Opinion: Chess as a Tool for Social Transformation / By Nicola Nigro
Chess can be a tool of transformation, it has great potential for social reintegration; the game itself helps to reflect on personal successes and mistakes and all this promotes coexistence in lockdown contexts. And it's not just the case with confinement, but in prisons, hospitals, or any detention center that involves isolation.
But how can chess improve our lives? because through different concepts and chess lessons, a real personal change could be generated in a collective at risk of exclusion, thus helping to better make decisions and developing strategies specific to the game-science that can be valid and transferable to personal dynamics.
On the other hand, it is well known that, in all environments, also school, chess is practiced without barriers. The social inclusion of children with disabilities underscores the tremendous importance of fostering the intellectual potential of these children in order to enable them to develop their knowledge in such a way that they achieve as much autonomy as possible in their adult lives.
It draws attention to the many ways in which chess fits as a pedagogical tool, a cross-cutting axis with the ability to explain emotions even through positions on the board. This is part of a program called aulaDjaque who present the proposal to identify the piece that is suffering or the one that may be threatening, an analogy with the emotions and sufferings of children in school, due to bullying, chess thus becomes a representative of these situations.
It is the sport of longest tradition and history among blind people around the world. It is also a very egalitarian activity, because chess for the blind is disputed in a single category, without distinction between blind and visually impaired, nor discrimination between men and women, nor by age groups.
And finally chess is an invaluable therapeutic tool in times of isolation. It even impacts internet data consumption patterns. Its adaptability to technology has given the activity an unprecedented call capability. Virtual meetings have become apprespectful appointments for experts and beginners. Social estating has been crossed into the hundreds of online tournaments held every day. No undermining of classes and tutorials on the subject. Even visually impaired chess players have dabbled in the use of the internet, playing most of them for the first time, online games about quarantine.
What do you think? In which other areas do you consider that chess has managed to generate a social transformation?
