http://www.chessintheschools.org/s/index.cfm?SSID=30
Learning chess include increased reading comprehension

Engelsk artikel om fordele ved skak i skolen

In 2000 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) brought together some 200 world leaders, to draft and sign, the so-called Millennium Declaration.

ln that document the participants formally committed “to free all men, women and children from the deplorable and inhumane conditions of extreme poverty on which the planet lives” before the year 2015.

To try to reach those goals, UNESCO drew up a document which appeared in number of eight the so-called, Millennium Development Goals.

They cover various aspects such as promotion of primary education, eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improving maternal health, fight against HIV / AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and promote a world association for development.

For example, regarding the objective: to achieve universal primary education, the target is to “ensure that by 2015, children everywhere complete a full course of elementary schooling.

UNESCO believes that: … “Education gives people choices regarding the kind of life they wish to have, allowing them to express confidence in their personal relationships, community and at work as well.

However; there are over 115 million children of primary school who, unable to go to it, are deprived of this human right.

The majority are children from poor households, whose mothers have not often received formal education.

In the late 1970s different countries (Canada, USA, England, Japan and Venezuela) began projects that underlie many theories of learning, of the intelligence and cognitive development, which had in common the search for new methods that contribute to the development of thinking skills among our students.

In the mid-80s and early 90s new projects of educational innovation started, such as school chess in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Kalmykia, Spain, Turkey, USA and Venezuela, among others.

However, most projects have been more focused on training high performance players, that by implementing some elements of chess as a strategy for learning.

To provide strategies for optimizing the thinking of our students involves the improvement of two groups of fundamental skills in the development of the individual at an early age: the verbal ability (mother tongue) and numeracy skills (management of numbers, serials).

Educational research suggests that learning to think, learn how to speak and learn to reason, are processes that are closely related.

Nowadays no one doubts that one of the fundamental goals of education is to teach people to think and that in order to stimulate thinking and improve it in the classroom, it is necessary to promote the implementation of strategies to facilitate language and mathematical reasoning.

In this sense, when verbal ability is stimulated, enhances the knowledge and the comprehension of language.

Then the ability of discourse, understanding the different meanings, increase dramatically.

On the other hand, we recognize that chess has a mathematical basis.

Mathematics is the language of the method and orderly thinking, mathematics and language are the instruments of science.

In this sense, proposals such as the inclusion of chess in schools, with children from an early age, has come to help us.

Blanco (1996), in his book Chess Instructional System, says that the incorporation of programs of organized chess in schools is:

An alternative for the development of important skills of thinking.

A pedagogical tool identified with the principle of "learning to learn.

A game that encourages the recognition and the acquisition of ethical values.

The principle of “learning to think” is related to all those skills and strategies used by the individual to consciously organize and transform the information received.

The emotion and the desire to know.

Moreover, chess, for its playful nature-based on recreational, strict rules and principles, has a lot to give to the school such as values such as: study, truth, discipline and dignity.

Some research suggests that chess school is a means by which virtuous habits and patterns of personality, facilitates insertion of the pupil in the public sphere of adult life.

Cognitive abilities such as attention, memory, logical thinking, self-controI, selfesteem and so on.

Skills that are essential for the further development of the individual.

2.

Creativity through problem solving, demonstrations of study, analysis of positions and game plans.

The problems presented in different positions, allow the application of general principles, whose solution is not necessarily unique and can be approached in multiple ways.

Critical thinking.

When considering, for example, a number of variants derived from a particular opening, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, making decisions that relate more to their character or which may harass or cause the greatest difficulties to his opponent, in the establishment of value judgments about punctual situations.

Judgments, that might be argued later, before the evidence and practical demonstration on the board.

Ethical sense.

Being chess a game of rules, that establishes values, criteria and standards for the technical development of the game, and for the players attitude and behavior, such activity gives an universal sense of ethic.

4 Likewise, departing from the implementation of specific aspects of chess, we can apply them to everyday situations.

That is, the chess allows applications in various fields of human knowledge (mathematics, history, geography, psychology, computers, etc.

Organizations like the Chess in Schools Commission of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) has established a new policy, oriented towards the development and optimization of training teachers to teach chess and research of chess in the world.

It is an intellectual sport, easy to learn and inexpensive.

A teaching strategy, an alternative for the development of skills and processes of thinking, a means by which we built habits and patterns of our personality.

A tool that facilitates the insertion of the pupil in the public sphere to adulthood, especially in the integration to the working world; a way to achieve educational excellence and a cultural right.

Propose to design a project to encourage the research that links education, cognitive science, neuroscience with chess.

Universal Cause of Chess in Schools