School Is a Game: Finite and Infinite Games in Education

This is a website about education, particularly pertaining to thinking about education differently. Jason, Kolby and I really enjoy discussing educational philosophy, and hopefully you, our readers, enjoy and benefit from our peculiar take on education.

In addition to being educational philosophers, we are also teachers – educational practitioners. What we talk about in our weekly posts we are also trying to live out in the classroom every day. Even though we write from a place of deep thought about educational ideals, sometimes the reality of the daily classroom means we get to workshop how those ideals play out with the students God has given into our care. And believe me, there are days that are less than ideal.

It’s perhaps satisfying for some of our readers to know that sometimes our students struggle to understand why we even have to learn Latin. Sometimes our students don’t wear the correct uniform shirts. Sometimes the lesson we planned that was going to help apply some deep work flow for our students just falls flat. We have to live in grace, knowing that our educational renaissance is carried out by very human beings for very human beings.

This is all preface to the concept I want to play with in this article: school as a place for play. The week before I wrote this in December was final exam week in the upper school. This means there are pockets of time during which students don’t have a class, they don’t have an exam, and the motivation to study for another exam has been depleted. And so they pull out a game to rejuvenate together for a spell. For one such game, the students requested I join them, and my own motivation to grade my exams was just about as low as their motivation to continue studying. Therefore, we played a game together.

Game Play in School

I think it’s very important for games to be played in school. I have played many rounds of four square in my day with my students. My shoulder is permanently sore from epic dodgeball games with middle schoolers. I can’t count the number of dress shoes I’ve gone through playing soccer with the kids. There are any number of card and board games that enrich and enliven the classroom, especially on rainy and cold days. Games teach innumerable lessons, and what is school but an environment for lessons?

The game of choice during exam week was Monopoly Deal. I had never played this before, but apparently it was a favorite of the students. It’s a card-based variation on the Monopoly board game we all grew up on. However, whereas the Monopoly board is rigidly bound by the property squares and has the inevitability of one expected outcome (whoever buys the earliest color group is most likely to win), the card game ebbs and flows as different players create new positions, altering strategic advantages constantly. After one round face up, I figured I had the hang of it. Interestingly, the game itself soon faded into the background of my consciousness as I observed the individuals playing the game. I was fascinated by new insights into the personalities of individual students and the group dynamics that emerged as alliances were made and broken. Who played fair? Who knew the rules best? Who was suspected of peeking at others’ cards? Why gang up on one student when a different student clearly had a stronger position? Something more than game play was going on here.

It just so happened that my humanities class recently focused on the concepts of finite and infinite games, as written about by James Carse in his book Finite and Infinite Games. Two voices that raised my awareness of these concepts are leadership guru Simon Sinek and Seth Godin, both of whom have talks that are easily searched on YouTube. In our discussion, we noted how finite games are dependent on some kind of limited resource, and the winner is the one who accumulates the most of that limited resource. It means there are clearly defined winners and losers. There are established boundaries and a clear set of rules that dictate the course of play. Infinite games are far different. They can go on indefinitely because the purpose of the game is not about winning a limited resource, but merely to keep on playing. The rules can change, the boundaries can change, the players can change. We explored how life is comprised of both finite and infinite games, largely embedded within each other.

To explicate this, Monopoly Deal is a finite game. There is a clear ending dictated in the rules. Once a player has completed three property color groups, that player has won. Game over. A limited resource, established boundaries and a clear set of rules make this a finite game. Monopoly Deal, however, is embedded within an infinite game called, “Let’s play together.” Students play together not because there are limited resources, established boundaries and a clear set of rules dictating that students shall play in exactly certain ways, under certain conditions and according to certain norms. Students play games because it is in our human nature to play. There isn’t a winner for the game “Let’s play together.” The game exists in order to continue being played. You might be the winner of Monopoly Deal this time, and I might be the winner of Monopoly Deal next time. But who’s keeping track? That’s not the goal of the infinite game. The goal is just to play together. The dichotomy between the finite and infinite games struck me as I simultaneously played the finite game with my students but observed them on the infinite game level.

Ludus: Is It a School or Is It a Game?

The Latin word ludus is peculiar. It simultaneously means two seemingly different things. The term ludus in one sense means “play, game, or sport.” It’s fun to think about ancient Roman children playing athletic games, like running races, as well as board games. We have artifacts of games that were the forerunners of chess, checkers and backgammon (ludus latrunculi, calculus and tabula). Such artifacts help us to clearly picture what this word ludus means.

