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TEACHING CHESS: A NEW PERSPECTIVE

It has increasingly become clear to me that most chess teaching is, at best, misdirected. The reason is that most professional chess teachers have an excellent knowledge of chess but little idea of what can be expected from their pupils, and whether or not they will be able to assimilate and process the information in a meaningful way.

From what we know about children's cognitive development we can demonstrate, by and large, that children in Infant Schools can probably learn how the pieces move, but that many of them will not, at least without significant adult assistance, be able to understand a fairly complex abstract concept such as Checkmate.

Children of Junior School age will be able to learn to play a complete game of chess, but, because they can only use simple logic rather than complex logic most of them won't be able to work anything out for themselves with any degree of accuracy. Children of this age usually learn chess in the first instance by a combination of memory and mimicry, and they cannot do this without proactive parental support. If you teach them something one week they'll have forgotten it by the next week.

I eventually realised that Primary School chess clubs, while providing children with much short-term enjoyment, were not working in terms of producing significant numbers of strong players, or players who maintained their interest in chess after Primary School. And so I decided it was time to move onto the next phase of my life.

The way we teach chess at present is based largely on knowledge and competition rather than skills development. I have recently been assessing the Dutch Steps System of teaching chess to children, which has been used very successfully in schools and chess clubs in Holland for many years, and is now making inroads into other Western European countries. This is essentially an exceptionally well thought-out skills development programme taking children in five steps (one per year) from learning the moves through to adult club standard. The basic course is now available in English, but the online version as well as much supplementary material is currently only available in Dutch and German. I hope that, by combining this method with the competitive chess available to children in this country and the online interactive acquisition of knowledge through chessKIDS academy schools will have the best of both worlds. I would be interested to hear from any schools, particularly in the Richmond area, who are interested in implementing this course.

The way we are teaching chess at present, it is only when children reach Secondary School age (and probably more like Y8/Y9 than Y7) that most of them will really be able to understand chess at a higher level. At that age they will understand the concept of being able to switch from the general to the specific and back again. At this age they will also be able to start studying and researching chess meaningfully on their own.

My aim in teaching chess, whether individuals or groups, is to identify the child's learning capabilities and work with the parents or school in providing an appropriate programme of chess education and activities.

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