Certificate of Merit

[Richard James]

I've no idea if it's aged badly as I don't remember ever reading it although it seems unlikely that it hasn't aged somewhat in 30+ years. Reading the reviews worries me though as I get the impression that it's a basic opening book and I can't particularly see a use for that amongst the target buyer. I would think that most 7-11 yo beginners would be immediately put off by anything but the most brief chess notations and most won't need or want to learn chess theory. I'm also not clear whether the book was written for children.

Nick

I agree entirely, and have made the same observation elsewhere on the forum. As far as I know, and Stewart will correct me if I'm wrong, it was not written for young children. I suggested that, for example, the Tim Onions book on openings would have been a much more suitable choice for Primary Schools, while using Stewart's book for Secondary Schools.

I believe this to be symptomatic of what has been going wrong in Primary School chess for the past 20 years or so. Take the Right Move magazine, for example. It seems to me that the writing, analysis and production are all outstanding: but most of the content is way over the heads of 99% of Primary School chess players. It's quite understandable that strong players coming into Primary School chess clubs will prefer to focus on the top few players, and the others will fall by the wayside. Young children need to be taught the basics slowly, step by step, before being introduced to competitive chess, and, within the framework of a typical primary school chess club, this is not really possible. There is little understanding of the needs of those young beginners (the vast majority) who do not have a chess background at home, and little realisation of how hard it is for most of them to make progress beyond how the pieces move.

I spent 15 years myself helping to run Primary and Prep School chess clubs. Out of all the hundreds of children in those clubs, the number who made any further progress after the age of 11 could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and even those all dropped out of competitive chess during their teenage years. It was also clear to me that if the boy I was 50 years ago had gone to one of those clubs I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it, and I certainly wouldn't have had anything to do with chess as an adult.

There are several other, and, I think, better ways in which we can approach Primary School chess. The Dutch Steps course and the course used by AF4C in the US are two very different but equally well thought out approaches, and there are no doubt others of which I am unaware.

[John Upham]

Richard,

Do you feel that the role of Director for Junior Chess and Education should have an interest in this discussion, and maybe, even contribute to it?

[Carl Hibbard]

With the complete lack of marketing is the CoM not nearly as dead as CfS though?

[Richard James]

Richard,

Do you feel that the role of Director for Junior Chess and Education should have an interest in this discussion, and maybe, even contribute to it?

Yes

[Stewart Reuben]

'Chess Opening - Your Choice!' was not written for any particular age group. It was written for chessplayers. It came as a great, and very flattering, surprise when Andrew Martin said he thought it would be suitable for the COM. Of course I was no longer able to provide an objdective opinion.
Marketing the COM before the first stage was complete (i.e. with the levels 2 and 3 booklet in place and a large bank of questions)seemed to me rather a foolish idea. Marketing it at the end of the school year also seemed unwise. I have ideas about marketing it, but would welcome input from others.
Stewart Reuben

[Matthew Turner]

Stewart Reuben wrote,
"Of course I was no longer able to provide an objdective opinion."

Why?

I had a look at Chess & Bridge and ChessDirect and neither of them was (as far as I could see) selling Chess Openings Your Choice! Is it only being marketted through the ECF?

[Peter Turner]

I'm feeling a bit lazy this morning so I'd just like to add my name to Richard's post as below. I could have written it myself and I suspect many others involved in junior chess over the years could add their names. It really is very frustrating, go into any school and offer to run a chess club (especially if for no cost) and 20-30 youngsters will be keen to join and have a go. The eventual outcome does not seem to be that youngsters will join a local chess club and remain active through their teenage years. Why do we do it? I bet many, like myself, have tried to find a reason for our endeavours and come across the famed New York Project which demonstrated that the chess group performed better than the control group in general education scores. I thought, "that will do for me ... transferable skills". I don't know why, but I don't regret giving it a go.

From Richard's post:-

I believe this to be symptomatic of what has been going wrong in Primary School chess for the past 20 years or so. Take the Right Move magazine, for example. It seems to me that the writing, analysis and production are all outstanding: but most of the content is way over the heads of 99% of Primary School chess players. It's quite understandable that strong players coming into Primary School chess clubs will prefer to focus on the top few players, and the others will fall by the wayside. Young children need to be taught the basics slowly, step by step, before being introduced to competitive chess, and, within the framework of a typical primary school chess club, this is not really possible. There is little understanding of the needs of those young beginners (the vast majority) who do not have a chess background at home, and little realisation of how hard it is for most of them to make progress beyond how the pieces move.

I spent 15 years myself helping to run Primary and Prep School chess clubs. Out of all the hundreds of children in those clubs, the number who made any further progress after the age of 11 could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and even those all dropped out of competitive chess during their teenage years. It was also clear to me that if the boy I was 50 years ago had gone to one of those clubs I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it, and I certainly wouldn't have had anything to do with chess as an adult.

