The final offering in what no-one’s calling “The Wonderful Week of Sims” is designed to give students practical experience of social inequality based on the unequal distribution of economic resources (wealth) – the eponymous “cake” of the title. While this can be an end in itself – a central part of the sim is the physical segregation of students within the same classroom – it can also be the building block for an examination of the possible consequences of such inequality.
In this respect the sim develops through a mock “IQ test” that can be used to explore a range of educational issues, such as:
- the effects of material deprivation on educational achievement
- meritocracy
- equality of opportunity
- the reliability and validity of IQ testing in specific cultural and subcultural contexts and
- class reproduction through “objective” testing.
Although the simulation instructions here focus on education this type of sim can be adapted to a range of curriculum areas wherever notions of class inequality are a central concern.
If you want to use an IQ test as part of the sim you will need to devise questions tailored to your particular students and you’ll find plenty of test questions, with answers, you can use on the Web. Alternatively either of the following might fits your needs: