Is Your Class Too Much Like Monopoly?

Recently, my family took a beach trip and I took a couple of decks of cards and a board game for evenings and in case of rain. On past trips we have played Monopoly, but I wanted something different. Monopoly can be fun, but the game presents a couple of problems. Sometimes it takes too long to play, particularly during an afternoon rain shower, and it is a game of attrition. Once you go bankrupt the game goes on without you until there is only one player left. I wanted to find a game that could be learned quickly and would keep everyone engaged to the end of the game. I took a different board game called Ticket to Ride. This got me thinking about instructional lessons we can learn from games.

In the US, board games historically were published to teach social lessons. If you want to learn more about the history of Monopoly and how board games evolved, check out Ruthless: Monopoly’s Secret History from American Experience on PBS (the link is below). During the early 19th century when the board game publishing industry was in its infancy, board games were published to teach children moral lessons. Typically these games were biased so that players won by being thrifty, upright, or by making choices based on Christian virtues of the day. As America became more urbanized adults had more opportunities to socialize in the evenings. This led game publishers expand by developing games that would interest adults with less moralizing and more strategy. In the 20th century the game of Monopoly became popular with adults favoring a combination of strategy, luck, scheming, and deceit.

The purpose of those early games allowed children to exercise agency and the choices made (along with luck) led to either winning or losing (with the goal of teaching a sometimes suspect moral lesson). As educators we are often trying to find classroom activities supporting student agency. Providing activities and interventions that allow students to make choices should lead to critical thinking in academic and social emotional learning contexts. But as educators we want to be careful of the lessons students will learn while creating various create choice-making opportunities. When planning some questions to consider should include:

Will the choices students focused on cooperation or competition?

Will student choices promote inclusion or exclusion?

Does this activity help students to learn respectful interactions?

Will this activity help students become more aware of the needs of others and/or develop self-awareness?

If there is competition does the activity focus on winning and losing or does it focus more on learning to critically assess mistakes and successes?

Can students remain kind to each other as they continue through the activity?

Is the activity so competitive that some students will disengage?

Educators should offer learning activities that allow for student choice to the greatest, but reasonable, degree possible. But when contemplating instructional choices it is essential to also be intentional regarding results of student choice. Limit or eliminate activities where students perceive that there will be one (or a few) winners. This does not mean that competitive activities are never a good idea, educators just need to keep competition in perspective. Many students already experience a school (and community) culture that is overly competitive. Students need to experience learning activities that prioritize cooperation, inclusion, and learning from mistakes rather than the perception that they need to “win” a particular activity. The difference is similar to the difference in the two games I considered for my family’s vacation: one can lead to disengagement for some, the other, while still competitive, is designed to keep everyone involved to the very end. If competition and attrition are the primary learning as a result of an activity or unit, then students are being poorly served.

Link to Ruthless: Monopoly’s Secret History produced by WGBH and PBS