School, Chess, Computer (by Alexeev, Razuvaev)

Sooner or later the truth will be revealed.(Leonardo da Vinci)

N. Alekseev, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Education

Y. Razuvaev, International Grandmaster, Honorary Trainer of Russia

In the last years of his life the World's 5 th Chess Champion and FIDE President Max

Euwe (1901-1981) paid a lot of attention to the problem of teaching chess at school. He considered this way of spreading chess knowledge to be the most promising for the future of our art. And his opinion was especially important for us as this outstanding Dutch grandmaster was also a doctor of mathematics and for many years worked as a teacher at school. And at last the time has come. Computer age impetuously changes our way of life. Our ancient game turned out to be akin to this new mentality, and kids are the first ones to sniff it. In many countries chess is now being introduced into the school curriculum as an optional subject. Thus, it is only natural that the problem of finding new methods of teaching chess has recently become extremely acute.

One could distinguish two main directions in the children's chess movement: 1) teaching chess in order to provide a more prompt and universal development; 2) teaching chess in order to achieve better sporting results. It is well known that teaching chess contributes to mental development. And this fact has got a scientific explanation. The experience of teaching chess in general schools shows that the ideal age for learning chess is 7 - 12.

The period of acquiring and then mastering a huge system of the native language is

usually over by the age of five, and that is when the development of another extremely important period starts. And that is the process of transferring activity from the practical to the formal level. In other words, the main peculiarity of this process is that a child starts acting in his head.

And soon this process starts preceding physical movements and oral utterances. At first the child tries to, so to say, play his further actions and words forward before realizing them. Due to the psychological research, logical mistakes made at this stage of intellectual development get rigid and are very difficult to correct. And chess represents nearly an ideal model of the successful development of the ability to act in one's head. Of course, certain questions can arise here. How real is the use of scientific methods when teaching chess? How objective and exact will be the testing exercises?

In order to answer these, as well as other questions, we have to remember two important factors:

1) The difference between organized and chaotic education is really great. And at the moment this process is nearly always spontaneous. Nearly every teacher goes his own way together with his pupils, and thus they all come to different results. We suggest making this process more useful and accessible from the point of view of intellectual development within the framework of general education.

2) The necessity of combining the process of teaching chess with various exercises directed at the development of thinking is indubitable. Why then neither the program nor the methods that would meet these requirements have been clearly formulated so far? We can try to answer this question if we read the works of two famous American scientists E. Merton and N. Parson. In order to successfully achieve a great goal, one has to set smaller goals, i.e. the goal should always be concrete. In our case it is the ability to act in one's head and overcome various obstacles on the way. This is quite real, and the most important thing, from our point of view, is that these methods can be quite simple not only for the teachers but for the pupils as well.

The second strategic question implies the role of a computer in chess lessons.

Generally speaking the introduction of computers into the school curriculum calls for the introduction of a special discipline dealing with preparation of schoolchildren for new methods of teaching. Chess is in harmony with computers. More to the point, chess is so far the only sport game to give a person an opportunity of playing against the computer. This fact is of great importance to a child and child’s self-knowledge. It can also prompt a child to realize the principles of computer’s decision-making, its strong and weak points. By means of playing chess a child gets a great deal of information concerning computers. Teaching children it is most important to bear in mind that such kind of games is quite popular with them. At that, the formula “man + computer” provokes new problems. Nature has given the man the ability to think, the scope of thinking being extremely large. Anyway, the man is far ahead of the computer in this field so far. However, as far as the accuracy and precision of calculations are concerned, Homo sapiens cannot be reasonably compared with the “metal friend”. Garry Kasparov’s success in making chess analyses with the help of the computer has become a legend. That’s why his opinion concerning this matter is of particular interest: “I believe, it represents progress, though there are certain negative factors. The process of human thinking becomes more formalized. The man strives to act in unison with the machine, and the versatility of thinking wears thin. No matter how well a person controls the machine, he is from time to time affected by what he sees on the monitor. This influence can only be studied after a series of experiments, which is going to take years on end. This process is only natural and inevitable, though.” In our opinion, these are important and well-timed words. The man faces a challenge, which consists in mastering the computer and at the same time doing analytical work. In this field the role of chess in the whole pedagogical process seems quite promising for the future.

In such a short item it’s difficult to describe everything in a nut-shell, but we hope we

have managed to answer some important questions and touch upon some new problems.