Word: chess
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This is the big downside of the future. Obsessions are fine, but every minute you spend online--playing chess, talking politics or just shopping--is a minute you're not spending off-line. And it is off-line, in the real world, where we find a precious social resource, people we have little in common with. The supermarket checkout lady, the librarian, the shoppers at the mall--all are handy reminders of the larger community we're part of--multicultural, socioeconomically diverse yet bound by a common nature...
Studies in New York City show that kids who play chess perform better in reading on national standardized tests. The gains are especially impressive in students who initially lagged behind their classmates. Schools across the U.S. are incorporating the game into their curriculums. Chess-in-the-Schools, the largest program, teaches the game to more than 36,000 students in 160 schools in New York City. Meanwhile, the U.S. Chess Federation, the governing body for all tournament play, has 42,000 junior members--an elevenfold increase since 1989. "Years back, people who played chess were considered nerdy," says Barbara DeMaro...
Welsh runs the nonprofit Harlem Educational Activities Fund, which bankrolls the chess programs at Mott Hall and the Harlem Chess Center (with donations from, among others, a charitable arm of Time Warner, parent company of this magazine). Much of the credit for Harlem's love affair with chess goes to Maurice Ashley, 33, a grand master and the highest-ranked black player in history. Ashley, who established Mott's chess program a decade ago, saw the game as a way to foster academic achievement and self-esteem. "I call chess intellectual karate," he says. "It's about setting a concrete...
That's an understatement at Mott Hall, where shining chess trophies adorn the hallways. Here, kids turn out to cheer at chess tournaments just as they would for sports teams at other schools. "The kids are like chess vampires," says Jerald Times, Mott's chess director. "They can't get enough." All 410 students at Mott play chess. It is a required course, just like math and English, for kids in Grades 4 through 6. By seventh grade, chess is offered after school only. At a time when the lure of gang life is strong, chess gives kids a chance...
Sixth-grader Anthony Hidalgo, New York City champion for his age group, falls asleep with a chess book almost every night. "I get ideas from studying the mistakes of other players," he says. Hidalgo, an A student who wants to be an engineer, says chess has improved his scholastic performance. Thanks to the Harlem Chess Center, 250 more kids each year will get to learn the game. And with any luck, they, like Hidalgo, will become winners on and off the chessboard...