Elementary school children playing chess in an afterschool program. Photo Credit: https://www.chess-site.com/chess-schools/
To most, chess is a board game that is played for leisure. However, chess is so much more than that and has been proven to provide those who play it with lots of important life skills.
By Joshua Altman
After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the chess world was uprooted and forced to make a full transition to the virtual realm. Surprisingly, this transition massively increased the popularity of chess. According to the gamer.com, the main online chess platform chess.com had “nearly 30 million members before the pandemic broke out in March, 2020. This grew to 57 million within the span of a single year. The number is currently over 75 million as of November, 2021.”In addition, according to the Daily Mail UK, there was a “world wide shortage of chess sets” last September as a result of the immense popularity surrounding chess. However, this popularity is based around people playing chess for leisure.Although it is amazing that chess is gaining this much exposure and engagement around the world, it is also disappointing that the conversation surrounding chess being a part of school curriculums, specifically in America, is seldom talked about, if at all.
I have been playing competitive chess for over ten years and in my experience I have found chess to have numerous benefits outside of the game itself. My problem solving ability improved, my concentration became better, and most importantly I became very self disciplined. These benefits I derived from chess have been found to be true in numerous studies. According to Healthline, playing chess can lead to intelligence, empathy, memory, planning and problem-solving skills, and the ability to be creative. In addition, according to the University of Memphis, “playing chess significantly improves children’s visual memory, attention span, and spatial-reasoning ability.”Furthermore, according to Connections academy, multiple studies of “elementary-school-age children in Texas, Los Angeles, New York, Pennsylvania, and Canada, showed that students who played chess showed more improvement in reading and/or math assessment scores than their non-chess-playing peers.” Thus, these studies beg the question: why isn’t there chess instruction in school and why isn’t it something that is seriously talked about?
Interestingly enough, Armenia, a country of three million, is the only country in the world which makes chess a required part of their national school curriculum. According to ChessBase News, “In 2011 Armenia made chess compulsory for second, third and fourth-graders.” On the basis that it “can dramatically improve pupils’ levels of concentration, boost problem-solving skills and develop their thought processes.”So far this mandate has succeeded as Armenia ranks third in the world in chess grandmasters per capita, and has won gold at two international chess olympiads, despite being a very small country. Armenia also has a 99.5 percent literacy rate and has a high school enrollment rate of 99.21% according to Nation Master.com. Since chess is shown to improve students’ reading, focus and ability to problem solve, it is plausible to suggest that these statistics could be linked to the chess curriculum mandate in Armenian schools.
These positive impacts of chess once again warrant the question, why isn’t chess a part of school curriculums in more countries around the world, especially America. There doesn’t seem to be a clear answer, nor any particularly strong opposition to the idea. This suggests that there isn’t a strong push being made for chess being in American school curriculums. However, I think there should be, as the benefits of chess shown previously are immense.
One argument against chess being in schools that I could envision someone making is that it simply doesn’t matter. And why should chess be taught in schools when it has no real world applications? I would respond to this statement by pointing out the facts, which show that chess actually does matter. As stated earlier, playing chess, especially as a kid, carries a multitude of benefits. Those being: Improved math and reading skills, problem solving skills, attention span, logical reasoning and many more. These skills are all very valuable for kids to learn and develop before leaving school and becoming an independent person in the world. Furthermore, studying chess can even raise one’s IQ. According to a Venezuealan Study, “4,000 second grade students found a significant increase in their IQ scores after only 4.5 months of systematically studying chess.”Thus, chess can have tremendous benefits for kids who learn it, and provide them with real world skills.
Another argument that I could envision someone making as to why chess shouldn’t be part of school curriculum is because it is not practical to squeeze chess instruction into students’ already busy schedules. Although this argument makes sense as students’ school days are very busy, the chess instruction would only be a part of the school curriculum from second through fourth grade. At this time students’ schedules are not nearly as busy as in middle and high school. In fact, across the United States, elementary schools have an average day length of 6.64 hours across 180 school days each year. So it would not be impractical to fit in 30 minutes of chess instruction three days a week into the school schedule.
This issue is of particular importance to me because over the course of my career as a competitive chess player, I have reaped the benefits of actively studying and playing chess. I remember when I was in 1st grade and I was deeply interested in chess, so I joined my school’s chess club. It was three times a week for 30 minutes, and the time was spent with a coach who gave direct and interactive instruction to the class. Everytime the club met, it was the highlight of my day. I loved the intellectual challenge that chess carried, and also the thrill of seeing my skills develop week after week. Eventually, I became so interested in chess, that I started practicing it both on my own and with a coach, outside of the allotted time periods where the club would meet. This allowed me to hone and develop my skills, and eventually reach a level where I would be able to compete in tournaments. However, the biggest benefit I derived from chess was that I became a much more engaged and serious student in school.
Even though I benefited a lot from the after school chess club at my elementary school, I had to play a lot outside of school to actually develop as a player. In addition, the school I went to was a small private school, which took chess seriously and had a curriculum for the club-which is incredibly rare. In North Carolina, a state that is known for producing talented chess players, “fewer than 10% of the 3,334 schools in NC have chess clubs”, according to an estimation by the Indermaur Chess Foundation. I believe that it is very important that chess is made a part of school curriculums across the United States so that kids are able to develop important skills that they will have for the rest of their lives.
Sources:
https://en.chessbase.com/post/why-che-should-be-required-in-us-schools-170413
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/profiles/Armenia/Education
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/chess-make-your-iq-higher
https://www.justlanded.com/english/United-States/USA-Guide/Education/The-American-school-system