Ann Hulbert wrote an amazingly insightful article on the relationship between chess mastery and its effects on those struggling with their personal chess improvement. Her observations and anecdotal tales shed light on the tip of the educational iceberg; the development of a chess player is simply a mirror of the new American society.
Chess, in a nutshell, is not the savior of American education. It isn't going to make a kid a better student, a better person, a productive member of society. Like anything else that kids become obsessed with, it has inherent seeds of destruction in it, much like video games, cable TV, the internet, art, etc. The point is, we allow kids to become obsessed with actions because we don't know what else to do for them.
Fischer became a James Dean anti-hero with a chessboard and a head full of talent and knowledge - in chess. He was pretty much a misanthropic kid who became even more insufferable because he confused chess ability with intelligence and importance. He was, and is, a microcosm of what we do to our kids in America on a daily basis. We don't really care about excellence in too many things, but, dammit, we want to look good while fooling ourselves and others. Fischer was an authentic chess prodigy, but it stopped there. To say that he was an asset to society would be akin to saying tooth decay is valuable to us because it keeps dentists in business. As much as I admired his chess ability, I was disappointed by his lack of awareness of the world around him.
Chess is a beautiful game, and I love playing it, but I will never be considered anything more than a wood pusher. Still, when I can execute a fork or skewer, or I can see a multiple-move combination that garners me material, space, or position, I am at the pinnacle of what I think chess should be. I refuse to become obsessed with it, so it remains beautiful.
We do not teach our future generations to search for beauty. We teach them the quadratic formula and the need to earn lots of money. We have become obsessed capitalists, finding virtue only in profit. To say that we have lost our way, as individuals and as a country, is ugly but truthful. We really have forgotten what made us great; we forgot to let Bobby Fischer be a person.
Who is worse, the dictator, or the populace that allowed this to transpire? Perhaps we need to take a long, hard look at what we are doing to our talented kids before we make them into something we eventually despise. Maybe we should look at what we are doing to ourselves...
