Three things chess can teach us about education

Memory really matters

Chess has long been used as an interesting way of studying human thought processes. Human chess players have been jokingly referred to as the fruit flies of cognition research, because they are constantly being experimented on.

But I think education can also learn a lot from some of the social and cultural aspects of chess, in particular its booming popularity and the way new technologies - against all predictions and expectations - have helped it thrive.

Here are three things I think education can learn from chess.

Humans can enjoy learning something even if computers are definitively better at it than them

In 1998, the then world chess champion Garry Kasparov lost to IBM's Deep Blue computer. Back then, lots of people predicted that interest in chess would collapse - why would anyone be interested in playing or watching humans play a game that computers were better at?

But in fact, the reverse has happened. Chess is more popular than ever, and there are lots of ways in which technology has helped it: you can learn online, you can easily find players of the right standard to play, and you can analyse all your matches using incredibly sophisticated chess engines that are better than the IBM one that beat Kasparov.

In the mid-19th century, machines definitively overtook the physical strength of the strongest humans. There’s a famous American folk song from the 1870s, The Ballad of John Henry, about a workman who dies trying to outdo a new steam-drilling machine. It’s a melancholy song reflecting an element of panic about what new technology meant for humanity. But again, a lot of the panic was misplaced. The physical machines solved a lot of problems for humanity.

What’s also really striking is that physical human sports really took off in popularity at around the same time, in the same way chess has taken off in popularity after computers outstripped humans.

There is a lot of pessimism at the moment about what increasing technological competence means for humans. The positive version from history is that we can use technology to do a lot of hard work for us, we can spend the time we’ve saved on our own development, and we can even use technology to help human development.

Humans also tend to be much more interested in the performance of other humans than in the performance of machines or robots - even if those machines are far superior.

Everyone accepts that if you want to learn chess, you start with the basics

Nobody says “don’t bother learning how the knight moves, the computer can do that for you”. Nobody says “it must be so tedious for an 8-year-old to spend time on chess problems a computer could solve instantly." Nobody says "let's make things more motivating by setting 8-year-olds chess problems advanced computers can't solve."

When it comes to chess, everyone gets that you start by learning and practising the basics, and that will stay the same however good AlphaZero gets.

This is also true in education - just much less well understood.

Cheating is rigorously policed in chess - and that has a "positive backwash" effect on the entire process of learning the game

Chess has had some cheating scandals in the past few years - both online cheating and even in-person cheating. But cheating remains intensely stigmatised and is also rigorously policed.

This has a huge impact on the way players learn to play the game, and gives everybody much more clarity about sensible ways to use technology in training.

Chess players do use extensive amounts of technology when they are practising and training. They will review their matches using chess engines, study the impact of different possible moves, and work through libraries of openings and end games.

However, the fact that they are working towards an end goal where technology is banned means that all this use of technology in training is in service of developing their own skills. You can use an amazing library of endgames to help you learn - but you won't have it in the game, so you'll have to memorise it.

In chess, everyone is working towards the end goal of an in-person match with no technology. This means that the technology you use in training is a tool for human development, not a replacement for human skill.

This is why it’s so important to have in-person tech-free terminal exams. Paradoxically, tech-free exams would actually improve the way we use classroom, because they would make it more likely we use technology to enhance student cognition rather than replace it.

Yes, but…

The biggest criticism of my above argument is that the end goal of education is not the terminal exam, but real life - where technology is allowed. I’ll address that in a future post!