Also, there is a lot of competion from video games. All my children have and had good chess abilities but other things take their interest.
Why is chess not that popular?
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Feb 5, 2013
0
#23
Coz...like...chess...like...hurts me head...like. Grunt. Thinkin'...all muscle me...thinkin'...grunt...snort...for those...whatyacallem...pro-pro-pro...fessa...people. Grunt.
ThrillerFan wrote:
Chess requires having a brain. Something very few people highschool age and below have now-a-days.
For starters, I can tell you first hand, with my wife being a teacher, that the vast majority of kids today can't spell. All they do is text all day, and turn in papers with "text talk" in it.
When they do translation (she teaches highschool Latin), a good half of the students will put down answers like "The boy desk his work" (uhm, where's the verb???, should be "The boy sat at his desk and did his work"), or another good one is you'll see answers like this: "The boy said to the girl 'I luv u, c u tomorrow'."
For crying out loud!!!!!!!!!! If you can't do basic writing, and can't spell, don't understand what a verb is, etc. How can you ever expect to be able to play chess?
Oh, here's another good one. An actual question my wife asked the students a year or two ago. "The boy drives the car", "what's the verb in the sentence?" Two students shouted answers immediately. One said "boy", and the other said "car". SHEESH!!!!! These kids are freaking 14 and 15 years old.
Being the father of 2 children; 1 a senior in high school and the other a freshman in college, I completely agree after meeting and speaking to my daughters peers and friends.
Infact, most kids today can't even tell time from a traditional clock as digital clocks have turned their brains to jello. Digital clocks only require them to read numbers. Assuming they can read the numbers on the traditional clock...they still are required them to think about the short hand, long hand and second hand. And God forbid if it is a traditional clock without the numbers only the minute markings.
P.S. My daughters are the exception to the modern day rule except when it comes to chess. They both learned how to play at a young age but were not interested thus know little more than the rules and some development strategy.
Feb 5, 2013
0
#25
@ThillerFan, you paint a sad picture for the future.
I keep reading articles about chess in schools. They are usually upbeat & optimistic but they only focus on a subset of children. What I'm getting at is; why don't we/they start making chess a required class at the elementary level? As it stands now, only kids that are curious about chess get into these programs.
The younger the brain, the greater the gain. In my school district they teach Japanese & Chinese (Mandarin) to elementary kids. Will they ALL go on to be oriental scholars? Of course not but some of them will have an edge up in the world to come. Likewise, chess at the elementary level may not make it more popular but I truly believe it would give kids a "leg up" in the ever increasing need for technical understanding in the future.
It's time to take this to the next level beyond reading articles about the benefits of scholastic chess every year in magazines and online. How can WE lobby the educational system to implement this? Hello, any politicians on chess.com? I doubt it.
Feb 5, 2013
0
#26
The problem is kids do not want to think these days. It sounds harsh, but it is true. They would much rather watch tv and/or play video games. Many of my friends do play chess, but those that do not simply say that it is too hard. As a history student I have and am studying many different cultures. Up until the mid 20th century thinking was a part of being social and relaxing. Through my years in highschool I could rarely have a real conversation with most students my age. As a result I decided to go into education, and am planning on making students learn how to think. The problem is not an interest in chess, but a resistence to thinking.
you have to be nucking futs to want to be good a chess player.. and most smart people know this ;)
Feb 5, 2013
0
#28
For those old enough to remember, the Fischer-Spassky games were televised, complete with off-site ongoing analysis by GMs to fill the time between moves. I loved it, but you never saw another televised game after Fischer disappeared from the chess scene.
ponz111 wrote:
Also, there is a lot of competion from video games. All my children have and had good chess abilities but other things take their interest.
Skill in chess and videogames is not mutually exclusive. I'd list myself as an example of a tournament player for chess and Super Smash Bros Melee, but by my own standards I still have a long way to go at both.
The learning process is similar though.
Feb 6, 2013
0
#30
Big_Daddy_10 wrote:
ThrillerFan wrote:
Chess requires having a brain. Something very few people highschool age and below have now-a-days.
