Chess is Child’s Play

By Deborah Mitchell
Issue 139, November/December 2006

Mothers are sometimes overwhelmed by all of the important things we believe we should teach our kids so that they will grow healthy minds, bodies, and spirits. Indeed, the worlds we create for our children—the activities we choose, the books we read to them, the experiences we expose them to, etc.—become the molds we pour our children into. Yet perhaps one of the most important things we can do for our kids is to teach them not what to think but how to think. Developing skills of analysis and critical thinking are vital to succeeding as an independent thinker in school and in life.

Even before my son was born, I, like most new mothers, bought an absurd number of books on parenting. I soon worked myself into a frenzy trying to determine how much advice I could actually pack into his life. But a suggestion buried in the last pages of one of those books caught my attention: teaching young children to play chess helps them learn to think critically, to concentrate, and to solve problems. Thus began a renewed love affair with one of my favorite games.

A Little History
Chess is a captivating battle of strategy and one of the oldest board games. Two players, with 16 pieces each, try to “capture” or checkmate each other’s king. No one is certain who created chess, but many sources suggest that it originated in India, about 1,500 years ago.¹ Now considered a sport, the game has been played for hundreds of years in many cultures and is a great equalizer of nations, races, genders, and classes.

There is some question as to whether chess makes kids smart or smart kids like chess, but some things are certain: learning to play the game helps children visualize, analyze, concentrate, recognize patterns, learn self-control, and understand the concepts of cause and effect.² Unlike so many games played by younger children, chess is not a game of luck, but one that requires players to make purposeful, well-thought-out decisions. In many countries, the game is a standard part of school curricula, used to improve reasoning, math, and verbal skills.

In her book, Children and Chess: A Guide for Educators, Alexey W. Root, PhD, senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Dallas, states that “Chess is a domain where one learns that one’s actions have consequences. Moreover, a teacher might illustrate for students the connections between making a difference at the chessboard and making a difference in the world.”³ Root, the US Women’s Chess Champion in 1989, was taught to play chess by her father at the age of five. She now teaches university-level courses that train educators and parents to use chess for educational purposes.⁴

Benjamin Franklin played and revered chess, calling it “the most ancient and the most universal game known among men.” He compared the game to life and believed that several “very valuable qualities of the mind” were acquired and strengthened by playing chess.⁵ If you’ve ever played the game, you understand why.

I learned chess in my teens and have always loved the game. Yet my child, now ten years old, was only four when I considered teaching him. I wondered, At what age can a child grasp the complex rules of chess? Root believes that “It’s possible to have a grasp of the rules of chess at four or five years old.”⁶ However, part of the beauty of chess is that, as the child matures, so will his understanding of the strategies and nuances of the game. Most five-year-olds play chess games dramatically different from those of seven-year-olds, and the games of seven-year-olds are different from those of nine-year-olds.

For example, five-year-olds are still mastering the fundamentals of how each piece moves, while nine-year-olds can understand the more complex rules of moves, such as castling. Typically, only one chess piece can be moved at a time, but in castling, if certain conditions are met, a player can move two pieces at once. Older children can execute the move and understand the importance of castling in the protection of the king.

The Research
In a study of 14 sixth-grade students near Bradford, Pennsylvania, researcher Robert Ferguson used the USA Junior Chess Olympics Training Program to teach students the game. The children were evaluated with the Test of Cognitive Skills and the California Achievement Test. Ferguson found that students who played chess each day during the school year experienced significant increases in their memory and verbal-reasoning skills.⁷