I manage farmining operations for absentee landlords in the southern US. I
also teacher HS science whenever a school needs a science teacher, since I
have a master's in biology and science educators are hard to find. The past
three years I have been at a small country school (and I mean deep in the
woods) that has some remarkably talented academic students. I have played
at Chess for 42 years, though never good enough to rto make an impression on
the outside world. Nonetheless, I feel as though Chess has contributed
greatly to my life and I started letting some of my students play at breaks,
when we finished work, or on their off day (off day is lab day. My lab is
small so only half the students can do lab at one time. Therefore the
others work on other subjects or tasks of their choosing). The game has
caught on and us is immensely popular. Their biggest thrill is to beat me
(though they dont realize how minor an accomplishment that is). Some of the
older students want to start a club next year and one parent bought 5 sets
for my classes to use.

Last week the administration sent a school policy admentment forbidding all
forms of board games. I went to the next school board meeting and brought
the set I bought for $3.99 in 1972. I placed it on a table and gave a five
mintue talk on what value I placed on the game and why. I then pointed to
the set and told them I have played at least 4000 games on that set alone.
I asked them how many of their kids would be playing their $40 video games
30 days from now, much less than 30 years from now.

I knew what I was up against when one of the do-gooder's (board members)
voiced her objection. Chess, she pointed out, was not appropriate under the
new No Child Left Behind Act, because there were definite winners and
losers, and educators needed to see that everyone succeeded!!?? Talk about
a scholar's mate, she used one of the best arguements for the game against
me. Well, I picked up my set before they finished and told them next year's
football season would be interesting under that philosophy. The president
of the board asked me if I had anything else to say and I replied that it
was really no use, ignorance never loses an arguement and in this case I was
definitely on the losing side. I dont know if they have figured out what I
meant by that yet.

Hopefully this is an isolated case, but it would be interesting to hear if
any others have run into this type of resistance (I dont mean the
traditional chess players are nerds vs. the jocks, etc.)


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