A strange thing happened last Friday during the school Chess Lesson.

While reprising the simple Rook/King vs. King ending strategy, Earl, 16, was doing an awful lot of thinking. I’d show the pattern; I re-iterated the ladder concept; I re-iterated that the rooks like to be as far from the enemy king as possible. Yet, Earl pondered for long moments and then moved the rooks in a tight formation around his own king only adding to his confusion and the complications, requiring more thinking. I showed him again and actually completed the end game in the simplest way a few times for him to observe.

Again, he pondered, a look of bewilderment curled his brow and then… he moved in a tight formation around his own king!

I signed to him that this strategy was as simple as it comes. That he can actually use this strategy in a game with other pieces on the board. Then the strange thing happened.

He began to tell me that he preferred English to Math.

Wha?, I answered. He signed “English” and motioned all the pieces lined up on the board in their starting positions. He then signed “Math” and placed pieces on the board that appeared to attack other pieces, reminiscent of a checker board set-up. I interepreted it to mean that he preferred playing with all the pieces and not only a few. I told him that if he can’t see simple patterns of strategy with only a few pieces, how could he expect to play with all the pieces and the added complexity? Start with knowing the simple first and then playing with the full complement would be easier to understand.

He repeated that English was better than Math. I was at a real loss. I failed to see what these two words had to do with Chess. Constantly being faced with the local coded sign language, I asked Teacher Delores if she could help interpret what exactly this all meant. Earl explained it to her, but she didn’t really understand either. Earl signed Gerald’s name to her and said that Gerald (the oldest student in the class and quite a decent Chess player who was absent that day incidentally) had told them, in some way, that all the pieces on the board were like English and playing the game was like Math. Earl wasn’t good at math, didn’t like math, therefore, he couldn’t play simple end games.

Where does a teacher go with something like that? Understand, this was a worldview, a presuppositional understanding of what the game of Chess is reminiscent of. Equating Chess with Math and English and the baggage that comparison may bring to the understanding is a huge obstacle to overcome.

The best comparison to make with chess is, matter-of-factly, life. Chess tactics, strategy, patterns, consequences of actions, and much more all point to a corollary to life itself. It’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s a very helpful one. So it seems that despite pointing this out week-after-week with examples, there is still much to do in getting it into the minds of the students. I will need, it appears, to improve my examples. English and Math are immediate and specific to Earl and I think my examples in the past may have been too general. This episode with Earl has revealed a weakness in my teaching. Thanks be to God in Christ for this reproof that I may now improve.

As in life, and what this episode emphasized for me, is that there are always subverting factors – people, teachers – who will teach something false that will harm understanding, but that students/disciples will cling to for whatever reasons. The Bible continually warns Christ’s Church about these very people. I’ll talk to Gerald to get a better understanding of what he meant, but I’ll also admonish him to stop using the analogy since it’s not helping Earl understand, but giving him excuses to stop trying.

May this be a helfpful reminder to us all, eh?