How Can Fourth-Graders Solve World Problems?

By NPR/TED Staff

Published June 17, 2012 at 1:53 PM CDT

Educator John Hunter says being a teacher is like reaching through time. "You're making an effect right here, in this room today you're not even aware of, and yet decades later — maybe even generations later, the effect can become apparent."

Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode Building A Better Classroom.

Educator John Hunter puts the world's problems on a 4 foot by 5 foot plywood board — and lets his fourth-graders solve them. At TED2011, he explains how his World Peace Game engages schoolkids and why the complex lessons it teaches — spontaneous and always surprising — go further than classroom lectures can.

About John Hunter

Musician, teacher, filmmaker and game designer, John Hunter has dedicated his career to helping children realize their full potential. In his own life, a quest for harmony led him to study comparative religions and philosophy while traveling through Japan, China and India. Inspired by Gandhi's philosophy while in India, he began to think about the role of the schoolteacher in creating a more peaceful world. This exploration inspired him to invent the World Peace Game, a hands-on political simulation that challenges students to work within a global community to address dangerous circumstances with minimal military intervention and achieve prosperity.

Hunter is a native Virginian. He was named one of Time magazine's 12 Education Activists for 2012.