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We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to introduce chess as a compulsory subject on the primary and secondary school curricula. More details
Submitted by Michael Jones – Deadline to sign up by: 15 March 2008 – Signatures: 17
More details from petition creator
It has been proven by studies conducted by the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at Edinburgh University, the University of Sydney and the University of Texas, among others, that learning to play chess improves children's powers of concentration, analysis, problem solving and memory. Additionally, as a competitive activity in which some children will win and others lose, it will teach children the lesson, currently overlooked in schools, that they will encounter both success and failure in life, and to accept both with equal grace. Similar schemes in other countries have reaped massive rewards, both in terms of the benefits to the education of all children and the performance on the world stage of those countries' leading players, and the implementation of such a scheme in the UK could not fail to do likewise.
