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The only kind of chess that I can play with any skill
these days is a variety I'll call preliminary bar
chess.
It works like this. You're in a tap room, bookstore, coffee house or the like. A chess board and pieces are available. Someone suggests a game. That's when you start Preliminary Bar Chess. The idea is to convince the other guy that it's been longer since you last played than since he last played. An exchange goes something like this:
I haven't played for years, so I'm pretty
rusty.
Oh, come on. It's been a while for me, too.
Don't try to shine me on. I saw you playing chess in
here last week. And I haven't played since I taught the
game to my daughters sometime in the '80s.
With my skill at Preliminary Bar Chess, I can avoid falling into a game and getting humiliated even after the other guy offers to spot me a bishop or a rook on account of my not having played in this millennium.
Thus I have forgotten the difference between the Ruy Lopez and Steinitz Gambit openings. I wouldn't follow chess at all, except that the chess column in the Sunday Post sits next to the crossword puzzle. That's one of my favorite vices, but my eyes wander while I'm trying to figure out what month St. Crispin's Day falls in, and I end up reading the chess column by Larry Evans.
This past Sunday, he reported that a high school in
Louisiana refused to allow students to form a chess club
because chess was not appropriate under the new No Child
Left Behind Act, since there were definite winners and
losers, and educators need to see that everyone
succeeds.
He also noted that in 1998, before No Child Left Behind
was even on the table, an Alabama intermediate school had
banned chess because it was too competitive and did not
foster the appropriate spirit commensurate with school
principles.
Nor is it just chess that alarms the modern protectors of children's self-esteem. This year, the venerable spelling bee was going to be canceled at the school district in Lincoln, R.I.
Assistant Superintendent Linda Newman said it conflicted
with No Child Left Behind because It's about one kid
winning, several making it to the top and leaving all
others behind.
She added that You have to build
positive self-esteem for all kids, so they believe they're
all winners.
Since not everyone can win a spelling bee,
it was eliminated in 2004.
However, the district got a new superintendent after the cancellation decision was made. John Tindall-Gibson re-instated the district spelling bee, which culminated on Feb. 17.
While this reversal demonstrates that not all school administrators are fools, it doesn't address the underlying issue of the effects of competition on children.
For my part, I represented Evans Junior-Senior High School and placed sixth in the Weld County Spelling Bee in 1963 when I was in seventh grade. The next year I finished second. I went to the state spelling bee in Denver both years, and never got past the written test. In other words, I was a loser. I didn't even get into the televised final rounds.
And so what? I lose at chess and I lose at Scrabble and I lose in journalistic competitions and the Friday crossword puzzle often beats me. Yet those who have to endure me in person will tell you that my self-esteem is generally so healthy that it borders on arrogance.
The important lesson that our schools might impart in
this regard is that most of us are going to be losers, and
we might as well figure out how to handle that fact. This
was made brutally clear back in 1974, when David Hapgood
wrote a fine book called The Screwing of the Average
Man.
It explained that The average man has of course
always been a loser, at least since the invention of
agriculture made it profitable for one person to exploit
another.
He went on to point out that America operates so that about 15 percent of the population comes out ahead. The other 85 percent of us are losers. Chess and spelling bees are as good a way as any to teach us that important fact at an early age.
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