Task 2
Questions 13-18
Read the article about the Armenian primary school curriculum. For questions 13-18, choose the correct answer (A, B, C or D). Mark your answer on the answer sheet.
Armenia makes chess compulsory in schools
Tiny Armenia, tucked away in a corner between Turkey and Iran, is an obsessive chess playing country and a big player in world chess. Their first laureate was Tigran Petrosian, who won the world championship in 1963 and successfully defended his title three years later. In 2011 a six-person national squad came first at the World Team Chess Championship in Russia. That group included up-and-coming player Levon Aronian, 28, currently third in the World Chess Federation's rankings. These contemporary exploits have fostered a recent craze for this mind-training board game. Indeed, a new move could make it even bigger: mandatory chess in school. The educational authorities of this former Soviet republic have made the game part of the primary school curriculum, along with such standards as maths and history, for children between the ages of seven and nine.
Armenian authorities say teaching chess in school is about building character, not breeding chess champions. The education minister says taking the pastime into the classroom will help nurture a sense of organisation among schoolchildren and will teach them the importance of taking care of their duties. "We hope that the Armenian teaching model might become among the best in the world," said Rehan Ashotyan. Half a million dollars were allocated to the national chess academy to draw up a course, create textbooks, train instructors and buy equipment. A further $1 million was paid for furniture for chess classrooms.
Continuing the line of successful chess players, Armenia now has an eight-year-old champion, David Ayrapetyan. His parents are hoping that the programme will give him an opponent worthy of his skills. The chess whiz finds the local retirees and fellow children to be pushovers. Only his classmate Aren can give him a run for his money. David's parents say chess is good for him, no matter what the future holds. Their assumption is that, even if he doesn't become a grandmaster or doesn't join the national chess team, chess will certainly teach him to think logically and improvise, as those are indispensable qualities in life.
Wendi Fischer, executive director of the US Foundation for Chess, has campaigned for the game to be taken up in American classrooms and labels Armenia's programme as undoubtedly positive. "By playing chess in class, the children think they're playing, while they are actually doing some serious thinking all the time," she said. "So it is a great way to cross over between having a true hard-core curriculum that's mandatory and giving young children the chance to play and explore and have fun."
Unlike so many addictive computer games with hardly any upsides, chess is said to teach problem-solving skills, self-discipline and the sheer pleasure of competition. Some classroom observations in primary schools proved that the children do love playing it, though there are some objections to outbursts of bad temper when they lose, and sometimes tears. Adults have acquired the ability to cope with such strong emotions or at least to conceal them, which children have yet to master. They ought to be taught that being gracious in defeat is an important part of the game.
The newly introduced chess curriculum might even help the children beat the odds against artificial intelligence. A $£ 30$ chess program can now beat the world champion. But for the ordinary mortal, trying to fathom the best move in each situation, to arrive at what grandmasters call the "truth" of a position, is endlessly demanding. There lies the real joy of winning a game of chess. The Armenians believe that they are giving their children a useful tool with which to approach life.