I never learned how to play chess. My father tried to teach me at some point, but for a man who made his living as a teacher, he was crap at teaching me: he was impatient, he blew up, he forgot to how to teach and just gave me the instructions you might find on the back of a cereal box. When my older nephews started to play chess, to the point of taking lessons and competing, I still didn’t get involved. I would play a game of make believe with them or go on any nature walk they wanted, but I could not and would not play chess.
But recently, after adding yet another language to my Duolingo list (Arabic), and struggling to figure out the alphabet and how the letters change when they are at the beginning, middle or end of a word, I got a notification that Duolingo now teaches chess, and just as an escape, I decided to try it.
In general, I like the way Duolingo approaches teaching. I like that it’s fun and the lessons are short and that you learn by doing rather than by reading, but they often go too fast for me, jumping through the early stages of a language or skill, and leaving out necessary steps or repetitions. Given all of that, I enjoyed the first few chess lessons, where they showed me what each piece on the chessboard is allowed to do and gave me a chance to practice, but too quickly, they moved on to lessons on strategy (move your knight here to block a potential attack, convince your bishop to die to save his queen, if all else fails run away). Of course, I made a million mistakes, and since I only have the free version of Duolingo, I had to watch a million ads to earn enough lives to redo the lessons, over and over, until they started to make even a little bit of sense.
As with Arabic, and Yiddish and German and Spanish before it, I resent that Duolingo gives me so few points for reviewing lessons, and so many for constantly moving forward. It mimics real life, where speed of progress seems to be more important than knowledge retention, or mastery, or sanity, and just like in real life, it leaves me feeling like a failure.
I was always a smart kid, so people assumed that I could pick up any new material easily, and sometimes I could, but when I needed more time or explanation to figure something out, teachers got impatient with me. I remember loving my math workbooks as a kid, because for each lesson there were pages of exercises, and I could practice until I not only understood what I was being taught but could do it automatically. Ideally, I would have had a stack of workbooks for every skill I’ve needed to learn, like how to open a bank account, or pay bills, or buy a car. Why is it assumed that people will just know how to do all of these things on their own? Even with Professor Google around to give us endless information, we still need support and advice and time to master new skills. Don’t we?
Anyway, the shame I keep feeling at the things I don’t know how to do, and don’t know how to learn how to do, keeps getting in my way, and what I seem to need, whenever a skill seems too complicated or overwhelming, is to be able to break it down into bite-sized lessons and practice all of them until I feel confident enough to move on to the next. So, I’ve been practicing how to give myself that time and compassion with chess: repeating the same lessons over and over again, for very few points, until I feel secure enough to move forward, no matter how little reward Duolingo chooses to give me for my efforts. And, no, I don’t think that learning how to play chess will fix my brain, or my life, but maybe building these habits while learning how to do this thing that in every other way is meaningless to me, might help me figure out how to learn the things that really matter to me, helping me map out the steps I need to take, rather than the steps that other people assume should be enough.
The problem is that, in Duolingo as in life, I keep forgetting my overall goal in favor of wanting to win at the current game. I crave the validation that comes with earning points and rewards, or praise and acceptance, and I forget that that’s not the goal I was shooting for in the first place. It’s kind of like how I can start the day planning to eat the right balance of protein, fat, and carbs and then I’ll see a box of cookies and completely lose my way. But that’s what practice is for, right? So that even if I go off on a cookie tangent every once in a while, I’ll remember how to get back on track. Though, right now, all I can see in my mind is a road paved with chocolate chip cookies, coated in milk chocolate, and colored sprinkles.
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rachelmankowitz 
Sounds like you’re wishing for the Yellow Brick Road.
When I was still a boy, I played chess reasonably well. The trouble was, that my peers either didn’t know how to play or didn’t want to play. As I grew older, a few friends consented to doing chess matches, but they and I were not dedicated to improving our skills. As an adult, nobody cared to play, so I resorted to playing my computer. I eventually gave that up, because I couldn’t beat the computer at the intermediate level. I do miss playing chess with actual human beings. I suspect my skill-level has diminished due to lack of practice.
I think playing against a real person might be too stressful for me, even when I get better at this. There’s something about capturing and being captured that’s triggering for me.
