COMPULSORY CHESS LESSONS IN EVERY SCHOOL – NOW THAT’S RADICAL
By Katharine Birbalsingh
Daily Telegraph
UK
Katharine Birbalsingh is the teacher who exposed the failings of the
comprehensive school system at the Conservative Party conference last
year. Katharine has been teaching in inner London for over a decade
and plans to set up a Free School in south London to help to serve
underprivileged children. Her book, To Miss with Love, is out now.
Follow @Miss_Snuffy on Twitter to see what Katharine’s doing now.
Katharine’s personal website is
Checkmate: it’s not a geek’s game, it’s a battle on a board (Photo:
Getty) Malcolm Pein in Birmingham runs a charity that promotes the
teaching of chess in schools. He has managed to get chess lessons
started in 70 primary schools – 1 hour per week. Children being
interviewed about their chess lessons insist that, in comparison,
computer games are “silly” and a “waste of time”. But chess makes
them play better with their friends, and improves their maths! These
are the kids talking…
Are they right? Is chess really what it is cracked up to be?
Believe it or not, Armenia has recently made chess compulsory in all
of its primary schools. Children from the age of six will learn chess
as a separate subject on the curriculum for two hours a week. Arman
Aivazian, an official at the Ministry of education, says that chess
lessons will “foster schoolchildren’s intellectual development” and
teach them to “think flexibly and wisely”. President Serzh Sarkisian
has been so inspired that he has committed around £1.5 million (a
large sum for an impoverished country) to the scheme. His intention
is that Armenia should rule the world of chess.
This is not just a pipe dream. In 1963, Armenian Tigran Petrosian
defeated Russian Mikhail Botvinnik to take the world chess title.
Armenia’s national team won gold at the biennial International Chess
Olympiad in both 2006 and 2008, and the country’s top player, Levon
Aronian, is currently ranked number three in the world.
But should chess really take the place of other national curriculum
subjects? I doubt Malcolm Pein thinks so. He simply believes that
young children should be taught the game and given the chance to
enjoy it. Teachers involved in his scheme notice its immediate
impact on children. They say the children are more aware of their
peers, better at problem solving, more forward-thinking and better
at building strategy: quite an extraordinary array of skills from
just a little game of chess!
It is said that the great chess masters have hundreds of different
chess boards memorised which they simply pull out of their head as
they play. Without super sharp powers of memory and concentration,
one cannot hope to win at a game of chess. So perhaps there is some
truth in it.
No one wants to deny a child the opportunity of learning the game
of chess. Contention only arises if one suggests that chess is more
important than something else. Is it more important than music or art?
What about maths or history?
Once I sat in the theatre in New York and next to me was a woman with
her 8-year-old little boy who wore funny glasses and shorts. He was
glued to his electronic chess board during the entire performance,
obsessed with winning against the computer. It was a sight to behold.
All I could think was, there is something different about that boy…
something I wish I could bottle up and give to all my kids back home.
Whatever one’s feelings on chess, what I find most endearing is the
comment of an ordinary Armenian man when interviewed about chess.
“Chess offers us hope – the chance of salvation. For in chess, every
pawn can become a queen.”
If chess does that, then compulsory it should be.
From: A. Papazian
www.katharinebirbalsingh.com.