Cognitive Learning through Ancient Gaming
It’s raining outside. The electric just went out in your apartment and you have nothing to do except stare at your younger brother all day. What to do? Well if your mind turns to the old board game closet, you may just have a game that improves your math, verbal, and reasoning skills. According to a recent study by Doctor Robert Ferguson Jr., the ancient game of chess is not only a constructive use of your time, but may be a viable curriculum for schools. In this comprehensive study, students were given sets of tests in the fields of critical thinking, creativity, and logical reasoning.
In all of these areas, students performed significantly higher after receiving instruction in Chess strategy. Ferguson suggests gaming allows for a unique method of critical thinking that goes beyond our regular math or verbal curriculum. Unlike staid material, each game presents a new problem, one that requires creativity and adaptive techniques to succeed. Additionally, the added impulse for competition challenges students to achieve personal and relative goals. These goal sets are founded on previous gaming experiences that require the use of cognitive memory for adapting to one’s opponent.
Although Ferguson’s study is founded through the lens of professional chess instruction, private schools around the world are now considering chess as a part of their daily curriculum. According to a CNN article, a parochial school in Birmingham is using chess to teach critical thinking in order for students to fulfill a math requirement. This unique program involves testing based upon past and present methods for adapting chess strategies in correlation to mathematical data analysis.
While instructive, chess is not the sole game catching the attention of schools and teachers. Other games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, and Boggle are known for their use of critical thinking, writing, vocabulary, and mathematical uses. Through its summer programs in Brooklyn and summer math programs, students at tutoring centers such as Five Points Learning in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, are given the opportunity to challenge their minds in fun and creative ways. Five Points even provides an organized analysis of educational games and offers a rewards-driven program for achieving personal goals. Beyond the staid curricula of math and English lies the opportunity to enjoy cognitive learning. We hope to traverse this realm as we find new and exciting ways to help students succeed.