There are several other, and, I think, better ways in which we can approach Primary School chess. The Dutch Steps course and the course used by AF4C in the US are two very different but equally well thought out approaches, and there are no doubt others of which I am unaware.[/quote]

[Stewart Reuben]

Peter Turner >I bet many, like myself, have tried to find a reason for our endeavours and come across the famed New York Project which demonstrated that the chess group performed better than the control group in general education scores.<

The Stuart Margulies project to which you refer is deeply flawed statistically. It compares the SATs scores of people who have followed a chess course with the general population of the same age. But it might be that the fact that a person follows some type of course is an indicator for superior test results. Whether the course be chess, computers, motor car maintenance, needlework, etc. Also of course people who take a chess course are more likely to be academically inclined. A correct analysis would have taken pupils of similar academic results, subjected groups to different courses including chess and then compared the value-added results.
That said, it is obvious that teaching chess is a transferable skill for some pupils. We all have anecdotal evidence of that.

Why teach chess since most of the children will give the game up? It is like that in all education. Each of us retains just a tiny fraction of what we have been taught. People (not just children) are exposed to opportunities. Just a fraction will continue whether it be chess, chemistry, classical music, football, history, art etc.
My father said to me when I was a teenager, 'Education is never wasted.'
Stewart Reuben

[Kevin Thurlow]

I get the impression that there is sometimes too much emphasis on success (and only success) at Primary School level, so only the players who are thought to be worthy really get encouragement. I coached a junior who became 200+, which is great, but the important thing is, he still enjoys chess. If a young player wants to play, (s)he should be encouraged. It is supposed to be fun! It reminds me of a cricket coach at our grammar school who quickly decided who the best players were, and ignored everybody else.

I hasten to add that I am excluding Peter and Richard from any implied criticism. I am sure they are doing the right thing - but when secondary education starts, so does coursework, and the pupils don't have time for anything else.

[Richard Bates]

Why teach chess since most of the children will give the game up? It is like that in all education. Each of us retains just a tiny fraction of what we have been taught. People (not just children) are exposed to opportunities. Just a fraction will continue whether it be chess, chemistry, classical music, football, history, art etc.
My father said to me when I was a teenager, 'Education is never wasted.'
Stewart Reuben

I think this is a good point. It is natural for a debate on a forum like this to tend towards looking to create a 'utopian' situation where individuals are introduced to the game at a certain age, develop consistently to meet levels of competence by certain key stages, and continue to develop towards a level where everyone can be said to have maximised their chess ability. (I've deliberately simplified and generalised). And equally bemoan the fact that many children participate for the "wrong" reasons, and never come close to reaching a standard (of which they may be fully capable) where they are remotely likely to continue past age 11.

It is no doubt true that if things were done differently, teaching was better, schools were more interested in results, and national attitudes were different, that we could be a much stronger chess playing nation in depth. The ultimate demonstration example being the Soviet Union. Where chess was THE no1 focus, pursued to demonstrate the superiority of the socialist model. But then even they didn't produce Fischer.

Or alternatively one could reflect Stewart's basic argument which is that nobody can excel at something of which they do not experience, and perhaps that (by implication) the primary value of marketing chess to primary schools and encouraging the establishment of chess clubs is to provide that basic experience (at the earliest possible stage) to as wide a number of children as possible and therefore to all those who might have a talent, and would never otherwise have realised it and/or before they find another talent in some other area. And then the challenge is to ensure that that talent/ability (and i'm not just talking about David Howells here, but people who will ultimately end up at a much lower standard) can be then identified and directed towards places where it is better developed (be it 'proper' chess clubs, national junior coaching schemes, personal or small group coaching etc).

In that context perhaps things like CoM should not be judged so much by their intrinsic value in developing players, but by whether they offer a basic structure under which primary school clubs can be operated. And the extent to which children enjoy it, even if ultimately they learn little that they retain.

[Richard James]

Peter

Many thanks for your support. I certainly don’t regret anything I did at Richmond Junior Club. In theory, encouraging primary school chess clubs through the Richmond Chess Initiative should have made RJCC stronger, but, if anything, it had the opposite effect. The stronger players who only wanted to do chess once a week were choosing their school club, when they would have got much more satisfaction from RJCC.

Stewart

Yes, just a fraction do continue: this was true at RJCC, but the fraction from school clubs was pretty close to zero. Many people believe that most children give up chess when they leave primary school. This is not true: most children give up well before that. Typically, a primary school chess club would have something like 16 Y3 children (age 7-8), 8 Y4 (8-9), 4 Y5 (9-10) and 2 Y6 (10-11). Round about 40% would drop out fairly quickly because without support at home it was too hard for them to get past learning how the pieces moved, another 40% or so would do well for the first 18 months or so but find it difficult to make progress thereafter for reasons outlined in my articles which you’ll find here. Yes, I agree that education is never wasted. My point is that there are much better ways of delivering chess education than the way we do things here.

