Frequently Asked Questions

What is a MicroSociety®  Program?

The MicroSociety® program is a cutting-edge elementary and middle school model through which students apply academic skills as citizens in a society of their own design. The students learn, work and manage their microcosm of the real world—as legislators, peer mediators, business owners, bankers, attorneys, community service-minded leaders, floating teachers, and many other occupations. The business ventures and government agencies provide the context for real world curriculum connections throughout the day. The MicroSociety program has helped dozens of schools dramatically increase student motivation, improve discipline, meet high academic standards and boost test scores and attendance.

What does a MicroSociety program look like?

In most MicroSociety schools, the student day consists of time in the classroom and time when students apply that curriculum in real world activities. Students of all ages work, govern, and participate in building their society inside school. Make no mistake; this miniature society is neither “virtual” nor imaginary. Students work in real time. They establish businesses, vote, serve on juries, shop, pay taxes, and settle disputes in court, LIVE! Depending on available resources, schools adapt their physical spaces to the emerging community. They build a marketplace with stalls and shops, a courtroom with a judge’s bench and a witness stand and a legislative chamber where laws are made and officers conduct business – all student-sized. Some schools use far less expensive approaches, rearranging existing furniture and using simple cardboard signs to indicate venture and agency headquarters. Either way, this is real. It is not a simulation or a token economy. It is a dynamic complex, often surprising and always progressively sophisticated learning environment.

Dr. George Richmond conceived the program in his fifth-grade Brooklyn classroom in 1967 as a strategy to focus students on their education and motivate them to stay in school and learn.  In 1981, a school in Lowell, Massachusetts became the first to implement the MicroSociety program school-wide. Word about the program’s impact on students quickly spread. In 1992 the non-profit organization MICROSOCIETY was formed to offer professional development and technical assistance to schools that want to implement the MicroSociety program.  Today, hundreds of schools in over 40 states have implemented the MicroSociety program.

How does the MicroSociety program differ from the rest?

A variety of worthwhile programs use real world or experiential learning activities as a strategy for learning and motivation. Some use outdoor expeditions while others have a prescribed economics curriculum. Some use 1-day field trips to gain exposure to the real world and some focus specifically on business or entrepreneurship. Opportunities are designed for the classroom, or only for high school-aged youth.

What is unique about the MicroSociety program is that it is not a simulation or a token economy. It is real. The students hold real jobs and are paid with an internal currency. The school based economy sits within a fully functioning society – in miniature – and the society functions all year long. The skills needed in the 21st Century are not only taught in the classroom, they are practiced in real world transactions every day.

How does the MicroSociety program instill leadership and accountability?

As a MicroSociety program fan, Gary Heil, the internationally recognized expert on leadership, service quality and change management and former member of the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, touts MicroSociety’s real world learning strategies. In his book Leadership and the Customer Revolution Gary wrote:

“Of the many ways organizations are trying to improve the performance of their workers, increased accountability is one of the most important…[the] old-style accountability is …for complying to standard practice. [the new] accountability is for doing things as well as they can be done…”

“If Eighth Graders Can Do It, Why Can’t (or Don’t) We?
Imagine an eighth grade where students spend part of their days being a lawyer, banker, or congresspersons, and where many of the traditional responsibilities of teachers and principals are handled by student groups. Called MICROSOCIETY and founded by educator George Richmond, [the first school-wide] experiment in education began in the early 1980s in a racially troubled, poorly performing school in Lowell, Massachusetts. Here as in other MicroSociety schools, students, not teachers create a society to manage their learning experience. They pass and enforce laws, manage their own political system, sell goods and services using internal currency, set economic policy, and act as financiers and auditors. Now in its second decade, the school tests well above the national norm in reading and math, absenteeism is below six percent, and there are virtually no drop outs. In fact, students all over the area are clamoring to get in.

The question is, if a troubled school in a racially charged environment can dramatically accelerate learning by allowing students to design their own society and take significant control of their own education, why can’t we give our own front-line employees greater latitude in the design and control of their work?”

How do MicroSociety teachers integrate all subject areas while also meeting state standards?  

