Four is not too young to chess the dream

Sep 13, 2016

Children have a good diet to help them fend off infection and grow healthy brains.

By John Masaba and Moses Abeka
 
Success! Every parent wants it for their child in life. Many parents will go the extra mile to prepare their children so they can be successful when they grow up.

Children have a good diet to help them fend off infection and grow healthy brains. Pregnant mothers take regular physical exercises and eat food supplements in a bid to give birth to healthy babies. All these steps have been bandied around by research as vital measures to nurturing smart children.

But after nearly 1,500 years of existence on earth, could a board game, chess, which is played by many people for pleasure, recreation and competition be what your child needs to excel in life? There is a lot of evidence to point to that.
 
RESEARCH FINDINGS
Several studies have shown that chess is an important stimulant of the brain and can be used to tickle children's brain into working better when faced with challenges.

A study carried out between 1973 and 1974 by Dr. Albert Frank, linked chess to improved numerical skills and verbal aptitudes among other abilities.

Verbal aptitude includes ability to spell words accurately, use correct grammar, understand word meanings, understand word relationships and analyse detailed written information.

Dubbed the Zaire study, the study showed that young people that participated in chess registered marked improvement in school.

The study said this happened regardless of the final chess skill level attained. Subsequent studies have linked chess to improved memory and verbal reasoning as well as an improvement of intelligence quotient (IQ). IQ is a measure of a person's intelligence as indicated by an intelligence
 
A MOTHER'S TESTIMONY

"I was worried about my child's behaviour. He could not concentrate on anything, not even at meal times," says Linda Birungi, a She says whenever the boy took her phone, he was at peace as he would engross himself in playing phone games.

"I then decided to enroll him for chess classes after I was tipped of the benefi ts," Birungi says. One year later, Birungi is all praise.
After enrolling her son for chess, she says his behaviour gradually changed.

"He became more focused in time. He is now a member of a children's chess club," Birungi says.
 
WHAT PLAYERS SAY

At Kyambogo College School, where the students play chess, a similar thread weaves the chess tale. "When you are playing chess, you have to think and plan every move or else you lose the game," says Collins Ouma, a student at the school.

He says he learnt to concentrate for long hours and pay attention to detail. "Chess has helped me learn that every decision counts," he says.

Besides helping improve the academic performance, the report notes, students said the game was helping them focus and become good citizens and that they are not usually involved in disciplinary cases.

Charity Musenze, a former national chess player, says the game has taken her places such as Egypt, Kenya and the UK. She says she has been holding chess clinics for children.

Many parents enrolled their children as a way to occupy them during holidays and weekends to keep them off negative activities. Months later, she says, many parents returned with stunning testimonies.

"Parents say children have improved in performance at school," says Musenze, whose organisation known as STAND (an acronym of Stay True and Never Deviate), runs chess clinics and workshops in Kampala.

"Our objective is to help children enhance their critical thinking, fair play, hard work and patience. We want them to learn how to win with style and lose with grace through chess," she says. Musenze warns parents that television is not good for children's brains, especially watching cartoons. She says cartoons make children hyper-active.
 
WHY CHESS TRANSFORMS CHILDREN

Chess is a two-player strategy board game played on a chessboard, a checkered game board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid.

Each player begins the game with 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns.

Each of the six piece types moves differently. The objective is to ‘checkmate'the opponent's king by placing it under an inescapable threat of capture.

According to Dr. Paul Nyende of the department of psychology at Makerere University, such maneuvering is very stimulating to the mind and children to become more creative.

"It is not easy to play and a lot of thinking is required. When you are trapped by the opponent, you have to find ways of getting out. That is what triggers the creativity," he says.

Beyond the game, Nyende says the children carry on with being creative and exhibit better problem-solving abilities in later life.

Musenze, who was introduced to the game by her father at the age of 12, believes taking up the game is the reason she ended up pursuing sciences — many of her girlfriends abandoned the subject, saying they were hard.

"Most of my friends, who used to play chess in school, ended up studying science combinations at A'level.

Many of them are engineers and doctors," says the former teacher of physics and Mathematics at Gayaza High School. Nyende, however, says for the game to be beneficial, children must start at a young age, at least at the age of four.
 
SCHOOL CURRICULUMS

In Kenya, the government is consulting on whether to include chess in the curriculum, which is currently under review.

This is after a number of schools adopted the game with outstanding results.

For instance, when chess was introduced in Winka Academy, an elementary school in Nairobi last year, pupils' grades improved. Countries such as Uruguay, China, South Africa and Japan have already integrated the game in their school curriculums.
 
HISTORY OF CHESS

Chess is believed to have originated in India around 600AD during the Gupta Empire and later quickly spread to Persia (now Iran).

The game has military links and was equated to military warfare. The Persians called it chaturanga, which translates as "four divisions (of the military)": infantry, cavalry, elephantry, and chariotry, represented by the pieces that would evolve into the modern pawn, knight, bishop and rook respectively.

It is said that players started calling "Shah!" (Persian for "King!") when attacking the opponent's king, and "Shah Mat!" (Persian for "the king is helpless") when the king was attacked and could not escape from the attack. These exclamations persisted in chess as it travelled to other lands.

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