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Richard James, a chess teacher from England, has recently published a book about teaching chess. The title of the book is the title of this thread. I can add some exact quotes later, but for now just a thread on this topic may be of interest to many chess teachers.
James notes the way chess is taught in the "Anglosphere" (UK and USA in particular and probably Canada as well) and contrasts that with the methods used in the rest of Europe. He comes to the conclusion that the Europeans have it right. What do you think?
In the UK and the US, the typical sequence of events is that a child learns how the pieces move at home and then joins a chess club. In contrast, he says, the European approach is that the child learns chess correctly, from the beginning, and for younger children the actual process of learning to move all the pieces may take a year or longer. During this time, their learning is deeper and more long lasting. James also claims that the likelihood that young players will stick with chess is strengthened, the non-chess benefits are more assured, and so on.
I am not doing justice to his arguments but I thought I would introduce the topic anyway. Have at it!
Dogs will bark, but the caravan of chess moves on.
Interesting. Reminds me about Gladwell's reporting in Outliers that math is easy for asian kids because of a coherent link between numbers and language - i.e. eleven is ten-one, twelve is ten-two etc. Less arbitrary words to remember.
Learning to play chess by yourself is, indeed, full of arbitrary stuff. First, you learn that pieces cannot jump over other pieces. But then there's an exception: the knight. And then there's another exception: castling. And then, there's another, sort of exception with en passant.
Separately learning how each piece moves might be a better approach, even if it takes a longer time to get started for real games.
I haven't read the book but having lived in Hungary for almost 5 years I have my own observations.
-The alleged superiority of European chess over North American chess is a myth.
-Here in Hungary kids learn chess at home, school, from friends just the same as anywhere else
play on ICC like anywhere else
The subtle differences are for example
My teammate FM Mihok,Laszlo(a retired engineer) taught his kid Olivier who is now candidate GM Olivier Mihok(2450-ish).
I just played Peter Gymesi(1646) in the Budapest Open. He'll probably have his uncle Zoltan(2675) look over his game and get some tips.
The differences are not obvious at first but kids do not have access to top class English chess literature as the prices are very expensive. Players here have bootleg copies of Houdini, Rybkka, Chessbase and DVDs etc.
Hungarian Juniors do not ready access to annotated games of Hungarian players except from the printed monthly magazine. Budapest Junior play for FIDE ratings only as there is no national rating system. The most common way to get a rating is playing in 90/G weekenders that I play for $15-20.
Sandbagging is pointless as the prizes are so small.
Now it's normal for chess teacher/coaches to teach with laptops and for keen players to bring their laptops/coaches to tournaments.
There is a national chess school(The Maroczy School) with the top group taught by GM Josef Horvath. If you have any sign of talent, that's where you go. I played in a small out of town open in Harkany once with about 100 players. To my shock GMs Horvath was there with his group; plus GM Pinter with his; plus at least three other IMs and their students.
There is more tournament chess in Toronto and Montreal than in Budapest. However, Budapest has more team events with supporting clubs. Budapest has monthly RRs from First Saturday but locals do not usually play the non-norm events. Those Hungarians are house players helping the organizer get entry from the tourist players. They play for free while the foreigners get gouged.
There are 3-4 normal RRs per year for normal Hungarian residents at modest prices. There are two 'big' Opens-The Perenyi Memorial and the Budapest Open. The Spring Festival is now just a minor event drawing fewer people than a weekend open. The Toronto weekenders are quite large comparison.
Promising juniors are permitted not to attend school and just sit final exams.
Expectations are high for promising players. Talents are expected to be IMs/GMs and this is just normal. It's just a question of how they will be when the titles and norms will be achieved.
Thanks for the comments Michael. The book by Richard James really focuses on how chess is taught, from the beginning, and addresses issues like how many children stay or stick with chess, and not abandon it after a few years, the non-chess benefits to learning chess, and the methods for introducing children to chess to achieve these and other goals.
Dogs will bark, but the caravan of chess moves on.
Thanks for the comments Michael. The book by Richard James really focuses on how chess is taught, from the beginning, and addresses issues like how many children stay or stick with chess, and not abandon it after a few years, the non-chess benefits to learning chess, and the methods for introducing children to chess to achieve these and other goals.
i've read james' work. it's interesting for bring up the average student's interest, but does not work for higher achievers in my opinion. for the most part i think his expectations are set too low. a year to learn to move the pieces is just a really long time. if it take a child a year to learn to move the pieces, they are probably not ready to learn chess anyways, and then what's the benefit. if the kid can't learn to move the pieces in a few weeks i don't think they are really ready for chess. and if your'e old enough to handle chess and you don't pick up how the pieces move in a few weeks, you'll probably never stick with it. most kids i've know learn how the pieces move and remember it within a day or two, even at 4 or 5 years old. they may not know en passant, but that's not necessary for 99% of the game.
further he asserts that you need to be 8 or 9 to fully be able to put togther a whole game, and even then he says it's really incomplete. all you have to do is look at the U8 section at the NAYCC. those kids are 6 and 7 and they are putting together whole games, and playing sophisticated endgames.
in my opiinoin most kids drop out of chess in north america as they get older not because of poor instruction, but because other activities take over, and the amount of time chess takes and the length of tournament makes it impossible to do serious chess and also be on the soccer, baseball or basketball teams, especially if the sports teams involve travel.
