DRUGS & KIDS & CHESS; CHESS: MINDGAME OF SPORTS
(Editor's Note: Local chess coach Dawn has a blog at http://campchess.com/ where 'smart meets fun' she dispenses knowledge about life and chess...)
Adults can’t sit easily for hours on end and children should not be expected to either. Many public schools adopt a policy of drugging children who are active, yet refuse to give them recess or athletic. I consider this to be criminal and abusive. In some schools, as many as 85% of the kids, particularly boys, are drugged. The complaints against them are easily remedied with a good sports program with healthy exercise. I am stunned that any parent would permit this.
I wrote in-school curriculum and taught teachers to teach Chess in public, private and transitional schools in several states. My observations made me hostile to the open political indoctrination and drugging common in public schools. Honestly I was shocked at what I observed on a daily basis.
To be fair, there are some good schools, but there are not many. What kids should be learning in school they are not. Public schools have become a breeding ground for the worst parts of society.
Children are too often not taught accountability, responsibility, self respect, manners, self control or how to make good choices. Bad behavior and poor performance is rewarded. Kids are coddled, indulged, taught that they are entitled and not held accountable. This is the path to drugs and other self destructive behavior.
My stance is clear. I consider this outright child abuse. There is almost nothing about an active child that a good exercize or sport program will not cure. Schools offer almost no recess or physical education, they rely on drugs. It is unconscienable. I am really surprised that any parent agrees to this.
This has been going on for a long time. I regularly encounter young men in their late teens or early twenties that were drugged for years by the schools. No healthy kid can sit quietly for hours on end, nor should they. Neither can most healthy adults.
I incorporate at least fifteen minutes of high energy activity per hour in every program over two hours in length. My kids then happily settle in on quiet focus time since they have burned off excess energy and have blood flowing to their brain.
For my elite Chess Students, I require that they are in a sport and preferably music as well. This is the best way to balance a child out.
Even my autistic, ADD and variously labeled kids are usually drug free and performing very well after a summer in CampChess. I routinely see kids going in a few months time from rocking under a table to interacting normally and performing well through Chess. These are consistent results that a good instructor can achieve after a few months training to teach the CampChess method.
Even seemingly severely dysfunctional children, early stroke, mild alzheimers patients and brain injury patients often achieve marked improvement using the CampChess method.
As for the other drugs kids often get involved in, an excellent sport program, particularly in conjunction with a high level Chess program, usually results in avoidance of those bad choices. This isn’t rocket science. There is no need for any kid to be compromised by prescribed or illegal drugs or grow up without a solid foundation that prepares them for success in life.
Sports and Chess equipment with solid training is available for a few thousand dollars investment. It costs more than that to bury a kid or support them for a month.
CHESS:MINDGAME OF SPORTS
Many top professional athletes use Chess as the mindgame to improve their performance in their sport. I have professional golfers, football players, soccer players and tennis players as clients.
Chess improves court vision dramatically which enables a player to know the positions of both team members and opponents. My Chess program improves the athlete’s ability to visualize the course, field or court. Chess also calms the mind which gives added time to respond to plays and an ever changing field.
In addition, the confidence of a player is improved through Chess. Athletes grow emotionally, feel more grounded and are better able to cope with defeats as they turn limitations and failures into success through Chess.
Chess is the best way to improve the mental agility, memory and cognitive skills needed for the best athletic performance. One side bonus is the scholastic improvement, particularly in math, which is a welcome plus for athletes.
Children as young as two are merkedly improved in the way they approach, process and cope with challenges, especially athletics. All of the team, sportsmanship, social, responsability, accountability, focus, patience, ethics, organizational and courtesy skills a good coach cultivates are greatly enhanced through the game of Chess.
Kids and adults alike enjoy the competition and fun of Chess. The Chessboard layout is similar to football, soccer, basketball or hockey playing areas. The Chess pieces, like the team players, have different positions, capabilities and combine with other pieces to play as units to achieve goals. All of the plays and maneuvers in team sports have correlative moves on the Chessboard.
As in sports, Chess requires a plan to achieve a win. As in team sports, the Chess player must constantly adapt to a changing board and adversary. On the first move of the game of Chess, a player has 20 possible first moves. There are 400 different possible positions after each player makes one move apiece.
There are 72,084 positions after two moves apiece. There are 9+ million positions after three moves apiece. There are 288+ billion different possible positions after four moves apiece. There are more 40-move games on Level-1 than the number of electrons in our universe. There are more game-trees of Chess than the number of galaxies (100+ billion), and more openings, defences, gambits, etc. than the number of quarks in our universe!
Chess is an infinite, ever changing playing field. Chess is by far the best training field for the mind of an athlete. It is the natural partner of sports and athletics. The self control, concentration and adaptability readily translate from Chess.
It is surprising to me that every coach does not use Chess as a valuable tool. But then, they probably will when they read my upcoming book.
