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- Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Written by Richard James, Chess for Schools: From simple strategy games to clubs and competitions is a great resource to help teachers encourage children to enjoy the benefits and challenges of the chess game Chess is a game of extraordinary excitement and beauty and all children should have the opportunity to experience it. Indeed, many claim that playing abstract strategy games such as chess provides a wide range of cognitive and social benefits- such as improvements in problem-solving ability and communication skills. However, Richard James argues that, because of the complexity of chess, most younger children would gain more benefit from simpler chess-based strategy games and incremental learning. In this practical handbook, Richard provides a wide range of games and puzzles based on these principles which are appropriate for primary schools and explains how teachers can identify children who would benefit from starting young. Richard also sets out how this approach can engage the whole community, including working with children with special needs, getting parents involved in learning and playing, and developing partnerships between primary and secondary schools. Chess for Schools shares the latest research into how children process information, combined with insights into international best practice in teaching chess to young children. The book demonstrates the transformative effect chess can have on older children, and how this can be promoted in secondary schools. Richard James offers valuable insights into the greater context of chess-playing, expressing how and why chess is a joy to so many worldwide andshares a series of resources and minigames for teachers to use with their learners. An ideal resource for primary and secondary school teachers wanting to introduce their pupils to chess.
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A
Praise for Chess for Schools
Chess for Schools explains the limits and the benefits of chess. Chess may not improve standardised test scores. But it can enrich lives, if taught properly. Renowned chess teacher Richard James describes activities, such as minigames which use some of the chessmen, that develop skills useful both on and off the chessboard. Chess for Schools also provides the terminology and the resources to move from beginner to competitive chess player. Schools now have a road map for their chess journeys.
Dr Alexey Root, author of Children and Chess: A Guide for Educators and United States Women’s Chess Champions, 1937–2020
When I began to read Chess for Schools, I was aware of two salient facts: that Richard James has tremendous experience teaching chess to children – in a classroom setting and as founder of the famously successful Richmond Junior Chess Club; and that he has been a consistent critic of much current chess teaching practice – particularly in primary schools, where he believes the teaching of chess is frequently pitched at an unrealistic level in relation to the cognitive development of the pupils. I was consequently well prepared for a text that might ruffle some feathers.
I was not disappointed. There are undeniably passages in the book which will make uncomfortable reading for some chess teachers and parents. Yet far from the feeling that Richard James is gratuitously courting controversy, I came to regard his unwillingness to pull punches with many in his target audience as a mark of the book’s uncommon integrity. His views are the product not only of great experience but also of a persistent quest to improve the outcomes for his pupils, both those with lofty chess ambitions and those who will enjoy a variety of relationships with the game. He has read widely and thought deeply, and the result is a coherent, very readable and well-structured argument which he makes with obvious passion. I didn’t agree with all his contentions, but I always found myself hungry to read on. The book will certainly prompt fresh thoughts and is also a treasure trove of practical advice and resources for chess instruction. I would Bstrongly recommend Chess for Schools to any chess teachers, parents and others with an interest in chess pedagogy.
Peter Wells, Grandmaster, FIDE Senior Trainer and co-author ofChess Improvement: It’s All in the Mindset
Richard James has created an essential tool for teaching chess in schools. Rooted in deep personal understanding and decades of experience, this approachable, practical guide breaks down the learning of chess and maps out an effective and robust teaching plan. Tackling both social and educational benefits, this book will help you establish a chess culture that seeps through your school.
Ellie Dix, Board Game Designer, owner of The Dark Imp and author ofThe Board Game Family
The author’s passion, experience and expertise in the field shines through every page. Whilst many readers will be drawn primarily to an invaluable and well-structured compendium of minigames and chess variants for introducing chess to younger children in a structured, gradual and progressive way (‘Slowly but surely’), the author’s robustly expressed (but, of course, contestable) critique of the two main approaches to chess in schools – to enhance academic outcomes or to breed future grandmasters – is worthy of serious consideration. He argues cogently not for chess in the curriculum or a weekly after-school club, but for the infusion of chess in a school culture. A veritable treasure chest of ideas, advice, opinions and resources for any teacher wishing to use chess to nurture the social world and well-being of their pupils and maybe, just maybe, to create the next Magnus Carlsen as a secondary gift too.
