Why not get kids more involved in the workings of politics and society. Show them the workings of the system we are living in. We want to design a game in which you play toward a stable, open society.
There are 6 parameters: satisfaction, political freedom, media freedom, human rights, economical freedom and system stability. You get 3 different cards: action, event, offer. An offer could be that journalists would get more freedom, but in exchange the system stability would become a little less stable. Or action cards: to build more electricity facilities, your wealth goes down in that round but satisfaction goes up. An event could be that we take the refugees in, or not. You have a choice. the effect would be better human rights, but satisfaction goes down because your population is overwhelmed by it.
We think it is a fun way to learn how systems work, and especially governmental systems. I guess there is a meta goal: to teach them that to reach open society is not that easy and worth protecting if you have it. But also that you just can’t go and distroy a system and expect that the new one will be a positive stable one, because that could be a dictatorship as well!. Maybe it will get kids more involved in political decisions. We are playtesting it on paper. But we are also going to make it digital.
The game could be usable for teenagers in highschool. The terminology/words we use now is quite ‘grown-up’ and might have to be adjusted. But we will see first if we can make the game work.