Chess in the school and educational context

Chess is a millenary game that symbolizes life, its organization and the resolution of its conflicts, which is practiced all over the world and in all cultures, and which serves education to model the child’s personality and enhance, discover or strengthen intellectual capacities.

Chess is defined as a game, a sport, an art and a science. As a game, it enables an activity where the learner tests his strategic and tactical skills to solve problems. The student does it in a free way, liked by an atmosphere of camaraderie proper to the game, but conditioned to a system of rules that the teacher is proposing gradually. It is positively reinforced because it sees and measures the result of what it does and understands that its mechanisms, in each level that it promotes, are valued by the teacher and by his classmates. This is where it is considered a sport. The student perceives, through comparison with books, exercises, games and problems that his progress is framed in an order of unlimited complexity. Although it may not reach a high level of play (because it depends on psycho-physical factors that are not prioritized in a first time of teaching), the child conceives all the ways that make it a particular artist. He begins to solve problems of progressive intellectual complexity and, that alone, is enough to acquire the notions to handle his own intellect. The sport compares skills and, if it is well taken in this way, the child gets pleasure in measuring himself with others in search of magnifying his abilities. The tournaments, organized in order to create fair expectations for their training, are necessary. There, the student learns to manage their achievements, to socialize their individuality, to not give up to reach higher levels and tempers their spirit at the service of a sporting achievement. Knowing how to win and lose, recognizing their abilities and mistakes, depending on their environment, give them a new dimension that shapes their character. It is not necessary for the family to exaggerately stimulate him, or to be impatient, but to accompany with dedication a desire that depends on the time invested.

Chess is also a science because, through its practice, it begins to investigate methodologically, with an invaluable contribution for its developments in the school. When you measure your achievements in a tournament, check that you are instructed on the planned and systematic ways of learning acquisition. With the simple method of trial and error that is often adopted in competitions, the student corrects his way to the infinite level. And if you are accompanied on this trajectory by the recognition of your own abilities, the most effective use of your intelligence will show you that you can apply your evolutions in models. Chess is studied and researched and allows to get results after a patient work.