Armenia is the first country in the world to make chess mandatory in school

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/201331792224757326.html

by taurussai • 13 years ago

71 35 13 years ago

dsfasfasf3• 13 years ago

Chess does not make you smarter. Chess makes you better at playing chess. Nothing more nothing less. If you want to become smarter on a specific topic then you must study that specific topic.

hsmyers3• 13 years ago

I think I know what you mean---but I'm not sure. If the exercise of the mind can be said to make you smarter, then surely chess is an excellent activity. Or is that not what you meant?

Cushman• 13 years ago

The only thing you exercise by playing chess is your memory of chess strategy. I'm sure there are ancillary benefits to that, but it's not really a complex intellectual activity the way it's commonly perceived.

blahedo2• 13 years ago

Well, sort of. It also primes you for an awful lot of conceptual development in the area of metacognition and computer science---understanding how to reason about a problem. While it doesn't necessarily explicitly teach the concept of problem spaces and data representation and minimaxing and heuristics, I'm confident that if I tried to explain any of that to a good chess player, they'd pick it up quickly and maybe even find it "obvious".

aaron6952• 13 years ago

> If you want to become smarter on a specific topic then you must study that specific topic.

This would contradict almost all current ideas on learning and education as far as I can see. Not many people think concentrating on rote learning creates a more educated society.

> Chess does not make you smarter. Chess makes you better at playing chess. Nothing more nothing less.

Chess is about problem solving and logic. I see no reason why it wouldn't help like abstract maths helps outside of the specific field of abstract maths.

dsfasfasf3• 13 years ago

>>Not many people think concentrating on rote learning creates a more educated society

Rote learning? What are you talking about? I never said you should do rote learning. If you want to become smarter in Electrical Engineering the only way to do that is to study Electrical Engineering. Unless playing chess is similar to solving or designing electrical circuits I doubt it will help you much. I hope I'm getting my point across.

But lets assume that playing chess is somehow similar to Electrical Engineering in the sense that 10% of the patterns in chess show up in Electrical Engineering. This means that 90% of the patterns you learned in chess cannot be used in Electrical Engineering. If what you want to do is learn Electrical Engineering then you've just wasted a lot of time learning 90% of chess patterns that you cannot use in EE. The time used to learn those 90% patterns could instead have been used to learn EE.

So, if all you wanted to do is learn EE then studying chess might not be a very efficient way of doing it.

helipad• 13 years ago

When the Armenian chess team returned to Yerevan as winners of the Olympiad, they were treated like rockstars outside the opera house, fireworks and all.

There are many great reasons this is good for the country: - cheap to play - teaches discipline & patience - both genders can compete on level playing field - scope for creative thinking & problem solving

_delirium2• 13 years ago

> both genders can compete on level playing field

In practice this doesn't seem to have happened, at least not yet (the FIDE top-100 list is 99 men and 1 woman). Would be interesting if it did, though.

hsmyers3• 13 years ago

The Polgar's have dropped off the list?

MaysonL• 13 years ago

It is improving though: the first women to achieve grandmaster was in 1991: now 21 of the top 100 women have full grandmaster status.

hsmyers3• 13 years ago

Good enough for West Point, good enough for Armenia.

ctchocula• 13 years ago

Article is a bit misleading, because they mention former world champion Tigran Petrosian who passed away in 1984, and quote his son the 29-year-old grandmaster Tigran Petrosian.

auctiontheory2• 13 years ago

Tigran L. Petrosian (the younger) is no relation of Tigran V. Petrosian (the late world champion).

gnuvince• 13 years ago

Not his son [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigran_L._Petrosian

JDDunn9• 13 years ago

Maybe this is a way for a tiny country to make a dent in the world's intellectual community. If you can't afford a giant linear accelerator or billion dollar telescope to make headlines, producing a few world chess champions could make you shine.