The MicroSociety ventures and agencies make standards more meaningful; the knowledge and basic skills required to succeed there are learned in the classroom and then reinforced “on the job”. These centers of real world application help teachers select what is critical to study and the school’s basic curriculum becomes fully integrated and mutually enriching. MicroSociety trainers help teachers create on the job activities for students that are directly aligned with state standards.

Do schools with more privileged children implement the program?

All children want to experience success and what’s more, they want to earn it. Our experience shows that all children – regardless of where they grow up or who their parents are – love to feel the satisfaction of a job well done. Ironically, privileged children, too dependent on the rewards from the work their parents do, are also at risk of not experiencing success. Large numbers of them pass through childhood without holding a single job or performing a full day of authentic work. A MicroSociety program puts authentic work back into the lives of children. It provides them with opportunities to be leaders and authority figures in a world of business – for-profit and not-for-profit. It gives them opportunities to develop real power, to discover work that they are good at, and with the chance to solve and address a broad range of political, social, and economic problems.

Since MicroSociety schools include a school-wide economy with its own monetary system, how do children learn ethics and character?

MicroSociety schools serve as living experiments in applied moral development. Part of the MicroSociety program design is the HEART strand, which emphasizes community responsibility, service hours, reflective activities and discussion as well as the importance of volunteerism in society.

“Both students and adults constantly face moral dilemmas that they must solve as they strive to build a “good” society. Do you want a micro-society with the extremes of poverty and wealth? Do you want a state based on law or one based on fear and violence? Should the micro-society’s government assist or ignore children who may not be succeeding? Do you want a democracy or a totalitarian state? Who can be a citizen and what burdens and responsibilities should citizens shoulder? What kinds of activities should be taxed? When does one put the community’s welfare ahead of the right of the individual? What civil rights should children enjoy in their micro-society? When has justice been done?”
            Richmond, George (1989), “The future school: Is Lowell pointing us toward a revolution in education? Phil Delta Kappan, vol.71, no. 3, November, pp. 227-229

What are the citizenship/civic education components of a MicroSociety Program?

“If you don’t do something in school, it only affects you. But if you don’t do something in Micro, your whole company is affected. If you don’t put the proper entries in the computer, you don’t just hurt the person who owns the bank account, you hurt the whole school.” 
            Mathew, 6th grade, alumnus

For students in the MicroSociety program, social studies become a living lesson in citizenship and government as they create and test their own theories and policies and are actively engaged in building their own society. Students apply academic and social skills while they learn about the world of work. Their jobs not only reinforce these basic skills, but also prepare them to be leaders. Students earn wages paid in the school’s currency, settle disputes in court, invest in product ideas, deposit and borrow money from the bank, pay taxes, tuition and rent, and purchase goods and services produced by their peers.

Can the MicroSociety program improve behavior and help prevent school violence?

The MicroSociety program empowers children to take active roles in solving the problem of school violence. The legislature enacts laws, Peacekeepers enforce the laws, and courts interpret the laws. Students create their own crime prevention task forces! They learn to take personal responsibility for improving the social climate in their schools. Within the MicroSociety program, when students learn the consequences of their actions and their behavior changes, improves and as attendance increases and behavior problems decrease, the overall climate of the school improves along with student achievement.

How does the MicroSociety program address the requirements of the No Child Left Behind legislation?

No Child Left Behind requires schools to serve all children in ways that enable each child to achieve satisfactory performance on measures of basic skills.  Because the legislation places specific emphasis on identifying the achievement of children according to economic background, race and ethnicity, English proficiency and physical, mental and or learning disability so that schools can take the steps necessary to be sure that children are not at a disadvantage and no child is left behind. The MicroSociety program creates a learning environment in which all children, regardless of conditions that may potentially disadvantage them, learn and develop to their potential. Every child has a job that provides the opportunity to be successful based on ability. The child who speaks little English might be a reporter charged with translating English articles into her native language. The child, who is autistic, may work in a venture that builds and expands social interaction skills and gives positive feedback. By integrating the MicroSociety program into the school’s curriculum, the overall school program addresses all children’s educational and developmental needs.  Every child, through their work in their society, has an equal opportunity for achieving personal success, for building motivation to succeed, and for valuing the future that educational success offers.