As an assistant professor at Concordia College in Seward, Nebraska, hired in 1963 to teach in the experimental high school, Ron Stadsklev found that students felt trapped in an endless maze of arbitrary requirements, or a home life or job without promise. Only two things suggested to him a way out: his license to experiment with teaching methods, and a paper he discovered by James S. Coleman: "Relationship between Games and Learning." When Stadsklev tried out his new Coleman-inspired Constitution Today game on the most boring part of his history class, the results spurred him to more experimen...