Fourth Graders for World Peace: A Teacher Recalls When His Students Schooled the Pentagon – StoryCorps

Since 1978 … a group in Charlottesville, Virginia has been tackling the ultimate challenge – World Peace … a fact made all the more remarkable since they’re kids.

Sometimes World Peace Game feels like the weight of the world on your shoulders. This is exploding over here, this is firing over there. This is spilling oil. And I say to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to fix this.’ 

The World Peace Game was invented by a public school teacher named John Hunter. In it, students are divided into made-up countries… given a specific role, like Prime Minister or Secretary of the United Nations… and tackle the world’s most pressing problems…. Like war and climate change. And they’re pretty successful.

John retired in 2014 … and he sat down recently with one of his former students, Irene Newman … To recount an unexpected invitation he and his 4th graders received…

Transcript

John Hunter (JH) 

JH: I get a phone call. ‘Hello, Mr. Hunter? Pentagon. We’d 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, it’s going to be a nice photo op. We’re going to have pizza with a general or something like that.’ No— they brought my 24 students into this room—who got very dressed up by their suits and ties on the 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 dossiers under their arms. It said in big letters, Top Secret Dossier. 

And they grill 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 her skirt 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, peer to peer, nose to nose, with some of the most powerful military people in the world, who are taking them seriously. 

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. We go in, and there is Leon Panetta, the Secretary of Defense. He says, ‘I got 10 minutes. I got to go see the president.’ He says, ‘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 talked for 25, 30 minutes. He was late to go see the president. 

Most powerful military commander in the world shows respect 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. 

And this is why I’m the most optimistic person you will ever meet. Because I’ve seen children for almost five decades figure this out so much so, that world leaders have come asking, ‘Can your children show us how they do this? Because we’ve not figured it out.’ 

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, means an awful lot. 

BACK ANNOUNCE:

That was John Hunter, speaking with Irene Newman for StoryCorps. John has taught the World Peace Game to children and teachers all over the world.