Professor Barry Hymer, former Chief Science Officer, Chessable, and educational consultant
CThis brilliant book is a three-layered cake. It is so well structured that you do not need to read it from end to end and you do not need ever to have touched a chess piece to find it worthwhile. The one key message for teachers is: if you can teach children, you can teach chess. That is, just as there comes a point when pupils will benefit from a specialist geographer, swimming instructor or mathematician, so it is with chess. The first layer sets the scene. It is easy to read, covers the history of chess and its place in education, what chess is – and, crucially, what it is not. The second layer is an impressively brief and comprehensive survey of the place of chess in the curriculum, and it’s not where you think it might be. This layer will make you think about curriculum development in broad terms as well as in relation to chess. It will make you think about the role of parents and parenting in children’s schooling. The book is properly, academically, referenced. The final layer is a manual of chess resources. The book stands alone as a good read without this section. My main revelation was just how many different games you can play with a chess set – it’s as if I had only ever learnt to play Snap with a pack of cards.
Tim Bartlett, former Head Teacher
E
Acknowledgements
I’d like to express my thanks to David Bowman and everyone at Crown House for commissioning this book and for helping turn my random thoughts into a coherent whole, and to the copy-editor, Joe Haining.
I must also acknowledge everyone involved in Richmond Junior Chess Club between 1975 and 2006 – members, parents, colleagues and friends – who have been the inspiration for everything I do. I’m also grateful to my students and colleagues at Hampton Court House between 2001 and 2012, who showed me what it really means to be a teacher.
Finally, I must mention all those chess teachers who, over many years, have pioneered the use of minigames in teaching chess to young children. Many of their ideas are incorporated in this book.
Contents
Introduction
I wonder what comes to mind when you hear the word ‘chess’. Maybe you learnt the moves when you were younger, as many children do. Do you see it as a slow, boring game? Watching a game of chess is often compared to watching paint dry. Or perhaps you’ve heard about Bobby Fischer and think all chess players are eccentric or difficult, if not crazy.
On the other hand, you may well have read articles claiming that ‘chess makes kids smarter’, that playing chess improves children’s maths and reading scores, their problem-solving abilities, their concentration, their creativity, their critical thinking. Perhaps that’s why you’re reading this book now. You might also be aware, through reading articles about prodigies and champions, that many children worldwide, often very young children, participate in competitions.
Individual stories may only tell single tales, but they also have tremendous power. In this book I’ll tell you the story of how chess transformed my life. You’ll find out later how chess can transform the lives of children in your school, and, in the epilogue, how it has transformed other lives as well as mine.
I decided to devote much of my life to helping children through chess and was fortunate enough to spend 30 years running the strongest children’s chess club in the UK. But once I started working in primary schools, I soon realised that what was happening there wouldn’t have helped a boy like me. I spent a quarter of a century investigating what schools were doing with chess, researching alternative approaches and questioning how, why, where, when and by whom chess should be taught. I eventually came up with a radically different, holistic approach to chess in schools that was designed to benefit all children. What’s more, it’s (virtually) free, doesn’t require valuable curriculum time and doesn’t need professional chess tutors like myself.
I’ll start off by telling you something about this wonderful game. Perhaps you’ve never learnt the moves yourself but, inspired by 2watching The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, you’d like to learn – and teach your pupils.1 You may know the rules of chess already. Or you may think you know the rules but are unsure or unaware of, for example, the en passant rule. If you want to make good decisions about chess in your school, you might want to familiarise yourself with the rules, or refresh your memory. While you’re doing so, ask yourself at what age you think the children in your school would be able to understand the concepts of checkmate and stalemate, and therefore be able to play a complete game.
At various points in the book, I make reference to ratings – relative indications of players’ strengths. In the appendices, I provide an explanation to help you understand what I’m talking about, as well as definitions of some of the terms I use to describe different types of chess. You may be surprised to learn that chess is by no means the only game you can play with a chess set.
You may want to run competitive chess within your school, or encourage children who excel at the game to play competitively outside school. Appendix 3 explains briefly what competitive chess is all about.
Chapter 1 provides background information about what chess is and what it isn’t. It also describes a little of the game’s history and the history of children within chess, in order to contextualise what’s happened in school chess since the 1990s.
Chapter 2 follows my journey into the world of education, looking at what currently happens in schools: the popular after-school clubs as well as the idea – promoted by local, national and international chess organisations – of putting chess on the curriculum. Are these effective in terms of generating in children a long-term interest? Are the claims made for the benefits of chess in enhancing children’s cognitive abilities justified?
