Scientific conference: Chess should be taught at elementary classes
February 01, 2010
On the last day of January research and practice conference “Chess as an innovating school subject in educational system” started within the framework of international Moscow Open chess festival. Greeting speeches from RSSU rector Vasily Zhukov, the Federation Council and others government structure was read out to participants.
The head of the “pedagogic and chess work organization” department RSSU Aleksandr Kostiev told about the successful undertaking – publishing the information from chess education conference, which took place in RSSU, and a publication of premiere collection “Project “Chess in RSSU”. Volume 1. International research and practice conference materials “Chess in Russian and World educational system” (2009).
The leitmotif of the conference was the article “Russian Chess Education” of the First President of Sakha Republic (Yakutia), deputy chairman of the Federation Council Mikhail Nikolaev. This article was quoted in many speeches.
Aleksandr Schegortsov, Doctor of Social Sciences, director of Federation Council chairman deputy secretariat, impressed the audience with his speech. He noticed that chess should be involved not only in life of each school, but in each family life.
Reports from regions-leaders of chess education were also of great interest. Methodist Tatiana Partys (Tomsk) and director of Internet-center of chess skills Galina Kovaleva (Khanty-Mansiysk) speeches and presentations covered a lot of methodical aspects of general compulsory education. The main feature of Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous area is using information technology during the chess lessons, the main feature of Tomsk district – narrow facility preparation to general compulsory education and good covering of compulsory schools. Guests from Tomsk brought the just published substantial collection “Problems and prospects of chess education development in Russia: All-Russian research-to-practice conference data”.
The report of the deputy director of the school №758 Elvira Umanskaya (Moscow) was about chess lesson characteristics for “The Teacher of the Year” contest and also about the quality of teaching chess at elementary school.
The speeches of Alexander Timofeev, Vladimir Mechitov and others were dedicated to different issues arising at chess lessons at comprehensive schools. There was no special mood – there was a constructive, quite tough and emotional conversation among specialists.
Nevertheless, all the speakers were of the same opinion that a chess lesson at school is very essential. It should be in the main draw of the lessons and chess should be taught at elementary classes.
Source: http://www.moscowchessopen.ru/press/press_6_eng.php
Well its nice to see something useful instead of the tricks, Susan,perhaps its a good time in history to leave the Um smarter than you games alone,besides we have a Black President and i dont know how many childern in American school system and The Fischer Science,so we will see what happens,thanks for the updates Peace and Love.
Go is better. Unlike chess, go is not a dying game.
Modern chess teaches people to sift through data collected by computers more than think by themselves.
Go is so much more complicated than chess that even when computers are able to beat humans, the computer expertise will probably be so involved as to be useless.
Go also has distinct, unmatchable advantages over chess for pedagogy and competitiveness.
First of all, there are several fun, challenging go variants that beginners can immediately understand and play.
The overall pedagogy for the full game is much more highly developed than for chess, which is only natural because go is a much older game. Interesting fact,which shows the depth of go: there is a 300 year old go problem called “Dosetsu’s masterpiece” which is unsolved to this day.
It was part of a secret training manual for one “house” of go players; the problems exist today, but the solutions were not written down.
About 1000 hours of work was put into a solution by a famous Japanese professional with a team of students in the 20th century; recently a flaw in their solution was uncovered.
No problem in chess literature has comparable difficulty.
I haven’t gotten to the strongest advantage of go over chess, which is the inter-rank competitiveness.
Unlike chess, go has a workable handicap system which can let players of widely different levels play roughly even.
I can play a top ranked professional with 4 or 5 stones and get to play an exciting game which I might win. I can also play someone who is a near beginner giving him 9 stones, and I might lose.
Sure, teaching chess in schools will have benefits—-but so would teaching checkers. We don’t teach one dead game; why teach a moribund one?
I grew up with chess and I love the game. I know someone will assume I’m a patzer, but I’m a master who hardly ever plays any more;however, last time I played on ICC, 5 years ago, I got into the top 25 on the 5r rankings.
I took up go when I was around 30 and reached a similar level to master after a few years.
Comparing the two games, chess has incomparable beauty, but go is simply demonstrably more competitive and less chained down with opening theory than chess.
The scope for creativity in just the first 15 whole moves (half moves are used to count in go games, so this would be 30 moves, counting as a go player) is greater than the number of possible chess positions.
When you look at professional go games, you dont’ see the same positions over and over again; almost always, after 30 or 40 moves, you’re in a brand new position. Sure, players study opening theory, but they are not as bound by it as in chess.
There are areas in the US where go is taught in schools: Seattle is one place, and I expect also SF and LA. If you want something different for your kid, look into go.
If you’re in seattle you’re lucky because there is an excellent chess in the schools program run by IM Orlov as well. Get both going at your children’s school!
Go away.
Thanks, Anon #2
About Go…shall look into that.
Yeah thanks anon, ive been considering getting into go!, dont know much about the game but that Dosetsu’s Masterpiece sounds wonderful,however many of your chess observations are dated.Um trying to see if i can mixem up with e4 e5 f4 ef nf3 f5!? i dont know, we will see.