The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence fights the stigma and the disease of alcoholism and other drug addictions.

ChessChild

National Council on Alcoholism and Other Drug Dependencies/Putnam
Carmel, NY

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It's not easy for a child just to say "no" to drugs. Their friends are taking drugs; so are their sports heroes and the celebrities they admire. Maybe their parents or siblings are smoking marijuana, using cocaine or drinking too much too often.

"It's not enough to ask kids just to say no," says Nathan Liebowitz, PhD, executive director of the NCADD affiliate in Putnam, NY. "We have to help them develop the right values, the independence to think for themselves and the judgment to resist peer pressure."

Dr. Liebowitz uses chess, an unlikely weapon, to help children ages 5 to 11 learn all the "right moves" to prevent the use of alcohol and other drugs. In "ChessChild," a highly structured program he designed himself, Liebowitz teaches the children how to play and learn the game from the masters. Youngsters in the "ChessChild" program also practice professional chess openings, the important first moves of any chess match, so that they can compete with anyone.

"But ChessChild is not about competition," says Dr. Liebowitz, who has a doctorate in sociology and is a certified chess instructor. "It's about kids working together to solve a chess problem or analyze a classic game played more than 100 years ago. In this way they become part of something larger than themselves, a learning community with its own sense of tradition and history."

But is chess anything more than a diverting game? Liebowitz, himself a tournament chess player, uses his experience as a high school and college teacher and New York City youth board counselor to answer this question.

"Success in any game or sport usually improves a kid's self confidence. But chess does more. Research indicates that chess enhances a child's reading scores because to become a good player, a kid has to read and study."

Chess also teaches a child to control his or her impulses, to think things through, to look before leaping, and to say "no" to today's temptations so that tomorrow will be brighter. "Say a kid is playing the 10th move of a famous chess opening, King's Indian Defense, and he wants to change the way it's been played for years," observes Liebowitz. "Well, he's just learned Bobby Fischer wouldn't make that change and neither would Capablanca. He's learned you shouldn't abandon or jump into anything until you know the theory behind it, what it's all about. That's one of the great habits of the mind that chess promotes."

A child who is doing well in school, a child who develops self confidence by becoming good at a difficult game, a child who can control impulse decision-making and delay gratification, a child who can resist peer pressure--these are children who have the tools to say "no" to drugs and mean it.

But kids aren't the only people turning their lives around through chess. Every week Liebowitz teaches chess to female inmates at the Taconic Correctional Facility in Westchester County, NY in a program the prisoners have named "ChessChallenge." Most of the women think that they can't learn chess because it's too hard.

"It's wonderful to see them solve a problem on the chessboard they thought was impossible 20 minutes earlier," says Gene Hanna, the prison's substance abuse counselor. "If the inmates are wrong about their ability to master chess, what else are they wrong about? If they can solve something that was supposedly impossible, what else can they accomplish?"

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National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc.

244 East 58th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10022 phone: 212/269-7797   fax: 212/269-7510 email: national@ncadd.org   http://www.ncadd.org HOPE LINE: 800/NCA-CALL (24-hour Affiliate referral)