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Chessville
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Teaching Life Skills Through Chess A Guide for Educators and Counselors by Fernando Moreno
Reviewed by Steve Rubin, PhD © 2002 by Fernando Moreno American Literary Press Inc. This small book is an interesting attempt to use the teaching of chess as a way of enhancing young people's understanding and solution to interpersonal problems. Engaging young people in thinking about their problems is often difficult and the major hurdle for any professional counselor. Fernando Moreno has provided an interesting and potentially very worthwhile system for subtly helping young people consider their options. Moreno is a Psychologist trained in Spain and holds a Master's degree in School Counseling from Trinity College, Washington D.C. He is a National Certified Counselor and works as a Bilingual/ESOL School Counselor in Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland. The book contains four chapters, Chess As An Analogy To Life, How To Use Chess In Counseling, Directory of Chess Positions To Be Used In Counseling, and Chess Counseling Programs. There is also a list of reference materials, running some sixteen entries long. Mr. Moreno points out in the skills table on pages 12 through 15 how conversations can show the parallels between chess and life. He sees chess problems as analogs for challenges between people and between people and the system. He shows how group discussions dealing with chess problems can, in fact, help to analyze even the group pressures of peers (page 33). He points out how present choices have both immediate and long term consequences in how you must think before you act. He nicely points out how chess has rules as does life and that solutions need to be found within the rules. A major issue in all counseling is to get the clients or people with problems to take a step back and distance themselves from the problems. This clinical distance allows them to use their intelligence to both analyze the situation and look at different options. Young people and many older people in the middle of the maelstrom of interpersonal problems cannot get the clinical distance which would allow them to use their intelligence to find solutions. The use of chess situations as analogies would permit many students to gain this clinical distance and hence allow them to engage their intelligence at solution finding. Mr. Moreno does give some helpful truisms and rules for dealing with problems, be they on the chess board or in life. The Directory of Chess Position's that Moreno advocates includes eight life-skill related positions, including such positions as Légall's Mate (used to foster discussions about stealing, "Look at the long-term consequences"), and the following one:
Should you (a) capture the Black pawn, 2.hxg6, or (b) move forward, 2.h6? Moreno writes: The best answer is b. If the white pawn moves forward, nobody can stop it. It will be promoted to a Queen and later the black King will be checkmated. But if white captures the black pawn, the other black pawn will capture it back and nobody will win. It will be a draw. ADVICE FOR LIFE When somebody challenges you, bothers you or steps un your space, your first reaction may be to bother them back or fight. Is this the best decision? It may be better to think before you move, focus on your goal, and move away from trouble.
Perhaps a more interesting question is whether or not looking at interpersonal problems as similar to chess problems doesn't make the students manipulative and in some sense impersonal in dealing with others. Most of us do not consider the feelings of chess pieces when we take them off the board. As a chess player you are probably not instructed to empathize with the opponent and how they feel. Trying to teach empathy and caring for other human beings is often counter to any competitive situation, be it football or chess. If that was a goal of Mr. Moreno's he would have to carefully consider how his students thought about chess problems, interpersonal situations. In the most humanistic orientation the student's sensitivity to others must be considered rather than the solution to chess problems. Fernando Moreno's Teaching Life Skills Through Chess
is a clear and easy to follow guide for educators and counselors as long as
one accepts the premise that intelligent analysis of short and long term
consequences and careful consideration of options is the goal of counseling.
Mr. Moreno has offered a technique to engage young minds and perhaps to use
this engagement for important discussions.
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