played the world peace game herself.
Okay, so for this week's question, we want you to tell us about someone who challenged you to think about something in a different way.
Let us know by leaving a voicemail at 702 -706 -TALK.
That number again is 702 -706 -T -A -L -K.
Or you can email us at podcast at StoryCorps .org.
Next week. Our lives could hardly have been more different.
You know, it was not predictable that we'd be friends.
And not only friends, but brothers.
This episode was produced by Jada Stikendal and Max Young Rice.
Jared Floyd is our technical director.
Our executive producer is Amy Drosdowska, and our fact checker is Katie Scott.
The art for this season was created by Liz McCarty.
Special thanks to Brian Reed, who found the story and recorded these interviews 13 years ago.
Thanks also to facilitator Matt Herman and Robin Klingler at the World Peace Game Foundation.
I'm Michael Grafflo.
And I'm Jasmine Morris.
Thanks for listening.
Support for this podcast comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