As I spent more than a decade on the staff of a new school, I started reading about child development, education, parenting and much else. I came to realise that there were many more ways in which schools could make use of chess. Chapter 3, the heart of the book, 3looks at different ways in which primary schools can use the elements which constitute the game of chess. Games, puzzles and other activities using subsets of chess can be utilised in many ways for many purposes, providing social as well as educational benefits for many children. As such activities can be learnt in a few minutes, they are accessible for all schools and teachers.
There will be children in any school who will gain particular benefit from chess: most notably children with a wide variety of special needs. How can you use chess to help these children? In my opinion, because of its complexity, playing a full game of chess is, by and large, more suited to older than younger children, so I explain how secondary schools can encourage children to continue playing the game or take it up for the first time. Given the wealth of resources available online, this needn’t cost you anything at all: all you have to do is get the message across.
The chapter also contains a lot of advice on the different ways in which you could run school chess clubs and provide opportunities for competitive play, either within or outside your school community. Finally, I provide you with my complete (at the time of writing) minichess activities pack: games and puzzles suitable for use within primary schools.
Chapter 4 offers a wide range of further resources: organisations, links to websites, books and films – any or all of which might inspire you to take the wonderful game of chess further and help your children discover this exciting and engrossing pastime.
Chess transformed my life, and there will be children everywhere whose lives will be transformed by discovering the excitement and beauty of the game. Just saying ‘let’s do chess’ and starting a club really won’t work. Chess in schools will only be effective with a more proactive approach, and I hope that reading this book will convince you that it’s both cheap and easy to offer children a lifetime of pleasure and intellectual stimulation. As Dr Siegbert Tarrasch, one of the greatest players of the late 19th century, wrote: ‘I always have 4a slight feeling of pity for [anyone] who has no knowledge of chess … Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make [people] happy’.2
1The Queen’s Gambit, dir. Scott Frank [Limited series] (Netflix, 2020).
2 Siegbert Tarrasch, The Game of Chess (New York: Dover Publications, 1988).
Chapter 1
Setting the Scene
Starting out in chess
I was born in July 1950 and grew up in south-west London. Although I was brought up in a middle-class family, my parents both had working-class origins. My father started his working life as a painter and decorator, served in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War and later qualified as a teacher of arts and crafts.
At the age of 5 I went to the local Church of England primary school. It was immediately obvious that I wasn’t like my schoolmates. I’d already learnt to read from bus adverts and road signs (my mother always said I taught myself) but struggled socially, having difficulties connecting and communicating with other children. I also had serious problems with physical activities that involved both gross and fine motor skills, balance and coordination. Today, children like me would be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and developmental coordination disorder (dyspraxia), but in the 1950s these things were not yet understood. The only diagnosis I received was of a speech disorder, and for a time a speech therapist visited my house to provide help and support. As it was, I spent my childhood being physically and emotionally abused by my father (a good man with one fault – a short temper – who did what was thought to be right at the time) and bullied at school for being unable to do things that others took for granted.
I did well academically and won a free place at Latymer Upper, one of London’s top academic schools. At first I showed an aptitude for learning languages, as a result of which I took my public examinations a year early. But then I hit problems: it became clear that I had what you might consider a higher-level learning 6disability which would probably best be defined today as a form of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Although I read a lot and remembered most of what I read, any sort of serious study would make my brain freeze. I only achieved low grades in my O and A levels and ended up studying computing at what was then a college of technology. Although I just about completed my degree, I had no idea how – or even if – I was going to get a job due to my poor interview skills. As it happened, I was lucky enough to get the first job I applied for and stayed in the same job until chess took over my life, but that’s a story for another time.
While academia may have been a struggle, I fortunately had a parallel life in chess where I was accepted for what I was and encouraged to take part in matches and tournaments. For Christmas in 1960, Santa brought me a pocket chess set. My father knew the moves but nothing else: once I could beat him, he wouldn’t play me anymore. My mother never learnt nor had any interest in doing so. On my first day at Latymer the following September, my parents advised me to take my pocket set with me as a communication tool. If I stood there holding it, another boy would challenge me to a game. They were right as well: I soon found an opponent; however, the first game I played, he captured all my pieces and mated me with two rooks. I also played on the train to and from school, and when my parents saw that I was becoming seriously interested they bought me a book so that I could teach myself to play properly. Within a few years I was able to beat everyone in my form at school, so I was taken along to Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club: I’m still a member now.
