Chess in school

Hello all. This is Acepong. Here with a topic that some chess players are questioning. What do you feel about chess being mandatory in some schools? What do you think the benefits are for the youth population who play chess? Do you think it helps them more with school or does it just make them stronger in mind?

I don't believe it should be mandatory because then some people will feel like it is forced upon the,. However, there are benefits. I read somewhere that it helps memory, and exercises the brain. I also read that it improves test scores (I can't remember the source, sorry). As much as I would love to see more children play chess, making it mandatory just doesn't seem right to me.

Wonderful comment there. Indeed chess does increase mental strength and helps the brain grow stronger for tests. Must it be mandatory, no it should not.

I agre that chess should be offerred, but it shouldn't be mandatory (because obviously some kids will not like it at all), and I don't think it would really help with tests (nor do I think the purpose of offerring chess should have anything to do with test-taking).

http://www.chessvibes.com/reports/10-big-brain-benefits-of-playing-chess

This is the source I was talking about earlier. I'm not 100% sure if all of it is true (obviously not everything on the Internet is true) but I found it as an interesting read anyways. I at least think it will help kids more than it can hurt them.

Well, of course it increases chess strength.  But "mental strength"?...I doubt it.

Why do you doubt mental strength, it is proven that people who have played chess have become mentally stronger.

lol...No, it hasn't.  The phrase doesn't even mean anything in particular.

I can find proof and the phrase happens to mean exactly the way it sounds.

cannot!

Why do you doubt me Andy? Just curious. I mean I think that we can all agree that  chess increases the power of the mind which is considered MENTAL STRENGTH.

Post a link to your evidence.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_toughness‎

The Cognitive Benefits of Chess According to Other Relevant Studies

According to studies performed in various institutional settings, the game of chess has shown to yield a number of cognitive benefits in children and elderly alike. Here are some of them.

• Chess boosts brain power in kids. 

Kids, between grade school and high school, are seen to reap the most brain benefits from playing chess, according to experts. Chess has shown to enhance the analytical, critical thinking, and visualization skills most particularly those of second to third graders. This is attributed to the rapid development of children in these age groups.

• Chess improves IQ.

According to a study conducted in Venezuela, results have shown that children who took chess classes for 4 ½ months have increased their IQ points.  This conclusion is also backed up by a 2003 study of Murray Thompson, a Ph.D. Education student at the Flinders University in Australia. In his research, participants who played chess also demonstrated improved IQ levels. Thompson ascribes this to the concentration and logical thinking a chess game calls for.

• Chess enhances arithmetical skills. 

A 1998 study titled The Effects of Chess Instruction on the Mathematics Achievement of Southern, Rural, Black Secondary, conducted by James Smith and Robert Cage, has shown that chess is also crucial in the improvement of a child’s mathematical skills. The subjects, who were African-American high school students, were provided with 120 hours of chess instruction. The math proficiency test results reveal that the students from the experimental group showed better scores, in comparison to the results of the rest of the students who did not take the exam. James and Cage attribute the enhanced arithmetical skill of the subjects to the influence of chess on perceptual ability, which is a child’s capacity to deal and provide meaning to sensory stimulus. Dr. Eric Gottlieb of Rhodes University, on the other hand, cites objective reasoning (or the ability to think a few steps ahead) as the major reason why chess players are proficient in math.

• Chess hones verbal skills. 

From 1973 to 1974, Albert Frank, a school director based in Zaire, studied the effects of chess on children who took classes for two hours every week. His study, which is published in the book Chess and Aptitudes, showed more than stellar results. After the chess lessons, he concluded that those who practiced chess demonstrated improved verbal skills, as well as enhanced mathematical skills and administrative-directional tasks.  So how does chess enhance verbal skills, despite the absence of words or verbal communication in the game? Frank believes that chess improves verbal skills since it utilizes all the abilities of an individual, as many aptitudes or faculties of the mind are utilized whenever the game is played.

Chess sharpens critical thinking skills. 

In his 1995 study titled Chess in Education: Research Summary, Dr. Robert Ferguson (a cardiologist at the Northeast Georgia Diagnostics Clinic) had established that chess is instrumental in the enhancement of a child’s critical thinking and good judgment skills. Ferguson’s subjects, who were seventh to ninth graders, yielded a 17% improvement in the results.

• Chess boosts emotional intelligence and psycho-social skills.

Intelligence is not merely measured by IQ points; emotional intelligence plays a big role as well. Also known as EI, it is defined as the person’s ability to perceive, control, and evaluate emotions. The game helps bring more and more people together regardless of race and socioeconomic status, according to Dr. Rose Marie Stutts of the Freedom Chess Academy.  In effect, chess improves emotional intelligence, as well as psycho-social skills.