For starters, I can tell you first hand, with my wife being a teacher, that the vast majority of kids today can't spell. All they do is text all day, and turn in papers with "text talk" in it.
When they do translation (she teaches highschool Latin), a good half of the students will put down answers like "The boy desk his work" (uhm, where's the verb???, should be "The boy sat at his desk and did his work"), or another good one is you'll see answers like this: "The boy said to the girl 'I luv u, c u tomorrow'."
For crying out loud!!!!!!!!!! If you can't do basic writing, and can't spell, don't understand what a verb is, etc. How can you ever expect to be able to play chess?
Oh, here's another good one. An actual question my wife asked the students a year or two ago. "The boy drives the car", "what's the verb in the sentence?" Two students shouted answers immediately. One said "boy", and the other said "car". SHEESH!!!!! These kids are freaking 14 and 15 years old.
Being the father of 2 children; 1 a senior in high school and the other a freshman in college, I completely agree after meeting and speaking to my daughters peers and friends.
Infact, most kids today can't even tell time from a traditional clock as digital clocks have turned their brains to jello. Digital clocks only require them to read numbers. Assuming they can read the numbers on the traditional clock...they still are required them to think about the short hand, long hand and second hand. And God forbid if it is a traditional clock without the numbers only the minute markings.
P.S. My daughters are the exception to the modern day rule except when it comes to chess. They both learned how to play at a young age but were not interested thus know little more than the rules and some development strategy.
You hit the nail in the head there. My wife goes to Italy with students that choose to go. It's to learn culture and history tied into Latin (Italian is derived from Latin). However, here's some things I can tell you about her experiences (thus far, she's gone Summers of 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, and they are going this year for Spring Break):
1) They are allowed to go off on their own for a few hours, but they will say that all the students and chaperones need to meet at say, 6 o'clock. One girl had her mother's watch on, but it was analog, and she seriously told my wife that she doesn't know how to tell time, which just goes to confirm your statement!
2) The legal age for drinking in Italy is 16, but the Chaperones required parental consent by parents of those 18 to 20, and wouldn't allow kids under 18 to drink. However, some of the 16 and 17 year olds go on this trip figuring they can sneak the alcohol and don't give two hoots about the history. There is an agreement signed before the trip that any kid caught drinking will be sent home on the next available flight, NO REFUND! I think she's had to send 1 thus far in the first 4 trips if memory serves me right, and she has a hunch about one of this year's attendees.
Then, back here at home, in the 2004-2005 school year, she was in a trailer (overcrowded school), and they were on a 4x4 schedule. That's where you have "A-Day" and "B-Day" and they alternate. The purpose is instead of meeting 45 minutes for 8 classes, they meet 90 minutes, but only have 4 classes a day, and only meet every other day. Now, many schools use that format but instead do semisters, but with foreign language, that still follows A-Day/B-Day because they figure you need to meet for the year.
That said, she had planning 4th block on both A-day and B-day. The teacher that taught a marketing class had the class in her classroom on A-Day. She literally would fall asleep, and the kids would be roaming wild. In March 2005, some idiot decided to go into her desk drawer, take out a pair of scissors, and actually cut the cord of the clock in the room, and there was clearly a spark as there was then a hole in the blades of the scissors. Lucky for the kid, they took the ones witht he plastic handles.
It gets better, 2005-2006 rolls around and she's in the same room. They replaced the clock, albeit this one was smaller. She had this one student named Chris King in 2004-2005 and 2005-2006. He was a true idiot. Here's some of the things he did:
1) Answered a translation with the word "sleeped" (uhm, past tense for sleep is "slept")
2) In their book, the English was written on the left, the Latin on the right. He's reading the English and says "You know, this subject is really easy!"
3) In the fall of 2005, he's in Latin 2, and he tells the teacher (my wife), "You know, this class is going by faster than it has in the past." He then looks towards the clock and says "Oh, the clock is smaller, that explains why time is going so much faster this year!"
