Chess as a Pedagogical Tool – Four Basic Concepts

Chess is one of the world's most popular games, with estimates that one out of five people globally occasionally play recreational chess. Tournament chess is more niche and popular among children as an extracurricular activity. Many schools have chess clubs. Sometimes chess is one of the more popular school activities. Urban areas commonly have leagues, with regional, state, and national scholastic tournaments, exciting children to compete as teams, travel, and meet other kids in their area, even nationally. As I detailed in Mystical Approaches to the Meaning of Chess, historically, chess originated as a priestly game, a form of divination. Chess became popular in the West as a gambling game and a method of mediating group conflict. Still, most importantly, chess emerged as a method to teach children basic thinking skills and moral reasoning. Chess has been shown to help children with concentration, long-term planning, visualization skills, decision-making, risk assessment, and more.

Many chess lessons are in morals and ethics, as the expression' chess is life'. However, chess is also helpful for general thinking skills, leading to the widespread use of chess in schools as a pedagogical tool. I refer to chess as a 'preacher's prop,' meaning the purpose of coaching chess is to preach a positive message, not necessarily the production of expert players. Chess is a means, not an end. Often, a religious figure or instructor will teach how to play chess and use chess as a metaphor for essential life lessons. Consider prison chess programs or teaching 'troubled youth' chess to help them make better decisions. Chess' spiritual character makes chess unique as a 'preacher prop' to express spiritual concepts, such as sacrifice, Karma (action-reaction), consequence of decisions, looking at things from other peoples' perspectives, long-term versus short-term planning, and more. These spiritual lessons can be taught non-sectarian or secular, as chess is a universal game, likely arising from Hinduism but currently formalized into a Christian form. The spiritual lessons of chess are universal and do not have to be connected to any religion or specific belief.

In public education, the cognitive skills aspect is emphasized and often related to math and science. I coach at the Detroit City Chess Club, hosted by the Detroit Institute of Arts. Coach Fite started the Club as a math teacher voluntarily creating an after-school chess club and team, just as many chess clubs are started as after-school programs by math teachers. Even though chess clubs might most commonly be affiliated with math classes, chess coaches come from all disciplines and backgrounds. The game has universal appeal, and chess can be just as valuable for an Art, History, or Political Science class. Recently, chess has been incorporated into the curriculum, not just as an after-school activity like athletics and team sports, where the pedagogical purpose is not teaching the sport itself, but fitness, health, exercise, teamwork, good sportsmanship, and other life lessons derived from sports. Similarly, chess has unique elements that can teach children essential life skills. In this essay, I want to focus on the specific aspects of chess that make it a method to teach children basic concepts.

Teaching Chess to Children

I will demonstrate the pedagogical uses of chess by exemplifying four basic concepts: Goals, Progress, Coordination, and Efficiency. As a chess coach, I generally follow the method of Sunil Weeramantry in Demystifying Chess: A Thinking Skills Workshop for Teachers. One of Sunil's primary methods is to break chess down into simpler components and create 'training drills' for these components. The training drill I use most often is mating with a King and Queen versus a lone King. At the Detroit Institute of Arts, Coach Kevin Fite, I and some other coaches employ Sunil's methods according to our various styles. In this essay, I will explain how these concepts are necessary not only to master basic chess skills, specifically checkmating with a King and Queen versus a lone King but can also be generalized to help students approach any discipline.

Chess is relatively simple; even a child, sometimes as young as three or four, can learn the game. Almost any child, regardless of cognitive skills, can learn the game's rules and play by eight years old. Younger children's learning depends on concentration levels. An interested adult can learn the game's rules and be playing in less than ten minutes. Nevertheless, chess strategy is infinite in complexity and interesting as a lifetime pursuit to increase skills and deeper understanding. There are only six different pieces for each player: one King, one Queen, two Knights, Bishops, and Rooks, and eight pawns, for sixteen pieces, totaling 32 between the two players, on an eight-by-eight board with 64 squares, alternating between two colors. The six different pieces move in a simple geometric pattern. The game's goal is to checkmate the opponent's King, which means attacking the King in a way that gives the King no way to escape the attack. The game is over at checkmate, not the actual capture of the King.

Besides the movement of the pieces, there are less than ten rules to the game of chess. Most children require a few weeks of practice with their peers until they have mastered all the movements of the pieces and rules. After learning the rules, children can play, improve by trial and error, copy their opponent's strategies, study chess books, receive coaching, solve puzzles, or use the countless online resources available. Truly mastering the game is a lifelong pursuit. In a classroom setting, chess might be divided into a thirteen-week lesson plan, with all the students knowing how to play the game within the first few classes and the rest focusing on more complex strategies. Any teacher, no matter the discipline, can generalize the skills from chess and use chess as a metaphor for their subject matter.

