Today, we will pack the family into the car. We don't have a dog, so there is no worry about where the dog will ride. We used to have turtles, but they only got in the car when it was time to go get their little beaks... um... Rostricured(?)
Anyway, today we will pack the family up. My first grade daughter will play 5 games of chess in the Washington State Elementary Chess Championships. My 14 year old son will join us, because he will have a couple of his own students who are playing in the tournament as well. This "cooler than you" teen has 4 students whose parents pay him 15 bucks an hour to play chess with their kids. He also has a paying gig as a coach at a local elementary. He has been one of the higher rated players for his age in the state, but that's slowly backsliding as kids focus more heavily on one thing or another.
But why does it matter? Isn't this sort of competition for young people exactly the sort of thing so many take issue with right now?
It's about learning. I really had no idea how to play chess until I was forced into learning how to play chess. The reason I was forced into learning it is my kid was frickin' killin' me. I had no idea what to do. I was disappointed in myself that I could barely manage a win against the computer on the lowest setting.
I'm still pretty awful.
1. It taught my kid how to deal with competition in a healthy and productive manner. He was able to recognize that the work he put into it would be rewarded.
2. It showed my kid that there were other kids who are equally as bright and talented and capable. That sort of thing is really important for kids who are bright, talented, and capable.
3. It encapsulates the process of learning in a very tidy package.
Up until my kid started to play chess, he would go and play a sport, but he would hardly participate. It was enough for him to be there. At least, that's what it looked like to me. As he progressed at chess, he began to understand that competition is fun. He began to recognize that those players he sat across from are just his opponents at the board, not the rest of his life. He saw chess players who were ahead of where he was, and he wanted to be there. So he began to move up the ladder by always trying to find the most challenging players.
Whenever undertaking any specific learning goals, there are things to consider.
What are the individual skills involved?
What is the overall structure or strategy involved in achieving a goal in this area?
How do you go about understanding and improving at these things?
How does one deal with setbacks along the way?
I think that pretty much every endeavor has some specific skills involved. In chess, the skills are a variety of things like tactical maneuvers, opening theory, endgame position play...
Each of these things can be studied and practiced on its own, but it is best if there is an overall strategy. The tactics are the individual maneuvers, but the strategy is the overall approach. As a chess player's brain begins to become comfortable with the repetitive patterns that are a fundamental basis of the game of chess, room seems to clear for more higher level learning.
I describe above a learning process called "chunking." At the beginning of learning chess, the brain is preoccupied with the basic understanding of how the pieces move, the basic rules of the game, and the playing field itself. This occupies a lot of mental energy. Soon, however, the brain begins to require less space for all of that information, and eventually that information becomes essentially one "chunk." Now that part of the game requires less and less mental attention, and the brain can move on to learning higher level concepts.
This is true with nearly any learning endeavor. Maybe the process can happen in a sort of reverse manner. Perhaps you can begin to see an entire structure of an undertaking before you begin to address the smaller parts that make up the entirety of the thing. I would suggest that there needs to be a little bit of both. See the big picture. However, remember this about the picture:
The big picture does not get painted without small brush strokes.
The learner also has to understand how to go about improving at the individual tactics.
Consider how one learns math. You cannot do higher level math without computational skills. Computational skills, for most people, require some intentional practice. All of that information that is "Basic Math Facts" needs to be chunked down so that the brain is more available to apply theses tools to higher level concepts.
A disappointment about chess to me is that it retains some strange forbidden mystery that causes many people to shun any mention of it. Do you know how many times I have heard people say something like, "Oh, I just never understood chess. I never could get the hang of it."
Well, I've heard that a lot. There is still this stereotype about chess. When I invite kids and adults to attend our weekend tournaments, they are always amazed at just how many people there are, and almost always they mention how "Fun!" the whole event is.
In Washington State, the State Elementary Tournament will draw between 1000 and 1400 kids for one Saturday in April. Every single one of those players has succeeded at gaining 3 out of 5 points during a single day tournament between the beginning of the school year and April. Tournaments around here range from 60 kids to 400 kids. We have national champions at different grade levels in this state. It's pretty high level chess for scholastic players of this age range. I should probably qualify that with "...in the US." Without the nationalism and history, it's a little more difficult to achieve higher levels.
Now that I have learned chess over the past few years, I am able to competently teach younger kids how to start playing chess. The first thing I always tell both the kids and the parents is this:
The great thing about chess is that there will always be someone better.
Unless you happen to be among the best in the world, you're always going to run into someone who will beat you.
I remind them frequently that they want to seek out the most difficult opponents. I don't care about them losing, as long as their learning the proper lessons from the game. I interrupt their games sometimes to give them ideas. Some kids don't like that I'm advising their opponent, but we are all on the same page about it.
Finally, I will note that there is still an incredibly unbalanced number of girls and boys. My 7 year old daughter is frequently the only girl at some chess things we do. She doesn't seem to care. One Friday she went from her chess camp to her ballet. She left a room full of boys playing chess, and she traveled to a room full of girls dancing.
I think that her experience as a competent chess player in a situation that is primarily comprised of boys will benefit her as she gets older. She will not be uncomfortable in when she is a woman in a male dominated situation.
Wish us luck. In two years, we've gone from nobody ever having even qualified to play in the state tournament to five players qualified, to 10 players qualified. I don't care if any of them come back with hardware. I'm just happy that I've gotten my daughter's school to recognize the value in friendly competition. They have always been fine with sports, but it's nice to see that they are recognizing the value of a more intellectually focused type of competition. (I do strongly believe that there can be greatly beneficial intellectual components to other sports.)
I could write for days on this, but I won't.
Our school is in a fairly upper middle class neighborhood in Seattle. I have a friend across the city who has taught chess programs in the "inner city (aaaah, the horror!)." My older kid and one of my friend's best players developed this amazing relationship over the years. It began as over the board chess opponents competing at the top of their age brackets. Eventually, my kid would end up across the city from us in the same school with his former opponent. Now they play music in the same bands, go to the same school, and they both coach chess at an elementary school with my friend in scholastic chess, Coach Otis. Our school, "over here," And their school "over there" are official "sister schools." We have created a nice working relationships across the city. Our kids get the benefit of understanding that friendship and competition are not mutually exclusive. It's a most endearing relationship. And it's just the cutest thing ever to watch these two 14 year old boys mature through this process.
Whenever any of Coach O's kids come out of the playing hall, he doesn't ask about wins and losses. Our chess clubs are structured around the same principle. It's the principle of learning to learn. Here is what he says to them:
What did you learn?
4:17 PM PT: I really want to sincerely thank the community spotlight people who put my diary up here. It's tough to compete in the arena of ideas on a political website. I've always felt that there are many people here who know so much more than I do about everything. I try to focus on things that are at least part of the ongoing struggle that is Democratic and Liberal politics.
One of those things is education. However, if I posted this at an ed site, it probably wouldn't inform people in the same way.
Thanks!