A native Virginian and graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, John Hunter is an award-winning gifted teacher and educational consultant who has dedicated his life to helping children realize their full potential. Employing his background as a musician composer and filmmaker during a three-decade career as a teacher, Hunter has combined his gifted teaching and artistic talents to develop unique teaching programs using multimedia software programs in creative writing and film courses. During his university years, he traveled and studied comparative religions and philosophy throughout Japan, India and China. It was while in India, the cradle of Gandhian thought, Hunter, intrigued by the principles of non-violence, began to think of how his profession might contribute to peace in the world.
Knowing that ignoring violence would not make it go away, how could he teach peace in an often-violent world? Accepting the reality of violence, he would seek to incorporate ways to explore harmony in various situations. This exploration would take form in the framework of a game – something that students would enjoy. Within the game data space, they would be challenged, while enhancing collaborative and communication skills. In 1978, at the Richmond Community High School, Hunter led the first sessions of his World Peace Game. Over time, in a synchronous unfolding with the growing global focus on increasingly complex social and political conditions, the game has gained new impetus. As Hunter succinctly explains, “The World Peace Game is about learning to live and work comfortably in the unknown.”
Here is his story.
Here is his story.
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| John Hunter |
The beginnings
I was born into a black middle-class family in 1954, in
Richmond, Virginia. I belong to the African American Community, and grew up at
a very interesting time. There were major changes in the legal system around
how black people were treated. We were a close-knit and quiet family, and
though my parents were activists and participated in the movement against
segregation, they were very quiet about it, and went about their activism
silently. You have what’s called the spotlight school, whose work was seen by
everyone, and the shadowed school, whose work was more behind the scenes - and
my family belonged to the latter.
I went to an all black school, and the change in the law on
segregation came in my twelfth year.. My parents brought me up as an outdoors
person. My father was a mechanic, and my mother was an elementary school
teacher. I was actually her student when I was in grade 4. I became an Eagle Scout
when I was 12, and grew up with a deep connection to nature.
I was one of the seven kids who were handpicked to go into
the white school. I still remember walking into the principal’s office thinking
that we were in trouble - which seemed strange because we were the
goody-two-shoes. When the superintendent came in, I was certain I was in
trouble - but when she spoke up, it seemed like something very important was
happening. She told us about how segregation was drawing to an end, and how the
school and the students’ parents had decided that seven of us would be the first
ones to integrate into a white school nearby. It was a huge change, not just
for me, but for my entire country.
I then went to a liberal arts school, and dropped out and dropped
back in - and this happened thrice. On each occasion when I dropped out, I went
to Delhi, Rishikesh, and Bangalore, in India. My trips to India were
transformative, because I was drawn to the powerful ideas that the country
stands for, particularly Gandhi’s views on Ahimsa. It was incredible to know
that one man’s efforts made such waves and drove the colonial power out. It was
around that time that I decided that my career would be in education. This
time, when I returned to school, I took on the “Experimental Program” in which
I gained insight into a radical model for teacher training that would also
place the teachers in classrooms as teachers, almost immediately after qualification.
It was around that time, that I created the World Peace
Game. I kept it on the down low, though, because I didn’t want my supervisors
to think that I was a radical leftist.
The World Peace Game
The game began as a simple geopolitical stimulation that I
invented in 1978. I was teaching a social studies course, and focused on
African studies. The game began informally when, one day, I printed out a
massive map of Africa and set it on the ground, and labeled the countries. I
looked at the problems challenging each of these countries. Mind you, there was
no internet at the time, so any and all research I did involved looking up
books and newspaper articles. I went back to my students, divided them up and
allotted each of them particular countries, gave them the problems that each
country was facing, and told them to solve it. They did - and did so
beautifully.
From then to now, the game has evolved tremendously. The
World Peace Game is now a much larger game with a 4x4x5 dimension, that
sometimes towers over my nine-year-old students! It was fundamentally created
to make young people see the reality of the world - the idea is not to teach
peace, but to help the children see the world, see things that happen as they
do, and then to respond to those things
accordingly. As it happens in the real world, in the game, there are several
problems happening all at once. You have about four or five country teams, four
agencies, legal counsels, arms dealers, a world bank and a weather goddess too
- who controls all things that are beyond our control. Students are divided up
into teams that have national cabinets comprising prime ministers, defense
ministers, financial officers and other portfolios. They are given different
degrees of wealth, energy resources, assets, and raw materials. They are also
given military and defense forces - some countries get air and space weapons,
too. They are given a four-page crisis document, and they have to solve these
crises, while increasing the asset value of all nations without war, as far as
possible. The students have to figure out, for themselves, a way out of the
fifty different interlocking problems that manifest across four levels: air,
space, ground, ocean (and undersea), and across all countries of their world.