Training Drill: Mating with King and Queen Versus Lone King

The most useful training drill is mating with a King and Queen versus a lone King. This drill is often taught in conjunction with mating with two Rooks versus a lone King, mating with a King and Rook versus the lone King, and finally, the more difficult mating with a King and two Bishops versus the lone King. Mating with two Bishops versus the lone King is a skill that usually takes many months to master, creating a threshold most casual players never reach. Students who quickly master mating with two Bishops are a heuristic for 'natural talent' and a sign a child understands the game enough to defeat most adults who have never played competitive chess. However, anyone with effort and a few months of practice can master mating with a King and Two Bishops versus the lone King, including young children. In an introductory course of thirteen lessons, all the students can be expected to master mating with a King and Queen, two Rooks, and the King and Rook versus the lone King. In a single lesson, a good coach can teach the movement of the pieces and the majority of the rules, demonstrate checkmate with a King and Queen versus a lone King, and allow the new chess player to try it. Here, I want to emphasize the universal lessons necessary to fully master mating with a King and Queen versus a lone King.

Chess is a game whose simple goal is to win by checkmating the opponent's King. It is often fun and exciting for children. As opposed to basic cognitive skills whose use may be unclear, new chess skills can be put to immediate use, namely winning a game of chess. Stages of mental development and age levels at which children can be expected to master various concepts are more critical for chess coaches in elementary school, as by Middle School, all children can be expected to understand most strategic concepts related to chess. For a teacher who uses chess as a pedagogical tool, it is just a matter of universalizing the idea to their subject matter or general advice for students. I chose the four useful universal concepts of Goals, Progress, Coordination, and Efficiency that can be applied to any discipline or important life decisions.

Four Basic Concepts: Goals, Progress, Coordination & Efficiency

Each educator or chess coach can develop their lexicon of practical concepts, depending on style and relationship to the student. Children often first learn chess from their Father, Grandfather, Uncle, or family friend, who play an active role in the student's development throughout their lifetime. Chess can be an excellent tool for Parents and Grandparents to pass on timeless wisdom to the next generation. Chess is commonly used as a 'preacher's prop,' specific to getting children to make good life decisions and understand long-term goals versus short-term goals. As mentioned, chess originated as a spiritual game, and many of these lessons are ideas stressed by parents, family members, or religious leaders who advise the child throughout their lifetimes. However, even a teacher of any subject matter for one semester can impart these concepts and utilize them with classwork for the time they teach a student. A scholastic chess coach typically has an advisory role for a few years, such as elementary, middle, or high school. Students whose main extracurricular activity is chess, often find their chess coach their most significant life mentor.

The relationship of understanding Goals, Progress, Coordination, and Efficiency can be demonstrated when mating with a King and Queen versus a lone King. Checkmate is how you win at chess; the game's purpose is the 'goal' of both players. I have done this drill hundreds, probably thousands of times. When I teach chess, mating with the King and Queen is usually the third thing I teach—first being the six pieces and how they move, second the starting position of the game and the few rules like check and castling, and the third checkmate exemplified with the King and Queen versus a lone King. To some extent, the ability to mate with a King and Queen is a prerequisite to playing the game, as it is the most straightforward and most explicit demonstration of checkmate.

The concept of Progress is directly related to goals. Mating with a King and Queen versus the lone King, generally takes three stages, as a mate can only be delivered on the side of the board with the King in Opposition to the opponent's King. Opposition is a key chess concept referring to when the Kings directly oppose each other with one square in between, a fundamental strategic concept related to chess's geometric and visual-spatial aspects. So, if you start with the lone King in the center of the board, to deliver checkmate, first, the King must be forced to the side of the board. The King was brought into opposition to the opponent's King, and finally, the Queen was placed directly in front of the opposing King, defended by their own King or checking along the rank or file. This configuration creates a checkmate, with the King attacked and no way out. Leading to the concept of Coordination. Checkmate with the King and Queen necessitates the Coordination of the activities of the King and Queen together; the Queen on her own cannot checkmate (but can stalemate, as usually students will cause stalemate multiple times before checkmate). Most children of any age intuitively understand the Coordination between the King and Queen regarding their father and mother. Chess is a symbolic game, as the rules only specify the geometric patterns of how the pieces move but not the game's meaning or interpretation of the pieces. In this symbolic aspect, chess is associated with artistic and creative thinking. The Coordination of pieces in chess is purely geometric, but the symbolic nature of chess makes chess such a powerful pedagogic tool. Complex chess strategy often centers around the Coordination of multiple pieces, as do the chess metaphors that educators use to help children navigate difficult, multifaceted life decisions.