Kevin

You make an important point about secondary education. Pupils approaching GCSE and A-Level are expected to do 3-4 hours homework a night, which makes it very difficult to spend time on other activities. Some clubs and areas seem to get teenagers out for evening matches, but here in Richmond it’s no longer possible. It’s too late for the younger children and the older ones have too much homework. I know Neill Cooper manages to get his players out regularly: perhaps it’s different if you’re asked by a schoolteacher? I also agree with you that there is too much emphasis on success at primary school level.

Richard B

In principle, yes, the theory is that you teach the basics in schools, identify the players who are good/interested and feed them through to junior chess clubs. At present, though, we’re running clubs rather than teaching basics in schools. Also, if a school says ‘we’re not interested in chess but we’ve read that Chess Is Good For You so we’ll get a GM to run a chess club’ it really doesn’t work. Primary school chess works best when the whole school is enthusiastic about the game, and this has to come from a senior member of staff. This is what happened at your school, Sheen Mount, where you had a dynamic head teacher, Jane Lawrence, who was passionate about chess. To the best of my knowledge, though, only two pupils did very much chess after leaving Sheen Mount, Tom Hinks-Edwards, an FM (I thought he’d qualified as an IM but apparently not) and yourself. At the same time there was another school in the borough, St Stephen’s, which was similarly interested in chess, although they were less focussed on competition. Only one of their pupils, again to the best of my knowledge, did very much after leaving the school, and he became a GM: Demetrios Agnos.

I would put it to you then that mass participation in chess in Primary Schools in the way we do it at present, while it might seem democratic, is actually elitist because the evidence over many years suggests that only the very bright children with very supportive parents, who are your potential GMs and IMs will continue. And you make the very important point that we need to encourage potential ‘average’ players as well as the potential David Howells and Luke McShanes.

[Stewart Reuben]

One thing has always puzzled me. Why is it that St Paul's School, with nobody on the staff much interested in chess until relatively recently, managed to produce 4 GMs an IM and a number of very strong players. How did Dulwich College manage a similar feat at a somewhat lower level? I know how it worked at my own secondary school William Ellis Grammar. The headmaster was deeply into chess presumably before he arrived. The game had the status of rugby by the time I arrived. We completely dominated London schoolboy chess. As a diminutive 11 year old that was excellent. That headmaster left when I was 14 and by a year later I was around as an organiser. The popularity continued until the last boys left the school who had joined it as 11 year olds when I was in my last year. As far as I know none still play.

From the point of view of developing chess, the grammar schools were far better than comprehensives. Now it is very much an academic private school preserve.
Stewart Reuben

[Richard James]

One thing has always puzzled me. Why is it that St Paul's School, with nobody on the staff much interested in chess until relatively recently, managed to produce 4 GMs an IM and a number of very strong players. How did Dulwich College manage a similar feat at a somewhat lower level? I know how it worked at my own secondary school William Ellis Grammar. The headmaster was deeply into chess presumably before he arrived. The game had the status of rugby by the time I arrived. We completely dominated London schoolboy chess. As a diminutive 11 year old that was excellent. That headmaster left when I was 14 and by a year later I was around as an organiser. The popularity continued until the last boys left the school who had joined it as 11 year olds when I was in my last year. As far as I know none still play.

From the point of view of developing chess, the grammar schools were far better than comprehensives. Now it is very much an academic private school preserve.
Stewart Reuben

When Ray Keene and his contemporaries were at Dulwich College, there was, I believe, a strong chess player, DB Pennycuick, on the staff. See here.

St Paul's was partly, I think, success breeding success. Once it had a reputation, parents of boys who were good at chess wanted to send them there. And in those days it was not difficult to do a lot of chess while being academically successful. These days, though, St Paul's is not especially strong.

[Paul Littlewood]

Please correct me if I am wrong but my impression of all the juniors I play nowadays is that they play with not very much flair. I wonder whether this is due to too much emphasis being placed on winning, rather than producing interesting games, at an early stage of their lives.
I long to see the excitement of watching a young Jonathan Speelman, Julian Hodgson or John Nunn sacrifice virtually all of their pieces to defeat much older players.
A lot of the time their combinations were not 100% sound but they played with a wonderful abandon which was a delight to watch.
Is there a danger we are squashing our young people's imagination by being too rigid in our teaching ?

[Richard James]

Please correct me if I am wrong but my impression of all the juniors I play nowadays is that they play with not very much flair. I wonder whether this is due to too much emphasis being placed on winning, rather than producing interesting games, at an early stage of their lives.
I long to see the excitement of watching a young Jonathan Speelman, Julian Hodgson or John Nunn sacrifice virtually all of their pieces to defeat much older players.
A lot of the time their combinations were not 100% sound but they played with a wonderful abandon which was a delight to watch.
Is there a danger we are squashing our young people's imagination by being too rigid in our teaching ?

I'm sure you're right, Paul, at all levels. Watching the games in the Minor section of the Richmond Rapidplays, I notice small children of about 50-75 strength playing the Colle with White and the Caro-Kann or Scandinavian with Black. These are not openings you'd come up with without tuition: they have clearly been advised by well-meaning chess tutors to play 'safe' openings to avoid losing quickly by making tactical oversights.