Teaching Tolerance

The Book Reader
The Fourth R
A.P. Feature Story
Store Manager's Review

Review in Teaching Tolerance (Southern Poverty Law Center)

Inexpensive, durable and eminently practical, Role-Play Peacegames ($8.95 each) sharpen students' reasoning processes by moving discussion from conflict to consensus. With more than 100 individual titles and 17 topical sets to choose from, social studies and science teachers, along with guidance counselors, will find these games a fun way to teach alternatives to conflict while covering important content material.

Review in The Book Reader

This innovative series helps ordinary people mediate big problems. Or small ones. And have fun doing it. Felder gives good commentary and nomenclature in each game. Players grasp the power of alternatives such as competition, compromise and collaboration. And kids (at whatever age) get a feel for the fairness in ground rules and the long term value of agreement.

Review in The Fourth R (National Association for Mediation in Education)

Learn and have fun. Each game has a fact sheet with background information, and sheets for each party to the conflict with their interests. These games include instruction in mediation.

Anyone who has been well train to be a mediator is familiar with the use of conflict role plays to practice and develop skills need in mediation. In this case, Mr. Felder has written and compiled role plays by topic, and is marketing them as games. Each "game pack" has five "games" on that pack's topic, plus some brief introductory material. Everying in each pack is printed on 8.5 x 11 inch sheets, each folded in half to produce a four page booklet. Each game consists of at least three such booklets. One is a statement of agreed facts about the conflict situation, and each of the other two booklets states the viewpoint and interests of one of the parties. Some conflicts have three or four parties. For the "Teenage Conflicts," "Family Conflicts," "Environmental Conflicts," and some of the games in thd three international conflicts packs there is an additional booklet on "What Actually Happened." As part of a larger curriculum, these games are a great resource for the teaching of mediation skills. Alan Markwood

Associated Press Feature Story by Ingrid Eulin

Scholar's Games Show Alternatives to Conflict

Using Modern examples, the newly marketed games teach players how to use compromise and mediation to resolve problems.

A philosophy and peace studies professor has released a series of games that allows players to act out the parts of participants in the Middle East peace talks.

"People using these games have reached settlements that satisfy more than half of the interests of all parties," said David Felder, a philosophy professor at Florida A & M University who has also written a book on abolishing war.

"The games teach players the difference between compromise and collaboration," Felder said. Each has a fact sheet, materials that each party keeps secret that tell their real interests, and instructions on how to be a mediator.

"Sometimes, people turn to violence because they don't know the alternative ways to handle conflict," Felder said. "The games can show an alternative."

He has presented his views on peace and conflict resolution at international conferences. He also wrote How to Work for Peace, published by the University Press of Florida.

Store Manager's review

We have found that parents, history teachers, and people in the military have all purchased the Peacegames. The most common statement we hear about the Peacegames is that they are good for group efforts, and are not the usual type of game one finds at Quarterstaff. Definite thumbs up as an educational aid!"

Chris Meyer, Manager Quarterstaff Games,Burlington, Vermont.