Chess is amazing it blows my mind why simple tools and games like this are not incorporated in some 'fun' way into the education system. By 'fun' I mean that if children were told to play chess they would not. A system would be need to be designed so that they look forward to chess class as they do for PE and art.
I've been teaching, middle school and high school, for the past 15 years. I have always had a stash of chess sets and clocks in my room. They see pretty consistent use.
I love chess in schools for a number of reasons. One of the most interesting things about watching chess in schools is seeing who rises to the top. The best players tend not to be the brightest academic students. The best players tend to be smart kids who fight some of the bs that schools make kids endure. These kids are smart enough to 'get' chess, and have enough fight in them to stick out the difficult moments in games and tournaments that separate the best from the really good. These are the kids who tend to get in trouble a lot, who get bad reputations among teachers. Watching those kids show everyone up by winning chess tournaments soundly against the brightest academic kids is pretty awesome, and can be life-changing for some students.
I love teaching chess because you can teach anyone some simple ideas such as opening strategies, piece values, and simple endgames, and they can then beat anyone who hasn't learned those concepts. Kids who never thought they could learn a "smart person" game like chess suddenly play well, and start to realize they can do intellectual things. Then you start to see natural talent come into students' games.
Playing chess with kids is fun! If you have the chance, introduce a kid to chess.
My daughter hates PE, but she's just been peer pressured into wanting to learn chess - at her first wet break time in her new class, half the girls sat down and started playing, and she felt left out.
That (along with watching the World Championship) has got me back into the game after not really having played it for about 30 years.
Chess is very addictive and I think even if they were told to like chess they would. I know that we played chess sometimes in public grade school and having been encouraged to do so didn't prevent me from enjoying it. it eventually became quite difficult to pull me away :-)
My daughter's grade school has chess lessons once a week (we are in Canada). They start as young as junior kindergarten. To reinforce the lessons and gauge her learning, I try to play at least one game with her a month.
I'm impressed at how much she's learned in the program. She's still not capable of beating me, but I'm able to teach her things she's not learned yet in the program such as castling and en passant. Then I'm happy to see her come back after that week's lesson to tell me she used what I taught her and won her game.
There's only so much time in a day, and there's a lot that one wants to throw at a kid to learn (everybody has a pet topic he or she thinks kids should study, whether it's chess, or music, or programming or personal finance or whatever..)
