Girls, Chess & Opportunity
- March 4th, 2010
- Posted in Uncategorized
- By Brian Rowe
- Write comment
Today I was told that the second chess class I will be teaching at Perkins has only two girls signed up, my daughter and promissing classmate of her’s in a chess class of 10 to 12 students . The first session was similar this Fall with a 4 to 1 ratio of boys to girls. Nearly 15 years after Judit Polgár made it to the #10 ranked chess player in the world, we are still living in a time where girls are not thought of as chess players or even given a chance to play to the game. Judit proved that women could excel at chess and compete with the best of the best.
In the 3 years that I did private lessons in the Portland area I had not one female student. In one house I taught a child 7 and one 10 both boys while their sister watched with interest. When I asked her if she wanted to play, I was told by one of the parents she was not interested. I contested this idea and the sister mysteriously ended up with an extra circular activity during future lessons.
This saddens me, the skills learned from chess are extremely valuable for anyone. Learning how to master a skill of the mind is transferable to any academic endeavor and helped me make it through law school. The focus, attention span, and concentration that it builds in younger students is valuable in reading and listening. The logical problem solving and strategic evaluation of positions is helpful in project management. While the ability to step through options is very similar to debugging computer code.
More parents of girls should serious give their daughters a chance to learn from and excel at chess.
Addition: I was understating how good of a player Judit is, her CV says it better then I could:
“In 1991, I became Chess Grandmaster, breaking Bobby Fischer’s record as youngest grandmaster in history at the time. On four occasions, I played on the Hungarian men’s Olympic chess team, and we won a silver medal in 2002. I have defeated world chess champions Spassky, Karpov, Kasparov, Topalov and Anand at international tournaments, matches and rapid tournaments.”
