Printer-friendly versionThis lesson plan is to accompany the Teaching Tolerance magazine article "Our Challenges as a People"
Framework
Forty-plus years after the end of legal segregation, individual African Americans have achieved amazing successes – including Barack Obama's election as president. However, the black community as a whole remains under great stress. African Americans make less money, on average, than white counterparts in similar positions. Blacks are overrepresented in prisons and underrepresented in college.
How did this happen? As Obama pointed out in his groundbreaking 2008 speech on race, African Americans have historically been shut out of a number of paths to wealth, including membership in labor unions, access to FHA mortgages, jobs in civil service positions and education in well-equipped schools. Other communities of color have faced similar obstacles – leading to a racial wealth gap that has made white people, on average, wealthier than people of color.
In this lesson, students will get a glimpse of the long-term economic effects of race-based policies that have limited the economic opportunities of African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans and other communities of color.
(Note: this lesson plan requires access to multiple copies of the game "Monopoly." Rather than spending money on board games, you may want to ask fellow teachers if they have copies of the game available to lend. Another option is to go directly to the Extension Activity below, and have your students design their own game.)
Objectives
- Students will explore basic economic concepts such as real property, wealth and income by playing the game Monopoly.
- Students will engage in a "rigged" version of Monopoly – and write a reflection on the long-term effects of economic injustice.
Materials
At least one copy of the board game Monopoly
One copy of the rules of Monopoly for each student
Copies of "supplemental rules" for Monopoly
Activities
Tell your students they're about to do something fun – playing a board game.
Many of your students will already be familiar with the game Monopoly. Others may have only a passing knowledge, or may have never heard of the game. Explain to your students that this board game was created in the early 20th century as a simple simulation of the business world. Stress that, like all games, Monopoly is just a model of what happens in the real world. It may not always be true to real life.
Tell your students that they are going to learn the official rules of Monopoly – and learn about the real-world economic principles the game represents. Walk your students through the rules of the game, explaining how they relate to real-life economic concepts.
Rent is what you pay when you live on or use someone else's property. Income is a source of cash flow (like the $200 you get for passing "Go" or the money you collect in rent). Liabilities are costs you have to pay – like rent and tax. Real property consists of land and buildings on that land. Wealth is a measure of your assets minus your liabilities.
Divide your class into Monopoly "teams." There should be three teams for every Monopoly board in the classroom. Each team should select one person – ideally someone who is new to the game of Monopoly – as its "player." The rest of the team will be "advisers" to the player. (Ideally, you will have enough Monopoly sets to have only three or four students on each team.)
The three players will sit down to play a game of Monopoly, with each team's advisers looking on, to explain the rules and suggest strategies.
Allow the teams to play the game for 6-10 turns. Then ask each team to work together to write down an accounting report that includes: Estimated income (per turn), wealth (in dollar amounts) at the end of the game, and a listing of real property. Depending on your class schedule, you may need to set aside an entire class period for the Monopoly game and the accounting of assets.
Begin the next class session by reminding the students that Monopoly is just a model of the economic world. Reality is always more complex. Tell students that they are going to break into the same groups they competed in yesterday, for another game of Monopoly. This time, however, you will introduce new rules that reflect a more complex reality.
Each team should choose one of three tokens to represent it: the Hat, the Car, or the Horse. Once each team has chosen its token, pass out copies of your "supplemental rules" for Monopoly.
After all groups have played ten turns of Monopoly, ask each team to account for its own wealth.
Remind students again that the game is just a model – a rough representation of reality. However, this model is meant to reflect the reality behind the race-based gap in wealth in America. Like the Horses, Native Americans had their property confiscated by European colonizers. Like the Cars, most African Americans were not allowed to own property until after the Civil War – and even then, Jim Crow laws or biased business practices prevented them from buying property in many communities.
Of course, the reality is much more complicated than the model. You should make clear to your students that America has adopted a number of race-based economic policies that were just as devastating, but were not reflected in our rigged Monopoly game.
For a list of some of those policies, check out United for a Fair Economy’s teaching guide on the racial wealth divide.
Give students, as a class, time to discuss how they felt playing the "rigged" game of monopoly. Everyone was playing by the same set of rules in the last two turns of the game – did those turns seem fair?
As homework, ask your students to write a short essay in response to the following proposition:
A good Monopoly player can be competitive even in a bad situation.
Encourage students to think about how their status in the game (Hat, Horse or Car) affects their answer.
Extension Activity
Have students create their own game to reflect the economic realities of life in America today. Give your students the goal of creating a game that would explain the basics of economics to students in younger grades. For an example of how to proceed, take a look at this lesson plan from the Utah Education Network.
