World peace more than just 
an odyssey of the mind

   World peace. It’s a universal goal, but the proposed ways of achieving it can be very diverse. The Odyssey of the Mind team from Notre Dame Academy in Duluth showed the world their way to achieve it and won third place last month in the world competition at the University of Maryland.

   Odyssey of the Mind is an international educational program that provides creative problem-solving opportunities for students all over the world. Students apply their creativity to solve problems within certain restrictions involving technology, engineering and interpretation of literature. The OM team presents their solution by way of a skit, which must also tie in with a theme. 

   This year’s OM theme featured sports and this team from Notre Dame, sixth-grader Patrick McKenna, fifth-graders Sean Egan, Robby Johnson, Will Summerlin and David Zink, and third-grader Joey Johnson, participated as the Peace Keepers, projecting ways to keep the ball rolling in the direction of world peace. For example, to fulfill the OM technical requirements of moving an object, the boys remotely hurled a tennis ball made to look like a bomb into a container labeled “neutralizer” to symbolize the world never needing bombs again. Similar simulations included a silver ping pong ball symbolizing a bullet and a soccer ball symbolizing a land mine detector in honor of Princess Diana, tying in with real world peace efforts. For the grand finale, the Peace Keepers shot a hockey puck with a peace sign into a goal decorated to look like a globe.

   “As the peace sign rolled into the world, they achieved world peace. The judges loved it,” said coach, Lona Zink.

   But Zink believes OM provides an even more meaningful way to lead to world peace.

“OM brings kids of many nations together to actually design things with a common goal to help people. Kids get to know each other and as they become adults, if there are ever diplomatic issues between these nations, they’ll remember how people from other cultures think.”

   OM also includes a spontaneous competition, in which the Peace Keepers took first place.

   “You never know what you are going to get with spontaneous,” said team member Robby Johnson. “You walk into the room where several judges are seated, and there are random materials placed in front of you. The judges present you with a problem, give the team a minute to talk about the problem, and then give the team maybe five minutes to solve that problem with the materials.” 

   The latter accomplishment is remarkable in that it requires tremendous rapport among the team members. Some teams work together for years to build this cerebral synchronism, but for the Peace Keepers, it was their very first year together, and their age range was more diverse than most teams.

   My dictionary defines odyssey as any distant wandering. Maybe with the wanderings of minds like the OM team from Notre Dame Academy, world peace may not be that far off.

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