How might the CFC ever get chess taught in schools as a core subject?

[Kevin Pacey]

From the CFC Long-term Planning Committee 2012 Report, under Opportunities [for the CFC]:

Pursue chess in the schools both as a core subject and also as an extra-curricular activity. The latter may be more important in the long run than the former.

I've been wondering for a while if the former (namely, having chess taught as a core subject in schools someday, nationwide) is going to be too difficult to coordinate for the CFC, given that education is a provincial jurisdiction - thus any efforts to achieve this (teaching chess as a core subject) could need to be divided 10 ways (at least), apparently. If there's going to be any new Long-term/strategic plan for the CFC that includes this (teaching chess as a core subject) as a goal, perhaps a detailed planning stage alone could prove quite complex. That's assuming Magnus Carlsen or some other Western world chess champion doesn't catapult organized chess, in terms of popularity, the way Fischer did.

[edit: Here's the 2012 report I referred to:]

http://www.chesscanada.info/forum/showthread.php?2694-6-Reports-(D-FIDE-Representative)&goto=nextoldest

[Vladimir Drkulec]

Its actually more complicated than dealing with ten provinces as you will actually be dealing with multiple school boards in every jurisdiction. The Windsor Public School Board, The Windsor Separate School Board, a couple of French language school boards, I believe along with a number of other county wide entities. All have their own rules and contacts. Education has a provincial component, but it also has a local component. We would need a network of people working on it to get it adopted across Canada. We aren't there at the moment.

[Kevin Pacey]

Somehow I had the impression that 'core subjects' (if chess is ever to be included as one) meant those that belong to what is known as the curriculum, and that each province can set the curriculum for schools in the province, regardless of whatever else local school boards have authority over.

[edit: from Google:]

"In several Canadian provinces, there are separate systems of English and French schools. Canada does not have a national curriculum; rather, the provincial governments are responsible for establishing the curriculum for their schools, and each province has its own, ministry-established common curriculum."

[Hugh Brodie]

What happened to "Défi math" - in which chess was taught as part of math courses in New Brunswick? This would have been about 20 years ago. Did/does it continue?

[Fred McKim]

What happened to "Défi math" - in which chess was taught as part of math courses in New Brunswick? This would have been about 20 years ago. Did/does it continue?

I asked Larry B about this in 2015.

Here is his reply "Challenging Math came on the market in 1984. The authors are near retirement and they are not interested in updating their program to meet new requirements mandated by the Board of Education."

[Kevin Pacey]

Fwiw, here's an old thread about chess getting taught in schools:

http://www.chesscanada.info/forum/showthread.php?364-Chess-approved-as-a-high-school-credit-in-B-C-(Okanagan)