We've taught more useless things in schools... Some states want to teach creation along side evolution for instance...

dictum• 13 years ago

The kids will love chess when they have to get good grades in chess class and wake up early, in the winter cold, to attend it.

“I suspect that many children would learn arithmetic, and learn it better, if it were illegal.” — John Holt

aashaykumar92• 13 years ago

Remember that video "What Most Schools Don't Teach" that had Zuckerberg, Gates, and Houston encouraging kids to learn how to program? The opening quote is from Steve Jobs that says "Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer...because it teaches you how to think."

To me, chess does the same and has since my childhood. When you first learn chess, you learn what each piece can and can't do. And after that, YOU must learn how to strategically move the pieces in a way that traps your opponent and beats him/her. It teaches you how to think strategically, both offensively and defensively...or to be able to think 4-5 steps ahead...it's a different way of thinking.

Of course, as you get more advanced, there are books and such to explain certain strategies but the world champions don't just win off the strategies in the book--they are forced to think even further outside the box if they want to have a chance of winning.

Chess is a great game to teach kids HOW to think. I'm all for this, especially in a country such as Armenia.

blahedo2• 13 years ago

Hidden in the middle of the article: "The majority of the budget was allocated to train chess players to become good teachers."

It's nice to see someone acknowledge that being good at a thing does not automatically make one a good teacher of the thing.

robomartin2• 13 years ago

I've been playing chess since childhood. These days I play on and off exclusively through Fritz using their online service, of which I've been a member since inception. I have also taught my kids to play chess. They have entered local tournaments starting at age six and have nearly always come out on top. They usually have to play one or two divisions above their age grade due to the skills they have developed.

And yet, after a couple of years of them playing tournaments and taking classes from our local master I pull them out of the entire thing and only allow them to play an occasional tournament here and there for fun. Why?

Because playing lots of chess only makes you good at playing chess. Yes, you learn deep concentration, situational analysis, etc. However, these skills do not translate linearly to other activities.

Playing blitz chess does not make you better at avoiding an accident on the freeway when things get out of hand. In other words, you don't become some kind of a super-fast general-purpose thinker. You simply become really good at fast chess.

The same is true of "traditional" slow chess. Again, the skills you learn seem to be focused around the game and very little of it translates to the outside world.

There are teachings that do, for example, one mantra I repeat to my kids while learning chess and try to reinforce in other activities is: "Is there a better move?".

The other problem with chess study is the fact that in order to move past a certain level you have to become a human chess database. I personally detest that paradigm shift in the game. Yes, you have to know how to analyze the board and evaluate positions, of course you do. However, without committing to memory a huge library of openings, end games and even mid-game strategies (and specific move sequences) you simply can't get past certain thresholds. This, from my perspective, is an absolute waste of time, talent and effort that no kid should be subjected to.

Please consider this to be my opinion and only that. Don't be offended if your position is diametrically opposite mine. It's OK to disagree. Life goes on.

The first couple of years of learning chess can be fantastic if, and only if, they are used as a conduit for learning important lessons. For example, teaching kids to deal with loosing can be a part of this. Teaching them to take a situation apart to examine the pieces is critical in nearly every engineering discipline. If you don't take the time to make these connections while teaching chess then all you are doing is teaching chess. In other words, the connections will not be magically constructed by your kid simply because they can now check-mate another kid.

What should kids have a really good grasp of? Lots of things, but if I had to name three it would be Mathematics, Physics and Programming.

Math gives you the most fundamental toolset you'll need for just about everything, from balancing your checkbook to building a rocket. Very important.

Physics connects math to the real world. If taught correctly kids get a real "touch-and-feel" sense of how things work and why.

Programming, again, if taught correctly, teaches, at the most fundamental level, about problem solving. How do you take a seemingly huge problem, break it into a bunch of little components and methodically solve each one of them. And it can teach quick real-world problem analysis as well. For example, I've done things like play "if-else-then" games with my older kid where we break down the things that could happen if you place a glass too close to the edge of the table.