Once the student learns to mate with a King and Queen versus a lone King, the next important concept is efficiency, which is directly related to goals and Progress. Usually, after letting the student try to checkmate on their own without help, I will comment, 'You're not making progress,' as often people tend to want to check the King over and over again with the Queen, as opposed to the superior strategy of trapping the King with the Queen. The student's understanding that trapping the King with the Queen instead of the more intuitive checking the King represents a paradigm shift and a threshold in developing a deeper level of understanding of chess strategy. But sufficient for here is to mate with the King and Queen versus the lone King. First, the King must be trapped on the side of the board. So, Progress is easy to measure and understand in terms of whether the King is being forced to the side of the board. Geometrically, that limits the board's available section to the lone King until it is trapped on the side of the board, to which the opposing King can be brought into opposition and the Queen can deliver checkmate. The concept of efficiency relates to all the moves working together in Progress towards the goal of checkmate. Understanding the concept of efficiency is crucial for academic success, using classroom time and study habits, and a grand chess metaphor for pedagogical purposes.

For younger students, I will often give them reasonable time to figure out each drill on their own. The student will frequently check the King without forcing the King to the side of the board or get them to the side but let them out by failing to coordinate their King and Queen properly. After they temporarily 'give up,' I will offer a hint in the form of explaining the concepts of Goals, Progress, Coordination, and Efficiency. Often in the form of asking the child, 'Do you know what goals are?', or 'Do you know what progress is?' and letting the student define the term. Even most elementary students recognize the terms and can give some reasonable definitions. Elementary students are usually familiar with the term coordination, often in relationship to sports, like hand-eye coordination or dribbling a basketball, or in relationship to group activities, like choirs or dance, where all the people in the group coordinate, doing the same activity at the same time. Efficiency is a more complicated concept that children sometimes have difficulty defining. Mastery of the understanding of efficiency is the completion of the mating with King and Queen versus a lone King drill and most of the training drills. Once the student completes the drill successfully, repeat the drill till they get it right every time. The drill is only completed when the student gets it right every time in the most Efficient way by Coordinating the King and Queen, with every move making Progress towards the goal of checkmate. In this way, all four basic concepts, Goals, Progress, Coordination, and Efficiency, are part of completing any of the drills. The drill is only completed when the student gets it right every time in the most efficient manner. This is the general method of Sunil Weeramantry in Demystifying Chess: A Thinking Skills Workshop for Teachers, where chess is broken down into components that can be taught and mastered individually through training drills.

Take Away: Generalizing the Lessons of Chess

Chess offers a way to teach multiple skills within a single simple game. Besides the basic concepts of Goals, Progress, Coordination, and Efficiency, countless lessons and skills can be extrapolated. Most youth chess coaches and teachers are not exclusively interested in chess but in chess as a pedagogical tool, a means, not an end. Although at the Detroit City Chess Club, we also train pure chess for competitive purposes, many coaches are more interested in giving essential life lessons in a way the children find interesting and eager to learn. The life lessons from chess have diminishing returns in training for competitive play. Most of the critical life lessons are imparted at the beginner level. For pedagogical purposes, it makes no difference whether students compete at chess or play regularly. The main lessons imparted to students through learning the game of chess are the future metaphorical usage of essential concepts. Hence, the greatness of chess, with the simple goal of checkmate and easy methods and signposts to determine whether Progress is being made. Chess offers a simplified way of showing more complex concepts like Coordination and Efficiency, as in school, a student needs to coordinate all the various skills and disciplines to Progress towards their life Goals, preferably in the most efficient manner.

An instruction can relate simplified chess examples of goals and Progress toward performing well in school and navigating important long-term life decisions. Chess exemplifies the importance of planning and having a long-term strategy. Specifically in a classroom setting, for any subject or discipline, where a teacher can make clear the goal of the class and what should be recognized as Progress towards that goal. Once that objective has been met, how to coordinate the new skills with other skills, with a generalized appreciation for working efficiently, is directly measured by the Progress being made to agreed-upon goals. I hope to add diagrams and create a series of essays in the future. Topics I hope to cover include spiritual and moral concepts learned through chess, thinking skills specific to mathematical, geometric, and scientific reasoning, visualization skills, and more detail on cognitive stages of development, and what ages children can be expected to understand these concepts and incorporate them into long term life goals.