
Armenia is the first country in the world to make chess mandatory in school - taurussai
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/201331792224757326.html
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dictum
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

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aashaykumar92
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.

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blahedo
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.

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robomartin
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...](https://www.google.com/search?q=steve+jobs+armenian&aq=f&oq=steve+jobs+armenian&aqs=chrome.0.57j0l3.4229&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

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btilly
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.

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

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qohen
_Again in moderation_

I was reminded of some cautionary voices from this:
<http://www.laweekly.com/1999-03-18/news/the-go-club/full/> , an interesting
LA Weekly article (1999) about the Korean female reporter's experience at a
Korean Go Club in Los Angeles (note: Go is known as Baduk in Korean):

 _But Go players, regardless of nationality, are mostly men — and Korean
women, particularly wives and mothers, think they’re full of shit.

"You know the people who play the Baduk," my mother answered disgustedly when
I asked her about the game. "They are just the lazy people who like to
smoking."

My friend Mia has a more dramatic tale. One day her mom came home to find
Mia’s dad teaching her and her brother Go. She immediately grabbed the kids by
their shirt collars and carried them out of the room. I will not allow you to
turn my children into Baduk players, she informed her husband. "She wouldn’t
let us learn," Mia explained, "because Baduk sucks your life away."_

(There's lots more to the piece -- if you're interested in the game and some
of its sociology, check it out).

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JDDunn9
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...

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robotmay
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.

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helipad
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

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_delirium
> 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.

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hsmyers
The Polgar's have dropped off the list?

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_delirium
Judit Polgár is the one I believe. Just checked by cross-referencing
<http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml> and
<http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=women>. Could well change in the
coming decades, but competition is currently mostly separated into men's and
women's divisions, like other sports (most top women compete for the Women's
Chess Championship, though Polgár is a notable exception in never having
entered that tournament).

edit: Was curious to look a bit more, and it seems like the reason is that
there are currently very few active women in competitive chess to begin with
(i.e. it's not that there are many _outside_ the top 100 either). For example,
there are 1574 Americans on the FIDE active player list, of any ranking (all
the way down to rankings in the 1300s), and of those, 1491 are men and 83 are
women.

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maxk42
I'm not sure of Kalmykia's political status, but chess has been mandatory
there for decades: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmykia>

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killerpopiller
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".

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auctiontheory
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.

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ctchocula
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.

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

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

-Diran

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

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dsfasfasf
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.

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hsmyers
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?

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Cushman
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.