I never felt I belonged in the real world, but in the world of chess I was able to make friends with whom I had much in common. I never wanted to be a grandmaster but was more than content to be what I was: a reasonably proficient club player (I’ve played at about 2000 strength since the mid-1970s). By the time I finished my studies, I knew that chess was going to be my life.
It was now the summer of 1972, the time of the World Championship match between the Soviet champion Boris Spassky and his controversial American opponent Bobby Fischer. Chess was on the front page of all the papers and suddenly everyone wanted 7their children, or at least their sons, to learn. Several of my parents’ friends asked if I could teach their children to play. After the bullying I’d suffered at school I vowed never to have anything to do with children again, but I’d also learnt that it was better to avoid trouble by saying yes rather than no. So, reluctantly, I became a chess teacher.
Much to my surprise, I enjoyed teaching and my pupils made, in some cases, considerable progress. When I was a child, many of my peers had despised me because I was different, but now I was an adult it was precisely because I was different that children liked me. I started thinking it would be good to start a children’s chess club; another member of Richmond & Twickenham Chess Club, a remarkable man called Mike Fox, was also involved in teaching chess to children and had the same idea as me. In autumn 1975 Richmond Junior Chess Club (RJCC) opened its doors for the first time. The full story of RJCC is again a tale for another time. Let’s just say that, although Mike left 4 or 5 years later when his job took him to Birmingham, the club became successful beyond my wildest dreams.
What chess isn’t
Chess transformed my life – and it can transform other lives as well. If you’re a teacher, there will be children in your school whose lives could be transformed by chess in so many ways. In order for you to find and encourage them, it will be helpful if I give you some idea about the nature of chess.
Many people, including parents and teachers, have a rather negative opinion of chess as a game, and also of those who play it (nerds, loners, antisocial, almost exclusively male) – but when encouraged, as we’ll see, by national and international chess organisations, they perceive it as something that is ‘good for children’, that ‘makes kids smarter’.
I’m sure you’ve often heard sports commentators saying, during cagier passages of play, ‘it’s a game of chess out there’. This might 8make you think that chess is a slow game where not a lot happens, which perhaps makes it rather dull.
Then there’s what you might think of as Schrödinger’s Chess: chess is simultaneously a very hard game only suitable for brainboxes, and a game which is so simple and trivial that it’s suitable for mass participation by very young children. This reminds me of the quote sometimes attributed to the great pianist Artur Schnabel with regard to Mozart: ‘too simple for children but too hard for artists’.1
Let’s look at some of these views.
Chess is slow
Chess may indeed not always be the quickest game. If you want, you can play by email (in the past, people even played by post!) with several days allowed for each move. On the other hand, you can play online ‘bullet chess’ where each player might take a minute, or even less, to play the complete game, which might equate to 1 second or less per move. It really is your choice: you can play at whatever speed you choose. Chess games certainly can be long: a typical game might last 40 moves or so (in chess we count a move as White’s turn followed by Black’s turn, so 40 moves can be seen as 80 turns). This is one reason why you might think it’s not always suitable for very young children.
Chess is boring
It’s true that nothing will appeal to everyone. Some people find football boring while others don’t. The point about chess is that, unlike football, and unlike many other activities, it’s knowledge 9based. Knowledge is not just the rules of the game but information accumulated over the past thousand years or more about the best way to play; in the computer age, that knowledge is increasing incrementally. You can enjoy watching a Premier League football match without being good at football, or appreciate a Beethoven symphony without knowing anything about music, but you really need to be a reasonably good player to appreciate a chess game. Having said that, there are many brilliant online broadcasters whose commentaries, either in real time or after the game, will be both informative and inspiring for anyone rated around 1500+ or, in some cases, 1000+.
Chess is for young children
Large-scale chess tournaments for pre-teens down to 5-year-olds are certainly very popular and are promoted for various reasons. The promoters might want to introduce more people to competitive chess. They might see it as a way of making the game more inclusive and less elitist. They might want to identify prodigies and champions. Sometimes they might want to make money (well, we all have bills to pay). Most of these aims are admirable, but my opinion – based on many decades’ experience of junior chess competitions – is that a lot of promoters are well intentioned but misguided. Although academically inclined young children with supportive parents will benefit from these competitions, I believe that, because of the game’s complexity and reliance on domain-specific knowledge, serious competitive chess is, in general, more suitable for children of secondary school age and adults.