These problems include all that we see around us: global warming, endangered
species, oil spills, toxic nuclear accidents, natural disasters, rogue
satellites, water rights disputes, border disagreements, insurgencies,
religious and ethnic tensions, and breakaway republics are a few of the
situations going on simultaneously.
Amidst all these students, there is one who plays a saboteur.
Before every session, I walk into the principal’s office and ask for the
troublemaker in the session. We need that little troublemaker’s energy to
channel it, and to harness it in the game. The saboteur plays secretly, and
strives to destroy all progress in the game. The saboteur is allowed to
pretend, to mislead, and to confuse - but not to lie. By the end of the game,
the children find themselves applauding and appreciating the saboteur’s efforts
for leading the challenge forward.
I do not interfere in this in anyway, my job is just to ring
the bell when the session ends. They arrive at the understanding that war is
undesirable, all by their own game play. It has been forty years since this
game began, and I still never know what is going to happen.
It's a complete mystery and blank slate with each group of students who play.
The Impact
I relinquish all control over the game, so it is always
interesting to see what happens. There have been times when they came so close
to a complete collapse after many weeks of efforts - only to find themselves on
track to winning. The object of the game is simple - a win is possible only
when the assets of all countries improve. On one occasion, I was with a group
of children who had been at the game for a good seven weeks, and were in their
last session. Their parents had come to pick them up, and were peering in
through the glass in the windows to see what was happening. There were about
ten minutes left, when the students realized they were going to lose. One
country had very little money, and was in great debt. At that moment, Brennan,
one of the students, marched up to my table and took my bell away. He rang the
bell and called everyone to them. I watched as there was yelling, papers being
thrown in the air, tears being shed, and finally, Brennan announced that a
donation would be made to this country. The child who was the Prime Minister of
this country was blank: he didn’t know what to do! Everyone cheered him on to
accept the donation, and with two seconds to spare, he accepted the donation.
At that moment, the children were jumping, rolling on the
ground with joy. This was powerful: and it was compassion, live, in action. Adults
may have made a loan - but the children just gave the country in need the
money.
In my experience, the game has been incredibly
transformative. I have always found that when I go into a classroom, I am the
one that’s getting to learn - they have one teacher, while I have thirty or
more. It feels like living in paradise every time I am with a group of children
playing the game. It’s not the same thing each time - the game is played very
differently, and grows with time. The children have never lost a game with me
in all these forty years, and have taught me that the object of the game is to
increase compassion and decrease suffering.
The children have been invited to speak at the United Nations,
and have visited the Pentagon twice, to offer advice on ways to solve global crises
- it wasn’t a photo op or a lighthearted visit, but a powerful, real worldly
visit that made an impact on ground.
When I see these children play, it gives me hope. Once, when
I went back to speak at Virginia Commonwealth, an old man in the back raised
his hand and stood up. He had white hair at the temples, and his glasses were
perched on the edge of his nose. He asked me if I remembered him. I said I didn’t.
“Mr Hunter, I am Terry. I was in your first batch of students that played the
game!” Terry had gone on to work in the field of Educational Policy in
Washington DC, and told me that I had taught him the art of looking at things
through multiple perspectives. We set a date and talked on Skype a few weeks
later. Terry then told me that he had learned a gesture I made - using my hand,
I had presented a “rounded” movement - sort of like the movement one would use
to describe a globe - and suggested that one should look at something through
multiple perspectives. He then told me he had something to show me, and called
his 21 year old daughter, and told me that she had just applied to the World
Bank and had interviewed for the position a couple of days ago. He told me that
he saw her speaking to them about the need to look at issues through multiple
perspectives, making the same gesture. Then, he beckoned a toddler into the
room - and told me that he had taught them this, too.
It was powerful - tremendously validating - to know that I
had unconsciously reached through time and impacted three generations, and
impacted children I would never meet, never know, and possibly never ever hear
about. Every little bit counts, every little bit.
