Armenia has raised curtains to a new competition among nations in an interesting as well as controversial way. The former Soviet state will now be strictly implementing chess as part of a new school curriculum to groom talented people at a very young age.
Known for its eccentric cultural heritage, Armenia is as smitten as any other developing country with enhancing the quality of its academics. Over the last 7 years, Armenia has won the comically pretentious ‘Chess Olympics’ three times. The nation’s top chess player Levon Aronian is a national icon; Offered with the title ‘Honoured Master of Sport of the Republic of Armenia’ by the government, he is quintessentially the Armenian David Beckham, minus the angelic face and athlete’s physique – yet provisionally in possession of a fully-functioning brain. Perhaps, he is supposed to be a bit more like Sebastian Coe, one might say… indeed a Sebastian Coe.
As any civilised person of the world knows, the natural development from domination in any sport is a enigmatic getting to the level of moving it lower down the throats of people. The Armenian leadership has even gone so far as passing an act to such an effect, by forcing their premature school kids to play the family-friendly war simulator. Beyblades and Pokemon cards just won’t cut the mustard for adolescent strategic training these days, chess providing boys with strategic know-how, competitive spirit and hours of fun.
The games of chess that one experiences at a tender age were about as perfectly coherent as the Pyongyang guide to military strategy and at the exact level of fun as turning on a tap. The lone thing that one finds more stubborn at the time was the event that led people to regard playing chess, such was the drudgery involved. All these features aside, perhaps if one is given some precise insight into how to play the game – and a proper reward for winning – it must have been some entertainment in it, maybe even resulting in some irreversible brain development.
Chess offers knowledge to kids in the form of the raw basics of aggressive military combat. Flank your opponents, pounce upon their most exposed resources and if all else fails, devastate the foundations of their society with religious extremism. Those extremely challenged bishops, a secret metaphor for the subversive nature of religion. This is what one should be teaching the kids might be.
What exactly is Armenia’s strategy? To groom a super-race of tough, xenophobic clever experts! Begin them off earlier and subconsciously impregnate them with biased views through the most socially acceptable of violent war-games. In two decades, people would be hailing Aronian as our ‘Supreme Master of Racial Cleansing’ as we goose-step through the black-and-white marble streets, homage to the game that started it all.
Eventually, this might proved to be a worthy go Cyprus kind of situation with the concerned people have got almost nothing to lose for sure. Perhaps, it is time now for other nations across the world to take a leaf or two from Armenia.