Ive also read Richard James and heard that philosophy over and over. I agree with Joshua - let the kids learn quickly and then make it a barrel of fun for them (for example:Andrew Peredun and also the Mississauge/Hamilton group and many other groups across Canada). I think Richard James wants serious students. I think there needs to be two levels of youth chess out there. First level: intense fun. Next level: give the kids who are interested exposure to serious chess and alllow them to continually go back and have fun. This is the way to cultivate serious players. Emphasis on fun and then gradual exposure to serious concepts.
I agree that the chess dropout rate has more to do with the things you mention (competing activities) than with method of instruction. But also important is the cultural place of chess in our society. Many parents and kids have no problem making a big commitment (many hours of practice, travel) to sports such as hockey or basketball even when the kids are in their mid to late teens and a possible career as a pro is highly unlikely. It's seen as a beneficial experience that complements academic work (i.e. the 'scholar-athlete'). But with chess, there is a strong motivation early on based on the belief that the game promotes academic success (chess and math!), but by around age 16, that largely disappears. Check out the relative sizes of the different age groups (especially among girls) at the recently completed NAYCC event.
I agree that the chess dropout rate has more to do with the things you mention (competing activities) than with method of instruction. But also important is the cultural place of chess in our society. Many parents and kids have no problem making a big commitment (many hours of practice, travel) to sports such as hockey or basketball even when the kids are in their mid to late teens and a possible career as a pro is highly unlikely. It's seen as a beneficial experience that complements academic work (i.e. the 'scholar-athlete'). But with chess, there is a strong motivation early on based on the belief that the game promotes academic success (chess and math!), but by around age 16, that largely disappears. Check out the relative sizes of the different age groups (especially among girls) at the recently completed NAYCC event.
part of the problem is that chess is a individual activity. although some sports are individual activities too, there are many more that are team sports, and individual sports are often made into team sports. while chess does have teams, it's much less a factor. further i think you're right regarding the motivation of chess promoting academic success. but when you get to 13-14(beginnng of high school), the emphasis switched to academic success since, unless you are master level or higher, grades and other extracurriculars are going to matter more to colleges. the presumption also is that any benefits of chess are already there by that time i think.
further, doing well in school often require hours spent doing homework. if your extracurricular activity is chess, then that means you finish your homework and spends hours more studying chess, versus exercising and building interpersonal skills on a team. top level players may chose the chess study route, but that means to really compete with them, you pretty much have to as well, and if you're not near the top why bother.
Even in a field such as finance, being a good chess player is interesting, but it doesn't get you that far if you don't have interpersonal skills and aren't a team player. As an employer in the finance field, i would be more impressed with a kid who did well academically and was on varsity hockey and had work experience than a kid who was on the chess team and did well academically. of course if you did all three then that would be impressive.
It is relative in terms of a real time. It depends at what age a kid starts to learn chess. Try that with a 2 year old girl LOL and probably the same one-year material could be covered in one day with a teen :)
Even in a field such as finance, being a good chess player is interesting, but it doesn't get you that far if you don't have interpersonal skills and aren't a team player. As an employer in the finance field, i would be more impressed with a kid who did well academically and was on varsity hockey and had work experience than a kid who was on the chess team and did well academically.
Why's that? Do you think a hockey player has more drive to win?
Team player doesn't cut it with me. Some players on teams simply "float". If a chess player floats he mostly loses. Of course, if finance means dealing with other people's money, maybe it doesn't really matter.
Joshua's comments on competitive hockey, versus chess, experience say it all. Successful team sport athletes are seen to have attributes that translate well into the business world (team player, leadership skills, 'grit', good interpersonal/social skills...). Chess on the other hand, has a somewhat tainted image here (loners, socially awkward, self-absorbed, 'geeky' etc - although I suspect that's NOT true of many of our current crop of strong young players) that doesn't jibe with the corporate world. Mind you, over the years a number of strong young players have found successful employment in the world of finance, most notably U.S. GM Ken Rogoff, also (I believe) Canadian Pascal Charbonneau.
Joshua's comments on competitive hockey, versus chess, experience say it all. Successful team sport athletes are seen to have attributes that translate well into the business world (team player, leadership skills, 'grit', good interpersonal/social skills...). Chess on the other hand, has a somewhat tainted image here (loners, socially awkward, self-absorbed, 'geeky' etc - although I suspect that's NOT true of many of our current crop of strong young players) that doesn't jibe with the corporate world. Mind you, over the years a number of strong young players have found successful employment in the world of finance, most notably U.S. GM Ken Rogoff, also (I believe) Canadian Pascal Charbonneau.
to be clear i dont' necessarily agree with the popular perception of chess, and there are always exceptions to the rule, but in terms of an explanation for why people drop out, that's a bigger factor than anything else IMO.
on the other hand poker players get a lot more respect since you're playing the person, not the board, and thus mimics real life more closely than chess. and contrary to popular belief int he chess community poker is not a game of chance, over a longer time frame it's very much a game of skill, although any individual hand may be due to chance, which is also much more like the real world.
