Programs
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Why Offer Chess in Schools?
What are the Academic Benefits?
Chess is a classic game of strategy, invented more than 1500 years ago in India. In the centuries since its invention, chess has spread to every country in the world. In the United States, it has received endorsement by many educators, ranging from Benjamin Franklin to former U.S. Secretary of Education, Terrell Bell. The word is out: Chess improves logical thinking skills. Studies demonstrate that math and reading scores improve when students learn chess. Thousands of children are involved in chess clubs, many local, state and national tournaments draw from 300 up to over 2000 children each year, and top scholastic players can earn both partial and full scholarships to many colleges and universities. |
We have brought chess to the schools because we believe it directly contributes to academic performance. Chess makes kids smarter. It does so by teaching the following skills:
- Focusing – Children are taught the benefits of observing carefully and concentrating. If they don’t watch what is happening, they can’t respond to it, no matter how smart they are.
- Visualizing – Children are prompted to imagine a sequence of actions before
it happens. We actually strengthen the ability to visualize by training
them to shift the pieces in their mind, first one, then several moves ahead.
- Thinking Ahead – Children are taught to think first, then act. We teach them to ask themselves “If I do this, what might happen then, and how can I respond?” Over time, chess helps develop patience and thoughtfulness.
- Weighing Options – Children are taught that they don’t have to do the first thing that pops into their mind. They learn to identify alternatives and consider the pros and cons of various actions.
- Analyzing Concretely – Children learn to evaluate the results of specific actions and sequences. Does this sequence help me or hurt me? Decisions are better when guided by logic, rather than impulse.
- Thinking Abstractly – Children are taught to step back periodically from details and consider the bigger picture. They also learn to take patterns used in one context and apply them to different, but related situations.
- Planning – Children are taught to develop longer range goals and take steps toward bringing them about. They are also taught of the need to reevaluate their plans as new developments change the situation.
- Juggling Multiple Considerations Simultaneously -Children are encouraged not to become overly absorbed in any one consideration, but to try to weigh various factors all at once.
The beauty of chess as a teaching tool is that it stimulates children’s minds and helps them to build these skills while enjoying themselves.
As a result, children become more critical thinkers, better problem solvers, and more independent decision makers. |
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In 1931, an out-of-work architect named Alfred Mosher Butts invented a game called Lexico. The game consisted simply of 100 tiles and no game board. The object of the game was to make words as long as possible while drawing and discarding from your hand (much like Rummy, only with words instead of melds).
After trying unsuccessfully to persuade any major game manufacturers to look at his game, Butts realized that he might need to modify it a bit. He added a game board and assigned each letter a specific point value. He added the blank tiles and the “premium squares”: the squares that multiply the values of words and letters. He called this modified version “Criss-Cross Words”. He manufactured them completely by hand and sold them for $2.
In 1947, a man named James Brunot contacted Butts, seeking the right to distribute the game. By this time, Butts had ceased production on the game. The two men struck a deal, paying Butts a royalty and letting Brunot deal with the distribution and manufacturing.
Brunot made the letter tiles himself, but ordered the game boards from a company called Selchow and Righter. He and his wife assembled the games in their living room and barely made any profits over the first few years of manufacture.
Suddenly, in the summer of 1952, Scrabble reached its tipping point and went from a cult favorite to a downright hit! No one’s sure quite why this happened, but the most common story is that an executive at Macy’s Department Store, in New York City, played the game while on vacation and ordered it onto the shelves at the store when he returned.
In any case, instead of making a few hundred sets a week, suddenly the Brunots were making upwards of 6,000, well beyond their means of manufacture, and sold the operation to Selchow and Righter. By fall, they had sold 37,000 Scrabble sets. In 1953, they sold 800,000. In 1954, 4,000,000.
In 1986, Selchow and Righter was bought out by a game company called Coleco, who were in turn bought out by Hasbro/Milton Bradley in 1989.
Alfred Mosher Butts passed away at age 94 in 1993.
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