7/26/2023 0 Comments Thank you mr postmanOne of the round table debates at last month’s London Chess & Education Conference, which I unfortunately missed as there were several other debates on at the same time which interested me, was on this topic: “Silence, touch move, timers: how strict should chess classes be?” I consider this a very important subject and would have been interested to hear others’ views. I guess it’s partly a generational thing: Postman was nearer my parents’ age than my age, and those who are 20 years or so younger than me will, by and large, have far fewer qualms than I do about this sort of competition. I can think of many benefits that children who excel at soccer (or chess) could gain from taking part in international tournaments even though I would certainly ask some questions and have some concerns. I would not take quite such an extreme position as Postman. What we have here is the emergence of the idea that play is not to be done for the sake of doing it, but for some external purpose, such as renown, money, physical conditioning, upward mobility, national pride.” “Why submit children to the rigors of professional-style training, concentration, tension, media hype? The answer is the same as before: The traditional assumptions about the uniqueness of children are fast fading. He then talks about young children competing in sports such as tennis, swimming and gymnastics, and has another question to ask. “What are the parents doing there in the first place? Why are four thousand children involved in a tournament? Why is East Brunswick, New Jersey playing Burlington, Ontario? What are these children being trained for? The answer to all these questions is that children’s play has become an adult preoccupation, it has become professionalized, it is no longer a world separate from adults.” Postman goes on to discuss a brawl between parents which occurred during an international soccer tournament for young children in Ontario in 1981. “The idea that children’s games are not the business of adults has clearly been rejected by Americans, who are insisting that, even at age six, children play their games without spontaneity, under careful supervision, and at an intense competitive level.” In his book Neil Postman writes about the decline in children’s play and the merging of children’s and adult games, with specific reference to Little League baseball and Pee Wee football. Other chess educators are asking the very different, and, in my opinion, over-simplistic question: how can we best put chess into schools as they are now?” It’s not really strange though: I’m always asking questions like “What should 21st century childhood and 21st century schools look like?” before I ask what role chess should play in them. You might think it curious that I should have been so influenced by a book which doesn’t actually mention chess at all. Reading this book caused me to think about everything I was doing in terms of junior chess, and everything that was happening in the junior chess world, in a different way. Back in 2004 I read a book, originally written in 1982, called The Disappearance of Childhood by the US writer and educator Neil Postman (1931-2003). Sometimes you read a book which makes you rethink your opinions on a particular subject.
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