The Stereotype Approach to the Modeling and Simulation of an Elementary School

An approach to the modeling and simulation of evolving societies of individuals is advanced. The approach is based on the conjecture that a society of interacting stereotypes may retain important properties of behaviors of real societies of individuals. Each of the stereotypes in the model, although a simple deterministic approximation to real life, can be unique and be made to interact with other individuals. A model of a hypothetical six-grade elementary school is developed, and a detailed description of the model is given. A digital computer simulation of the school model is used to test the feasibility of the idea of model simplification through the use of stereotypes. An indication of the versatility of a simulation of interacting stereotypes in terms of the various outputting possibilities, the kinds of events that can be observed, and its potential for evaluating indicators is provided by a study of the results of the six-grade school simulation. In particular, observations are made of the effects of variations in the decision-making processes on individual students and faculty members over a ten-year period. The effect of changing the kinds of students enrolled in schools that are otherwise equal is also observed.