Well, let's just say things haven't really improved at all for 2012-2013, and it's no different! We will certainly make sure we find a way to make our almost 3-year old daughter become an exception and not fall into this trap that kids are falling into now-a-days.
skullskullskull wrote:
People don't like losing.
Very true!
I imagine the vast majority of non chess players were like myself. I only started playing by accident then joined here pretty much within the same week. I always imagined chess to be for old people or people without a life...etc.
I have to admit, if i had have known how much fun it is years ago, I would have indeed been into it without doubt.
Cheers!
Feb 7, 2013
0
#33
Chess for "old people" and "people without a life", lololo, oh, oh, now you step into it!!!
Actually, enjoying chess should be proportionally to all the other activities you have in life. The biggest pieces off the pie would be going to work, taking care of home and family, etc. Then there comes your free time, how do you want to spend it? I would rather be out on a boat and fishing , hunting , going for hikes with my dogs then sitting in front of the bbop tube, or playing chess! So I play chess when there is nothing better to do, like dead time. lolo
anpu3 wrote:
@ThillerFan, you paint a sad picture for the future.
I keep reading articles about chess in schools. They are usually upbeat & optimistic but they only focus on a subset of children. What I'm getting at is; why don't we/they start making chess a required class at the elementary level? As it stands now, only kids that are curious about chess get into these programs.
[...]
It's time to take this to the next level beyond reading articles about the benefits of scholastic chess every year in magazines and online. How can WE lobby the educational system to implement this? Hello, any politicians on chess.com? I doubt it.
For "politicians" you mean members of the nomenklatura, right?
Rather than chess, in school they should teach the basic concepts of freedom so maybe we wouldn't have posts like yours. Forcing other people to learn a useless board game is nonsense.
Forcing kids to do something is a great way to make them hate that thing for the rest of their lives.
GhostNight wrote:
Chess for "old people" and "people without a life", lololo, oh, oh, now you step into it!!!
Actually, enjoying chess should be proportionally to all the other activities you have in life. The biggest pieces off the pie would be going to work, taking care of home and family, etc. Then there comes your free time, how do you want to spend it? I would rather be out on a boat and fishing , hunting , going for hikes with my dogs then sitting in front of the bbop tube, or playing chess! So I play chess when there is nothing better to do, like dead time. lolo
I didn't mean to offend anyone, trying to explain how i saw it.
My apologies for not thinking first. Always been my cross to bear.
Rnewms wrote:
Yeah not one person near me really knows anything more than some rules/piece movement. All they know how to do: drive around, buy food, and use the internet.
Welcome to America. Dumbest country in history.
In Pakistan they kill people who give out free vaccines because they think it is poison.
In post-Hellenistic Egypt they burned down the biggest collection of human knowledge because it was made by pagans.
So, we do have some competition.
Feb 7, 2013
0
#39
"Forcing kids to do something... " Well, hasn't history shown that kids are always being forced to do something!
Agrarian cultures for centuries "forced" their children to do the chores necessary for survival. In every classroom today kids are "forced" to learn math, language & science. Skills they will need to function in society. Suppose they are allowed to reject anything "forced" upon them? Where would society be then?
So yes, if kids were "forced" to learn chess at the elementary school level, then the world might be a better place.
if it was on tv it would be hugly popular. before 2004 no one except a few guys who gambled played poker. it was some what popular but after the nhl lockout it became huge. but if you think about it, poker is a lot more boring than anything on the planet, and if you've played poker before then you know that most of what you do is just sit there and wait till good cards come by. depending on how fast the game is, could take 2 hours ):
They edit poker on TV so only the most exciting hands get shown, there are a lot of suck outs so even crappy players think they have a chance to win big money. Top class chess is really, really hard to explain to a general audience and it doesn't help when in a lot of games somebody resigns when it isn't immediately apparent that they are losing so theres no big payoff for a TV audience there..
As far as the original question goes, chess is one of those things which is its own subculture of obsessive players who can't understand why other people can't see the beauty or the art involved in a great game. I guess you could compare it to Jazz music or something like that. The people that are totally into it don't understand that their obsession is irrelevant to the vast majority of people.