• Chess preserves mental acuity in the elderly.

While chess has already been proven to be highly beneficial for kids, studies have shown that it can help improve the mental acuity of the elderly as well. Chess hones an elderly player’s ability to determine cause and effect patterns, analyze the relationship between two ideologies, and understand key concepts. As such, chess has proven to be highly effective in protecting the elderly from neuro-degenerative conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Benjamin Franklin’s Viewpoint

A chess enthusiast himself, Ben Franklin explicitly emphasized in his essay,  On the Morals of Chess, how playing chess can enhance crucial skills of circumspection, careful observation, caution, percipience, and forethought. For instance, the experience of escaping near cul-de-sac positions can teach one to persevere amid adversity. He further insinuated that the the habits of the mind that are acquired in a particular domain (e.g. playing chess) can be moved to or adopted in other domains (e.g. real-life situations).

The Grandmaster Chess Research Project

Despite many researches already proving the impact of playing chess on a person’s cognitive skills, a new study called the Grandmaster Chess Research Project, has been aimed to further explore the “uncharted territories” of the game. A collaborative effort between Israel’s University of Haifa and grandmaster Boris Delfand, the research is intended to delve deeper into the relationship of chess to cognitive development. Another one of its objectives is to create an international training program for coaches and instructors, as well as Hebrew-dialect educational software to teach kids about chess.  Apart from its scientific and cognitive effects, its political, historic, and cultural aspects of chess will be tackled as well.

Kasparov and Polgar: ‘Thoroughbred’ Geniuses? Or ‘Byproducts’ of Chess?

It cannot be denied that two of the most intelligent people in the world are grand masters. Judit Polgar, who obtained extensive chess training from her father when she was a child, has a spectacular IQ of 170. Kasparov, who became an acclaimed international chess grand master at a mere age of 16, walks around with an impressive IQ of 190. But whether they acquired their intelligence by playing chess or by lineage hasn’t been clearly determined. One thing’s for sure, playing chess magnified their cognitive ability and catapulted them to the top of the list of the world’s smartest people.

But the flip side of the coin, as far as the essence of the intelligence is concerned, reveals a series of thought-provoking questions. Is there anything else besides playing chess that these GMs can be experts at? How smart is it to be super-smart and do nothing else but to sit on a chair and play chess? Granting these GMs were already genius by birth, is it safe to infer that playing chess has enhanced their overall intellect? To what extent?  All these lead to the more compelling question previously asked, “can chess really make a person smarter?”

There has been some research done that already point to the numerous benefits of playing chess on human cognition, but the puzzle still lacks some crucial pieces, especially since whether or not expert chess players are really capable of applying their problem-solving skills in practical situations hasn’t been established yet. In the meantime, we only have to be content with the answer– it possibly can.

I think that this pretty much covers it. Here is the link to those two long posts I put in. Have a nice day.

yourbrainatwork.org › Brain Health and Functionality‎

I turn a skeptical eye upon all such studies.

The real problem though is that MENTAL STRENGTH is an empty phrase.

Okay. No, I'm not gonna look up evidence, just too lazy. But I could, not gonna though. You can all find it on your own, its out there. There have been verifiable studies (worldwide) that show that children who start an activity like chess (chess specifically) perform better as they're learning other subjects. Math, reading, science, whatever. Many countries are currently experimenting with chess programs and everyone I've read about babe positive things to report.

Just a couple of common sense observations: if you take kids that are misbehaving, have troubled home lives where they have no guidance. whatsoever in a positive direction and give them chess lessons several things happen. All simultaneously. First, by actually studying something fun (hey, its a freakin board game not school work, yay!)

Ill finish now. Messed up my post.

If these kids learn to play something fun that MAKES them think and they soon learn that to improve (having a rating is kind of cool) is to study and give your best effort it DOES Cary over into other areas. Think about this: your in a class of 20 chessplayers and you don't want to be one of the worst there (hey, you goof off there you might have to take a class in something that really sucks) well, you HAVE to study to compete. That teaches so many thing. Will continue in a moment again

Again, I'm uninterested in "studies."  Studies merely seem to illustrate the current age's propensity to sound "scientific" about everything.  Studying photons I'll buy (although that is rather perilous in itself)...but humans studying other humans?  Uh-uh.  Too many variables and whatnot to make it at all trustworthy.

The problem with all of this talk of skills and so forth is that it is dehumanizing, and ignores the most important factor at all--indeed, the only one of any real importance:  the inner lives of the "subjects."

Of course, I find generalized schooling to be a decidedly dubious venture in the first place, particularly when it is of the universal variety.  Anything that takes place in such an environment is likely to induce some strange results, because few people want to be there in the first place.