Chess Club Changing Lives

Here is a positive news story from Maryland about a chess club drawing in troubled youths and helping them to improve their lives through the game of chess.

http://www.gazette.net/stories/103107/silvnew194729_32374.shtml

The thing I found most interesting about this story was "Among the papers presented was a yearlong study sponsored by the Scottish Executive Education Department comparing three primary school classrooms, one of which had chess coaching and active promoting of an after-school chess club.

The study found the students playing chess adjusted better socially, significantly improved their vocabulary scores and performed marginally better on math and reading tests than non-chess playing students."

There have been many studies like this that shows positive results from the youth learning and enjoying the game of chess. Another very interesting thing in the article was "One goal at Broad Acres is for all students to graduate knowing the rules of chess, and 50 students take part in after-school chess clubs offered three days a week.", I think this is a great step towards a more positive future for the school and the children who attend.

It would be great to see more schools follow in these foot steps and implement chess into their programs but sadly this is a very uncommon thing, especially for schools throughout the US.

rdl, try getting some of your peers interested, and see if you guys can't raise money!

Yeah, it's amazing what chess can do to young people.
At my school, it seems that only the nerdy kids play chess....