Let's play school

A rare counting game for young children. The game piece shows five children, including one in a Dunce’s cap, with a blackboard of cutouts. Numbers slide across to make sums, and another gives the answer.
Part of the Children's Literature Research Collection.

This set appears to be the only known example of this game held by an Australian collecting institution.

Role playing games have always been popular choices with parents and educators. Some toys and games are very much replicas of items used by adults to prepare children for their roles in adulthood and children do gravitate towards playthings that imitate the activities of their care-givers.
This game is a little different in that it teaches addition whilst offering the chance to play 'schools', especially the plum job of the school teacher. Or the Dunce perhaps, which we would now see as something inappropriate to feature on a child's game lest they identify with the poor student, or single out another child to fulfill that role.