Chess on the other hand, has a somewhat tainted image here (loners, socially awkward, self-absorbed, 'geeky' etc - although I suspect that's NOT true of many of our current crop of strong young players) that doesn't jibe with the corporate world.
Maybe you could explain something to me. Given the image you paint of the chess scene, why are parents so anxious to introduce their children to the game? I don't get it.
I've served in executive positions of over the board clubs (VP and President), administered and rebuilt the membership of the Canadian correspondence organization, directed more tournaments and more thousands of players than I care to recall over the year and met more nice people than I likely would have met in any of the other sports. I also did some teaching when I was much younger but never charged money.
The picture you paint might be anywhere from maybe 2 to 5 percent of the players I've had dealings with. 10 percent of players gave me about 90 percent of my problem when organizing.
Some people are shy but I never looked at that as a serious problem. Possibly others might call it socially awkward but I don't.
Most of the chess players I know or knew were successful in the line of work they chose. Mostly what a good chess player doesn't know he can figure out.
and contrary to popular belief int he chess community poker is not a game of chance, over a longer time frame it's very much a game of skill, although any individual hand may be due to chance, which is also much more like the real world.
That's a popular belief in the chess community? What makes you think that?
"Tom is a well known racist, and like most of them he won't admit it, possibly even to himself." - Ed Seedhouse, October 4, 2020.
Let me just confess that I haven't finished reading the book yet. Nor have I done the sort of careful comparison of the teaching manuals that is needed.
i've read james' work. it's interesting for bring up the average student's interest, but does not work for higher achievers in my opinion. for the most part i think his expectations are set too low. a year to learn to move the pieces is just a really long time.
If you've really read his book then you know that these aren't his expectations at all. The whole point is to prolong, for younger children in particular, the period of learning to play chess. During this longer period of time, and in contrast to the approach in which children are taught how to move the pieces as quickly as possible, the learning about chess is deeper. By the time the kids can play a full game with all the pieces, they actually do something beyond random shuffling of the pieces. We are talking about all the kids, not just the talented ones.
Originally posted by Joshua Hu
... further he asserts that you need to be 8 or 9 to fully be able to put togther a whole game, and even then he says it's really incomplete. all you have to do is look at the U8 section at the NAYCC.
James is looking at the results of chess teaching in the aggregate. That is, what happens with the thousands of kids who are taught chess? Why do so many drop out? And so on. Making generalizations about the tiny elite that play in the NAYCC kind of misses the point. He's looking at the big picture.
Originally posted by Joshua Hu
... in my opiinoin most kids drop out of chess in north america as they get older not because of poor instruction, but because other activities take over, and the amount of time chess takes and the length of tournament makes it impossible to do serious chess and also be on the soccer, baseball or basketball teams, especially if the sports teams involve travel.
They not only drop out of any competitive chess, they stop playing altogether, says James. He is looking at the thousands and thousands of kids that are taught chess. And the reason for that goes deeper than other activities taking over. James claims it has to do with how children reach a kind of ceiling in their learning, they do not improve any more, and, as a result, they are frustrated with the lack of progress and abandon an activity in which they are not improving.
These other activities can be very expensive and chess, in comparison, is much cheaper. "One in three Canadian families can’t afford to enrol their kids in sports and recreation." So there are plenty out there who could be playing chess. Why aren't they?
Ive also read Richard James and heard that philosophy over and over. I agree with Joshua - let the kids learn quickly and then make it a barrel of fun for them (for example:Andrew Peredun and also the Mississauge/Hamilton group and many other groups across Canada). I think Richard James wants serious students. I think there needs to be two levels of youth chess out there. First level: intense fun. Next level: give the kids who are interested exposure to serious chess and alllow them to continually go back and have fun. This is the way to cultivate serious players. Emphasis on fun and then gradual exposure to serious concepts.
Thanks for the reply Hans. Making things fun is critical, there's no doubt about that. James divides chess clubs into three kinds of services or groupings. He talks about
1) a club for beginners, teaching from scratch.
2) a drop in club. This is the typical NA chess club, no instruction is provided, children may or may not be welcome, and this is also the most "fun". However, as I've noted above, James claims this may simply lead to frustration and abandonment of chess.
3) an advanced club. teaching goes on, but at a higher level, in preparation for tournament play.
So, he's noting the same kind of divide that you have. He just wants to do things a little differently for the younger kids. ( number 1 above)
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Ken Kurkowski... regarding the cultural place of chess in society. I would add, as well, that sporting associations in Europe often transcend any one sport. In a word, sport is more democratically organized in Europe whereas we seem to have a heavy emphasis on elite/spectator sport and the rest can go to hell. (to be blunt)
I would say that we live in an anti-intellectual culture and this is an uphill battle. But it's worth it. Obviously, most of feel that way, why else participate in a chess discussion board?
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Anyway, I am grateful for all of the comments. Let me finish the book and then I can explain how I missed his points entirely. lol.
Dogs will bark, but the caravan of chess moves on.
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