I started playing chess when I was about 4 or 5 years old. It is very good for children to learn to play chess, because it helps them to develop their mental abilities. It also helps to consolidate a person's character, because as it happens both in life and in a chess game we have to make decisions constantly. In chess there is no luck and no excuses: everything is in your hands.
Interpretation
Chess enhances children's mental abilities and character by teaching decision-making skills.
Vladimir Kramnik emphasizes the significance of learning chess at a young age, arguing that it supports the development of critical mental skills and character. He notes that both chess and life require constant decision-making, and since chess operates without luck or excuses, it encourages players to take responsibility for their choices, thereby shaping their character.
In practice
During a speech at a youth camp, I shared this quote to encourage children to engage in activities that develop their thinking skills.
Part of my preparation for the World Champion match against Kasparov was to be ready for his off-board tactics. I did not to react to them at all. Once you start thinking about these things during the game, even analysing them, you're caught.
I believe every chess player senses beauty, when he succeeds in creating situations, which contradict the expectations and the rules, and he succeeds in mastering this situation.
I don't know whether computers are improving the style of play, I know they are changing it. Chess has become a different game, one could say that computers have changed the world of chess. That is pretty clear.
Even if you play perfectly, a fault of your opponent's can destroy the entire beauty of the game.
When I speak of the beauty of a game of chess, then naturally this is subjective. Beauty can be found in a very technical, mathematical game for example. That is the beauty of clarity.
The development of beauty in chess never depends on you alone. No matter how much imagination and creativity you invest, you still do not create beauty. Your opponent must react at the same highest level.
Education must not simply teach work-it must teach life.
No adult can bear a child’s burden or grow up in his stead.
Teach by doing whenever you can, and only fall back upon words when doing it is out of the question.
Many of us grow up thinking of mistakes as bad, viewing errors as evidence of fundamental incapacity. This negative thinking pattern can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, which undermines the learning process. To maximize our learning it is essential to ask: "How can we get the most from every mistake we make?"
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: "This is water." "This is water." It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.
In nine months, a group of children left alone with a computer - in any language - would reach the same standard as an office secretary in the West.
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