That said, chess is great. And, in moderation, as a conduit for learning other ideas it could be fantastic. Nothing wrong with that.

BTW, there's an interesting connection between Steve Jobs and Armenia:

http://tert.am/en/news/2011/10/06/jobsarmenian/

https://www.google.com/search?q=steve+jobs+armenian&aq=f...

btilly• 13 years ago

Indeed. For this reason I refuse to teach chess to my children. Instead I'm teaching them go. I find that it has much simpler rules, more complex strategy, more varied games, less memorization at my level, has a good handicap system, and uses areas of your brain that chess simply doesn't.

But in the end it is a game. If they enjoy it and learn a way of thinking, great. But I will not encourage them to master it either.

robomartin2• 13 years ago

Yes, Go is really interesting. I think there are reasons to teach both. Again, in moderation.

igravious• 13 years ago

I've been showing my little girl both, but I started with Go as it is the more intellectually demanding game. There is rote memorization in Go but conceptually initially it seems to require far less memorization of specific sequences. It seems to be more about spatial awareness, counting, balancing defense and attack and grabbing territory, as well as the if-this-then-that-if-the-other-then-something-else (decision trees?) that Chess has. I may have said this on this site before but I personally am saddened that Go is only just gaining mindshare in the West because it is a far superior game to Chess and I wish I had been taught it as a kid when my mind was more sponge-like. At least my kid will should be able to kick my butt one day which will delight me.

dsfasfasf3• 13 years ago

And a good reason of why chess does not translate to other activities is that probably most of the patterns that you learn in chess do not show up in other domains so you cannot really use those learned patterns in other situations.

For example, learning a new language means learning lots of new patterns. A lot of those patterns are new grammatical rules. If you were to learn a Latin derived language like Spanish then a lot of those same patterns can be re-used to learn another Latin derived language like French. With chess, unless those patterns you've learned exist in other domains then they are useless and can only be used to play chess.

One of the thing chess can do you for you is increase your memory, maybe, since as you said you need to become a chess database. The cost is probably too great and the reward too little, though.

juskrey• 13 years ago

It is not only your opinion. Numerous experiments show that playing chess does not add any skills across domains. As well as any other types of simplistic gaming. This only shows how far Armenian education system from real rationale.

dhimes• 13 years ago

This, from my perspective, is an absolute waste of time, talent and effort that no kid should be subjected to

You've hit upon something which is a Deep Truth (TM) of parenting. There is nothing wrong with a child committing to that time and effort in chess, or gymnastics, or baseball, or anything, under one condition.

That condition is that they love it. Not for the parents, not for the coaches, or for the accolades. They have to deeply love whatever it is for its own sake.

maxk42• 13 years ago

I'm not sure of Kalmykia's political status, but chess has been mandatory there for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmykia

killerpopiller• 13 years ago

yep. definitly top-down chess enthusiastics - their former president is president of the world chess association and every kid learns chess in school since his "reign".

auctiontheory2• 13 years ago

Chess has many lessons to teach the entrepreneur, or indeed any businessperson. One is the difference between strategy (aka planning) and tactics, and the vital importance of strategy.

I've seen too many companies run entirely in reactive "what do we do next?" mode - you can't do that and win at chess or life.

robotmay• 13 years ago

The biggest problem I had as a kid was finding other people to play against. I moved from a fairly urban area to the countryside and never really found anyone else who enjoyed playing it. I only ever played for fun and was never interested in competitive play.

These days I'm mostly relegated to my own rules of drunken hyper-chess; the two players must make their move immediately after the other and the entire game is over in a couple of minutes. Drink every time a piece is taken. This is a form of chess most people seem to be able to get behind.

mrdiran• 13 years ago

Out of curiosity... Are there any Armenians on Hack News?

-Diran

macspoofing• 13 years ago

I think this is about on par with making programming mandatory in (elementary) school.

Armenia is the first country in the world to make chess mandatory in school

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