Yes, especially if there is any kind of religious bs taught there, then replacing it with chess and/or logic will be a great idea.
Education is increasingly seen as something that must be paid for to be valuable. While I’m all for compensating educators, I worry that this trend is turning knowledge into a product, rather than a shared resource. When everything has a price tag, we risk excluding those who need education the most, and it sends the message that only paid education is “legitimate.” How can we balance fair compensation with making education more accessible? Is there a better way to share knowledge without making it feel like a commodity?
Give every student the opportunity to develop their skills, without having to pay for speciality classes or tutors. Imagine how much more accessible and beneficial it would be if schools prioritised chess the same way they do other subjects.
If chess becomes an actual class instead of a club, the public education system will require 2 years of education courses to get a teaching license. In Illinois, anyway, even if it's a grandmaster teaching.
Clubs are great. So are sports. Join a few. My parents required us to be involved in at least 1 organized activity of our choice.
Shouldn't the focus be on making chess accessible to everyone without jumping through extra certification hoops?
A two-year course for a specific chess teaching license is not a standard requirement for all schools. At least I don't think so, because I was unsuccessful to find which schools in which cities require all this extra hoops.
Based on AI search results, it appears that a two-year mandatory chess certification for all school teachers is not a widespread requirement. The searches did not reveal specific lists of schools or cities that universally mandate such extensive certification for all teachers who might incorporate chess into their lessons or run chess clubs.
https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/RegulationsForTitlesAndCertificationsOfChessInEducation
https://www.europechess.org/ecu-school-chess-teacher-training-course-batumi/
https://granite.chessineducation.us/faq/
https://new.uschess.org/resources-chess-educators
Educational Benefits of Chess
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00762/full
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/376777908_Reducing_Violence_Through_Chess_Involving_Pre-service_Teachers_in_Participatory_Action_in_Schools
Movies illustrating the impact of chess:
The Dark Horse
Life of a King
The Mighty Pawns
https://youtu.be/UY5sheN51fc?si=RedxRUmYzt1eoSNv
Movies about chess. Maybe you might find more that are related to schools.
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls008261403/
Yes. Math also. Sixty four squares. And the basic algebraic identifier of each square on the board.
Rank and File. The two dimensional relationship of the chess board in our three dimensional world is an excellent teaching tool.
And no plug in required.
@Toscani said in #42:
> Education is increasingly seen as something that must be paid for to be valuable. While I’m all for compensating educators, I worry that this trend is turning knowledge into a product, rather than a shared resource. When everything has a price tag, we risk excluding those who need education the most, and it sends the message that only paid education is “legitimate.” How can we balance fair compensation with making education more accessible? Is there a better way to share knowledge without making it feel like a commodity?
>
> Give every student the opportunity to develop their skills, without having to pay for speciality classes or tutors. Imagine how much more accessible and beneficial it would be if schools prioritised chess the same way they do other subjects.
I had to take a look to see where you were from. It makes more sense now, Canada.
Down south of you here, we've got a hurdle to overcome which basically is the thing creating all the negative aspects you just pointed out above. Public sector unions, more specifically, teachers unions. They have taken over complete control of the education system, destroyed whatever was good about it, and pretty much have a license to steal from society at large.
There is just enough truth in the idea of education being worth money to perpetuate that practice as well. The difficulty with sending your kids to a better school here is that you do so at your own cost. I'm not quite as old as you but pretty close, I was sent to a private school and my parents paid 100% of the school taxes for public schools but then also paid for me to go to a private school completely out of pocket. I'm talking about grade school and high school, not furthering education at a college where of course somebody's on the hook for that. Truth be told, the taxpayers here pay that also because colleges receive a perverse amount of money from the government. Going back maybe 10 years I remember seeing statistics which showed the cost of a college education here, even at that time, was 300% of what it was 30 years earlier. That's in adjusted dollars. And I'm pretty sure the education wasn't any better.
I'm afraid it is a commodity here, and it is absolutely reserved for those who will pay. The video I linked above is worth purchasing even if it's not available otherwise, it highlights the quest of several people who attempted to make positive change for all the kids in the schools, and were summarily crushed by the education system here. These people don't want anybody cutting into their precious tax dollars by providing merit-based, taxpayer funded education, to less privileged kids. And they absolutely will not stand by while someone provides better education for less money.
To give you an example of the academic levels coming out of schools here, I'll just share this parable. I hired a kid for a summer job at my manufacturing shop. My local school district is ranked about 160th out of 503 in the state academically. This student was a senior, an honor roll student who had completed physics and calculus, and had been accepted to Penn State for mechanical engineering. He could not read a tape measure, did not know fractions of an inch, and did not know if 0.4 was 1/2 or a 1/4. True story.
The Video is available for purchase on Amazon Prime.
The UK and USA educational systems are quite similar in practice. One of the things developing in the UK is an epidemic of 'minor' mental illnesses in the young - so much so the nearly half a million are work incapacitated from a total working population of around 20 million. The fingers of blame are pointing all over the place, but no one is questioning whether the causes lie within the educational system, no evidence for this but then there wouldn't be. What I do know for certain is that if I was a child nowadays I wouldn't be able to hack modern schooling. So credit to those who emerge undamaged.
I would suggest that chess and bridge can be offered for rainy playtimes. Probably not good for Californian chess, but great for English!
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