We grew up in a little ranch house, six of us counting Mom and Dad. Our TV was black & white, and we only had four channels. For real entertainment, almost free, we played endless board games. We were having fun as a family, not trying to "learn" anything at all. We played to win! We didn't have a Clue that board games were educational.

Video games didn't exist yet; so games from a box had a Monopoly on our entertainment choices. That was Life, before Pong and Pac-man and Nintendo made cardboard and paper seem obsolete. Although modern digital games are amazing and engrossing, we Risk losing the wonderful benefits of table-top contests when we leave those great board games in the closet.

Monopoly forced us to do the math, to plan ahead and budget, to make deals to our advantage, and to consider the fickle nature of luck. We learned about making our own rules, in order to create faster or richer versions of the original.

Risk taught us how to compete without money, by using careful planning and considering strength in numbers. The educational benefits of games like Clue and Scrabble and Boggle were so obvious to us in our teens that we actually disdained those as "too brainy" for a while. Just until we got smart enough to win against our parents, that is. Now that was fun!

As adults today, we still enjoy board games like Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit. Our kids like them, too, when we can tear them away from their gaming consoles. Each of those "new traditional" games provide painless education about artistic expression, and a whole world of trivial tidbits. The lessons learned about teamwork and cooperation across generations may be the most powerful of all.

Educational or recreational, board games offer something wonderful - something beyond the dazzling graphics of video-based contests. Playing a game with parents, grandparents, spouses, siblings, and friends all seated around the table having fun together teaches us all how to get along. Win or lose, that's an education beyond price.

copyright 2007 - all rights reserved

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