The other sense of ludus is “school,” predominantly primary school. The Romans had designated buildings for ludi, with headmasters, desks, writing tablets, etc. The school day started early and ended after children had been exercised in reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The Roman world is one we can readily recognize because it contains so many of the trappings of our day. How many students moaned to go to school (ludum) because it meant they couldn’t play games (ludos)? What a peculiar word, then, to describe these two seemingly dichotomous things? Unless, of course, the word itself reveals that “school” and “game” are not after all dichotomous. If school is actually a place to play, and play is a place of learning, maybe the word ludus reveals something we are prone to miss about the reality of education.

Life Is a Game

It shouldn’t surprise us that school is a game. Life, after all, is a game, or at the very least has game-like qualities to it. There are limited resources, boundaries and rules in all kinds of areas of life. Getting into a college, finding a job, and landing a promotion are games we play. Many of the games we play are set up with winners and losers. He got the job, and I didn’t – winner and loser. She got the promotion, and I didn’t – winner and loser. We even make games out of trivial matters. How often have you been in a conversation where the goal is to share a more extreme experience than your friend? Who got less sleep last night? Who had the worst commute? Ironically, we often become the winner by accomplishing better than our opponent a losing strategy.

However, when we apply the concept of the infinite game, we can see that these little finite games are nested within a larger infinite game. Too often we get so caught up in the finite games we play that we lose sight of the infinite game. The infinite game considers such concepts as my long-term happiness, living a meaningful life, and being driven by purposeful relationships and events. The infinite game makes the finite games irrelevant. I might not have gotten that promotion, by my infinite game wasn’t dependent on that promotion. For many, the competition to get the promotion fits into only a narrowly defined finite game. But what if the promotion is not aligned with, or is even contradictory to one’s long-term, infinite game strategy?

Thinking in terms of finite and infinite games has been a rather essential aspect of my college guidance strategy. The approach most students take regarding colleges is to play the finite game. What is the best college with the top-ranked degree program in the field of my choice? Can I boost my GPA and my college entrance exams just a little bit more to not only get into college, but to land the highest merit-based scholarship? Now it is not that these games aren’t worth playing. Those limited resources are out there and some students thrive on the competition that comes with finite games. Yet most students aren’t best served by playing the finite game. There’s an infinite game that can be played instead that flips the college-choice question on its head. It begins by having the student work through their own vision for their lives. What kind of skills, passion, calling or agenda do they sense for their lives? When students start to envision a meaningful and purposeful future, they can start to see that college exists to enable the student to fulfill that vision. You can hear the infinite game being played now. When I play the finite game, the college sets the agenda and the student has to fit the criteria of the college. When I play the infinite game, the student sets the agenda and the college now has to fit the criteria of the student.

Let’s be clear, this means we’re playing a different game than most college-bound students are playing. The finite game player might say that you just lost the game by not going to the highly-selective school or not going for the top scholarship. But the infinite game player can swat that gadfly away by saying she’s playing a completely different game, a long-term strategy that has more to do with crafting a meaningful life rather than getting a notch on the belt. Obviously we aren’t dealing with diametric categories. You can go after the elite college and the top scholarship as part of a long-term strategy. Perhaps that’s part of how an individual plans to shape his or her meaningful and purposeful life. Great! It’s just that most who play the finite game miss the larger picture and blindly pursue a gambit without thinking through the long-term priorities of life.

To Become a Game Master, You Must Master the Rules

I think understanding school as a game can be helpful in many respects. We can see how school is supposed to have a playful aspect to it. There should be a deep and abiding joy as teachers and students make discoveries together. Learning is fun. We don’t need to hype it up by superimposing games on the classroom. Instead, we can see how game play is part of learning.

School rules are often handed down (or at the very least received by students) in a less than joyful way. One way to help students reconsider the rules is to see how all games have rules. The rules establish order and justice. Our post-game discussions of sports more often than not come down to the rules. We complain when a ref misses a call. We cry foul at a perceived bending of the rules, placing our local team at an unfair disadvantage (rarely does this feeling get applied to the opponent’s perceived unfair disadvantage). A school has to have rules as well. Fair, balanced, equitable game play is the result.

As I write my eBook on habit training, it strikes me that schools are playing an essential role in the infinite game of students’ lives. The fundamental goal of habit training is not to create automatons, but to enable the student to live a pleasant and easy life. The more a student gains a sense that they are creating for themselves a meaningful life, the more purpose any and all of the rules of the game take on. Moreover, the teacher is not merely there to enforce the rules. Instead, the rules (or a more worthy concept – the habits) are there to promote life skills.

As we enter a new calendar year, I hope this reflection on school as a game renews your commitment to playing the infinite game with your students.