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Monday, March 15, 2010

Why I Am Passionate About Chess

Kevin is a prime example why we should not condemn and abandon our students to the TAKS only mentality. Click on the title, "Why I am Passionate about Chess". I have taken a lot of heat from my peers on this issue that chess is just a game and has no real educational value. Yet educational systems outside the USA make it a mandatory part of the curriculum (and we wonder why we are falling behind).
Chess teaches critical thinking skills, consequences for your actions, and you do not have to be a super athlete to be successful. I do have one major disagreement with the featured campus policy it is their No pass, no play rule. With such an highly academic activity as chess denying the student the pleasure, satisfaction of succeeding does not make much sense. We need activities such as chess, mancala, mindstorms, brainwarp, and other brain friendly activities to fill in the gaps that become so prevalent in our young peoples minds. I have gotten into some heated debates about our discipline system and thinking when we take away something so vital to the students intellectual development simply because it is something they enjoy. One professional peer became so enraged that they would rather their students go outside and run around instead of learning a discipline that would help in the long run (in detention we have a captive audience so to speak) why not do an activity that engages and not disengages the brain with that detained student? I know this does not sit well with folks, but then again a good deal of things I think don't sit well with some of my peers anyway. Until then, "dar jaque", Check!