Artwork from Chess & Strategy
Officials hail inclusion of chess in curriculum
http://www.mindanaotimes.com.ph
National Chess Federation of the Philippines (NCFP) president Prospero Pichay Jr. and its regional director James Infiesto welcomed the move of Education Secretary (DepEd) Jesli Lapus to finally integrate the sport chess in the elementary and high school curriculum in the coming school year 2009-2010.
Pichay said the new curriculum will be a golden opportunity to develop new talents like 15-year-old prodigy grandmaster Wesley So and catapult the Philippines into world chess supremacy.
On the other hand, Infiesto cited that chess is a learning tool for Science, Math, Arts and other subjects that deal with logical reasoning.
He said in a Texas study, regular (non-honors) elementary students who participated in a school chess club showed twice the improvement of non-chess players in Reading and Mathematics between third and fifth grades on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills.
A New Brunswick, Canada, study, using 437 fifth graders split into three groups, experimenting with the addition of chess to the math curriculum, found increased gains in math problem-solving and comprehension proportionate to the amount of chess in the curriculum.
The Venezuela “Learning to Think Project”, which trained 100,000 teachers to teach thinking skills, and which involved a sample of 4,266 second grade students, reached a general conclusion that chess, methodologically taught, is an incentive system sufficient to accelerate the increase of IQ in elementary age children of both sexes at all socio-economic levels.
Chess is found as required curricula in nearly 30 countries, he said.“I am happy that chess has been finally recognized in the Philippines as a tool to equip the youth making the right decisions in life by enhancing their logical thinking. This will pave way also for employment for chess players who can never let go of wood pushing because of the love of the sport,” he said.
Infiesto said career wise, chess is one of the basic foundations of creative thinking in magic presentations.“Anticipating the reactions of your audience is just like playing chess where you anticipate and analyze the moves of your opponent,” Infiesto further said. (PNA)
What’s the USCF doing about this? Why don’t Goichberg, Berry and Bauer resign and let other competent people help chess?
Thank you devine helper Campo!
This crooked Campo cronies have no shame.
But thanks Pinay for reminding the Filipino people of how Campo operates. By taking credit of other people’s achievements.
For over 50 years, he looted, used and abused the early Filipino chess talents, and set back Philippine chess, while enriching himself.
So more power to Pichay and the new Philippine chess leaders. You showed Campo how things are done the right way.
Maybe someday we will catch up with India and China.
Instead of streamlining the curriculum, here we are adding yet another thing to be “integrated”. It does not matter if learning chess is positively correlated to academic performance. The truth of the matter is that our curriculum is too crowded right now, and we should be removing and and not adding to it. Also, just because chess is in the curriculum of nearly 30 countries does not necessarily make it right to include it in the Philippine curriculum.
(P.S. My high school PE grades came solely from my being a member of the chess team.)