I learned more when I could practice in context. SUNY New Paltz used to offer weekend 1 credit language immersion classes in the city and at their campus. They also offered a 3 credit immersion class n 2 weeks. It was a lot of speaking. Too much of the foreign language instruction is book learning I’m the US or at least was in the past.
Immersion classes are so much more fun than grammar!
My dad taught me to play chess a long time ago. I was never very good and had pretty much given it up until my one daughter learned how to play at school. Now she beats me and has taught her sister how to play! We will, however, never be a match for my niece, who is a chess champion! I’m craving that chocolate road!!!
We definitely need more chocolate roads in the world!
maybe I should give Duolingo a try for learning chess. My 10-year-old grandson tried to teach me when he was visiting recently; I’m afraid he wasn’t too impressed with my ability to immediately be able to glom on to all the rules!
Ten year old teachers can be brutal!
yes i’d like to know where that road is, too
Ha!
I gave up trying to learn. My brain simply will not process information anymore. Good luck with your practice! (Maybe Tzipporah will play a game with you? 😊)
If all of the pieces are made out of chicken, there’s a possibility!
😂. If you invent a set like that, Chewy would sell out in no time!
Your text is touching, sincere and very relatable. It invites empathy and leaves a clear message: allowing yourself to learn at your own pace is an act of compassion and resistance against a culture that prioritizes speed and the appearance of success.
Thank you so much!
Glad you are giving learning chess and Arabic a go.My journeys with chess and knitting have hit deadends.
I used to love knitting, but my fingers didn’t love it.
I always wanted to learn chess but settled for MahJong-
I tried Duolingo for Spanish but gave up on studying Spanish, and I replaced it with studying for my bnei mitzvah! And I am re-learning how to read the Hebrew alphabet and memorizing my portions – just like a 12-year-old! HA!
Good Luck with Chess!!!!
I love the adult bnei mitzvah program at my synagogue!
I never had any interest in Chess. Everyone I knew who played it seemed to think they were somehow superior to other mortals, and also liked to humiliate lesser players with their ‘easy victories’.
Best wishes, Pete.
Ouch! That might explain why I didn’t want to play it up until now.
Chess I get, checkers on the other hand loses me 😆. That’s cool that duolingo offers that.
Duolingo is trying to take over the world.
If we could harness the power of “helping me map out the steps I need to take, rather than the steps that other people assume should be enough” we could have such a different world, everyone supporting each other rather than simply tossing out orders to learn then to do. And…I’m with Tzipporah. Where is that road? I want to be on it too!!
It can be really difficult for teachers, and parents, to overcome their expectations and impatience and really pay attention to what the child needs. We tend to assume that everyone else is made in our own image.
So true, we do assume that and I’ve done it myself. I think it comes more from impatience that inattention. Either way, yes it puts limits, sometimes hard limits, on the learner.
I take my hat off to you for your skill of languages. I have an ear for music, but foreign language? Nah!
I don’t so much have a skill as a lot of curiosity. I’ve met some professional translators in my classes and they have abilities I can’t even dream about.
I still think you’re amazing!
Thank you!
I admire your determination! You are amazing! 💜
Thank you!
I could never get the hang of chess. I know how each piece is supposed to move, but looking moves ahead and employing strategy is beyond me. I never got the hang of Arabic either, although I spent a great deal of time in the Army trying. I could know every word in a sentence (OK, I rarely knew every word) and still get the meaning of the sentence wrong. And I used to think I was smart!
Languages are a science unto themselves. And strategy? Pffft. No idea how that works.
I stopped with checkers and even stopped that when my grandkids regularly beat me. Chess always gave me a headache. I do know what you mean about taking the time to master something.I used Khan Academy to finally understand trigonometry—50 years later! It was very rewarding and completely non shaming.
I remember Khan academy! I used that site when I was preparing for the GRE and it really helped. I’d forgotten pretty much all of the math I’d ever learned.
You are a winner in God’s sight.
I think your frustration with Duolingo is a consequence of the over-gamification of apps like that. They build tiny achievements in there to parcel out cheap dopamine hits, but from the design perspective it’s easy to lose sight of whether your users are really getting it before moving on…especially on an ad-supported platform that hard caps what you can do between ad interruptions.
Anyway, Arabic is brutal, as is any language without a Roman alphabet. Good luck!
Thank you!
I’m always in for chocolate chip cookies, no exceptions.