Chess for Schools

Richard James has been teaching and organising chess for children since 1972. Between 1975 and 2006, Richard ran the highly successful Richmond Junior Chess Club, whose members included Luke McShane, Jonathan Rowson and other future grandmasters. He is also the author of Chess for Kids and The Right Way to Teach Chess to Kids, and has written extensively on chess history and trivia.

This brilliant book is a three-layered cake. It is so well structured that you do not need to read it from end to end and you do not need ever to have touched a chess piece to find it worthwhile. The one key message for teachers is: if you can teach children, you can teach chess. That is, just as there comes a point when pupils will benefit from a specialist geographer, swimming instructor or mathematician, so it is with chess. The first layer sets the scene. It is easy to read, covers the history of chess and its place in education, what chess is - and, crucially, what it is not. The second layer is an impressively brief and comprehensive survey of the place of chess in the curriculum, and it's not where you think it might be. This layer will make you think about curriculum development in broad terms as well as in relation to chess. It will make you think about the role of parents and parenting in children's schooling. The book is properly, academically, referenced. The final layer is a manual of chess resources. The book stands alone as a good read without this section. My main revelation was just how many different games you can play with a chess set - it's as if I had only ever learnt to play snap with a pack of cards.Tim Bartlett