Chess is for brainboxes
If you promote competitive chess in primary schools, the children who are playing regularly at home against parents who are knowledgeable about the game will come out on top. They will very often also be the children who are top of the class, typically – but 10not always – excelling at maths. If you promote the game in secondary schools, when children have become independent learners and can (if they’re interested) teach themselves, anyone can do well. I have a lot of friends from non-academic backgrounds who developed an interest in chess at secondary school (even those who weren’t academically strong enough to get into grammar schools) in the 1960s and 1970s, later becoming excellent players and remaining active in the chess world today.
Chess is for nerds
If you look at junior chess tournaments, it certainly isn’t the case that all participants could be categorised, however affectionately, as nerds. Very often the school chess and football teams comprise many of the same children.
Chess isn’t for girls
Sadly, the vast majority of competitive players are male, and there are various reasons why this might be the case. Chess clubs as we know them today have their origins in the gentlemen’s clubs of the late 18th and 19th century; the game later became popular in working men’s clubs as well, so it has always been associated with male rather than female spaces. As a result, even today, fathers will sometimes teach the moves to their sons but not their daughters. You might also consider that the warlike nature of the game – a battle between two armies – may be more attractive to boys than to girls. In my day, certainly, it was boys rather than girls who enjoyed playing with toy soldiers.
My view is that there’s no reason why girls can’t play chess just as well as boys. Schools can and should play a part in getting more girls involved in chess, perhaps by running separate competitions for girls or by ensuring that chess teams are mixed.
*
11Many people also have misapprehensions about the nature of chess and the skills required to succeed.
Several decades ago, RJCC was invited to send a group of children to the Barbican Conservatory to help in the making of a TV programme about chess. This was part of a series, fronted by a pair of ‘alternative’ comedians, which, each week, featured a different children’s activity. One of the presenters had recently broken his leg and was using a wheelchair. The first thing that happened was that we were asked to set up a mock tournament during which the wheelchair-bound presenter rode around knocking all the boards over. Some of the children were then asked how they distracted their opponents during a game and were fed answers like ‘kick them under the table’ and ‘spill my coffee over them’. The whole thing was a travesty of chess and a bad experience for all concerned. A chess player behaving like that would be thrown out of any club or tournament.
Recently, I was contacted by someone who enjoyed playing poker and wanted to learn chess, thinking it was something similar. Now many chess players (not me, though) also enjoy playing poker, but after I explained that chess – unlike poker – is a game of ‘complete information’, she changed her mind and I never heard from her again. Yes, there are some occasions, at higher levels, where bluff comes into play (opening choices, swindles), but you have to reach proficiency first.
There’s very little luck in chess: you don’t toss coins, throw dice or draw cards. I know exactly what pieces you’ve got and where they are. You know exactly what pieces I’ve got and where they are. If you play better than me, you’ll win. If I play better than you, I’ll win. It’s essentially a game of knowledge and skill.
A few years ago, I had a request from a young private pupil, echoed by his father. Could I teach him how to win when he was a queen down? I asked if he wanted to know about queen sacrifices. He said no: he kept on losing his queen early in the game and wanted to know how to win from there. (Of course, the answer is simple: don’t lose your queen.) His chessboard vision was good, so this appeared to be a problem with lack of concentration or 12impulse control. Neither he nor his father, who played a bit, realised two vital points: firstly, that superior force (usually) wins; and secondly, that good players don’t make one-move blunders.
At about the same time, I was teaching the grandson of a colleague – a passionate and knowledgeable educator who had founded three schools. The boy was too young and immature, and there was no reinforcement at home, but I did the best I could to entertain him. On one occasion his grandmother came into the room and told me, ‘Chess is all about memory’. Likewise, parents often say to me, ‘My son’s got a tournament coming up: can you teach him some traps?’ They think chess is all about memorising traps and springing them on unsuspecting opponents. Yes, children enjoy learning Scholar’s Mate and similar traps and using them to score quick victories. Some older players, likewise, enjoy memorising trappy but unsound openings. The stronger you get, the more important memory becomes, and it clearly helps a lot if, like Magnus Carlsen, you have an eidetic memory, but it’s not really what chess is all about. Memory without understanding is pointless, and understanding requires much greater maturity than memory.
One reason why parents and teachers encourage children to start ‘big chess’ too soon can be put down to a failure to understand the true nature of the skills required to play a proficient game.
You’ve seen what chess isn’t. Now let me tell you what chess is.
What chess is
At one level, chess is an endlessly fascinating game which offers its devotees a lifetime of enjoyment and intellectual stimulation. But, much more than that, it’s a unique and powerful combination of sport, art, science and struggle. Let’s look at each in turn.
