[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 41 (Monday, March 6, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E523-E524]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       A WINNING GAMBIT IN HARLEM

                                 ______


                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                          Monday, March 6, 1995
  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize the achievements of a 
group of young people from my congressional district in Harlem, members 
of the Mott Hall Middle School chess team, the Dark Knights. Through 
their dedication and enjoyment of chess, the Dark Knights have become 
city-wide and national champions in a demanding game. The team's 
members, who are black, Latino, and Asian, have, through their belief 
in themselves challenged us to believe in them, and students like them. 
I congratulate them and the coaches, parents, and private citizens who 
have assisted them. They challenge us all to raise the expectations and 
possibilities our Nation holds for all young people of color. I 
encourage you to read the attached article from the February 17 Wall 
Street Journal:
             [From the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 17, 1995]

                       A Winning Gambit in Harlem

                           (By Hugh Pearson)

       New York.--Twenty-eight-year-old Maurice Ashley is standing 
     before a classroom of students in Harlem's Mott Hall Middle 
     School. Behind him, unsurprisingly, is a blackboard. But on 
     it is displayed something unexpected: the diagram of a 
     chessboard. Mr. Ashley is preparing his team of chess-playing 
     hotshots for the following weekend's competition. ``I'm going 
     to show you a game that's so dramatic in exposing weak 
     squares, it's ridiculous,'' he tells them.
       The team calls itself the Dark Knights. Its members know 
     they can trust Mr. Ashley's judgment: He is an international 
     chess master--indeed, the highest-ranking black chess player 
     in the world. Last year he coached the Dark Knights to the 
     National Junior High School Chess Team Championship.
       Mr. Ashley details the opening moves of the game, then 
     dramatizes an unusual maneuver. ``It's called a Dutch. And 
     it's characterized mainly by the fact that this pawn goes to 
     [position] F5 in order to get real serious control of this E4 
     square. As you can see, D5 and F5 pawns are controlling E4.'' 
     He pauses. ``What could go wrong with a move like this?''
       ``It blocks his C8 bishop,'' answers a student.
       ``That's right. The C8 bishop could have a very hard time 
     getting into the game.''


                            Problem Solving

       With such teaching Mr. Ashley guides the team through 
     various moves and countermoves that may come up in 
     competition. Periodically he gives them a break from 
     blackboard instruction and divides the class up into pairs. 
     Over real chessboards, they puzzle out problems of increasing 
     difficulty, sometimes competing with one another. The pairs 
     choose names for themselves, which Mr. Ashley writes on the 
     blackboard so he can keep score.
       With the imagination and humor typical of 12-, 13-, and 14-
     year-olds, one pair decides to call itself ``Storm Soldiers 
     and One Fool''; another is ``Men in Tights.'' Yet another 
     chooses the name ``Confused.'' When this pair gives a wrong 
     answer, Mr. Ashley says: 
     [[Page E524]]  ``I see why you call yourselves confused,'' 
     Everyone laughs.
       Mr. Ashley doesn't worry that his students will take his 
     kidding the wrong way. They are good at chess, and they know 
     it. He obviously feels no need to patronize them, reassure 
     them or redeem them from feelings of disadvantage.
       When Mr. Ashley coached another team--the Raging Rooks of 
     Harlem--to a national junior-high-school chess championship 
     in 1991, one team member, Sharu Robinson, wondered out loud 
     at the national media attention: ``Why is it that they're 
     acting as though we we're some Cinderella team that came out 
     of nowhere and won? We went, we knew what we were doing, we 
     kicked butt, and that's it. What's the problem?''
       Of course the problem--or rather, the surprise--was the 
     color of their skin. ``One, it's about being black,'' says 
     Mr. Ashley, reflecting on the odd reaction he gets when he 
     tells people that he teaches chess to Harlem youths. ``Two, 
     it's the fact that it's chess, which has this mystique 
     surrounding it. It's not the urban game; it's the urbane 
     game, the game of the elite.''
       People are often skeptical of the value of chess 
     instruction. ``Chess players are considered to be in their 
     own intellectual stratosphere,'' Mr. Ashley explains. ``The 
     strategy of teaching it to kids already seems wrong. And then 
     to teach it to young black kids on top of that brings in all 
     the stereotypes; that they're too disadvantaged to learn the 
     game; that they aren't really smart; that they're more 
     physical than intellectual. The stereotypes are just so 
     dramatic on all levels that it's too far for most people to 
     stretch.''
       Mott Hall defies such stereotypes regularly. More than a 
     quarter of the school's students--who are black, Latino and 
     Asian--receive chess instruction twice weekly, as part of an 
     educational initiative that sees chess as a competitive, 
     engaging way of learning analytical reasoning. The program is 
     financed by a prominent New York real-estate developer, 
     Daniel Rose, as part of his Harlem Educational Activities 
     Fund. The fund itself is an unusual success story.
       Besides its chess component, HEAF finances a program 
     designed to improve the reading skills at the New York City 
     elementary school with the lowest average reading scores. 
     (Mott Hall, it should be noted, is the public school for 
     gifted Harlem children; for the past four years its reading 
     scores have been the highest in the city for public middle 
     schools.) The fund also provides tutoring to Harlem youths, 
     to help them prepare for the entrance exams to New York's 
     three most exclusive public high schools (Stuyvesant, Bronx 
     High School of Science and Brooklyn Tech). A mentoring 
     program assists those who are admitted and eventually advises 
     them about picking the right colleges.
       HEAF's track record is impressive. One way or another, it 
     has served more than 1,000 youths since its inception in 
     1988. Besides facilitating Mott Hall's chess victories, the 
     fund has raised the reading scores at the city's lowest-
     scoring public elementary school substantially. In 1992, only 
     9% of its students scored at or above the city's average 
     grade level; this past year 30% did. So far the fund's 
     tutorial instruction has helped nearly 200 Harlem youths 
     score high enough to enter the city's top public high 
     schools.
       Mr. Rose's efforts are just one of many privately funded 
     programs by wealthy businessmen concerned about the lack of 
     educational opportunities for children who live in poor urban 
     areas. Many such programs, like the ``Student/Sponsor 
     Partnership'' founded in 1986 by Dillion Read investment 
     banker Peter Flanigan, are designed to funnel students from 
     such communities into private and religious schools.
       Mr. Rose, by contrast, believes in the importance of public 
     schools. He feels that the private sector has a crucial role 
     to play in making up for dwindling tax dollars. But he also 
     feels that the private sector should lead the way in ensuring 
     that school funds are spent more efficiently. ``The gross 
     expenditures in the New York City public school system are 
     very high,'' he explains. ``But it doesn't show up in the 
     classroom. Given the horrendous number of students graduating 
     as functional illiterates, obviously something isn't working. 
     The resources we have must be redirected.''
       To Mr. Rose, chess instruction is one way of redirecting 
     such resources profitably. Mr. Ashley agrees. ``Kids have a 
     natural excitement and curiosity for the game,'' he explains. 
     ``As they get deeper and deeper into it, they become more and 
     more confident, more and more sure of themselves. Their self-
     esteem rises. I look at the kids I've instructed here in 
     Harlem who have gone on to high school and they have this 
     peaceful aura about them.''
       Both men are convinced that the mastery of chess 
     complements--and encourages--academic success. Sharu 
     Robinson, for one, will graduate this year from The Dalton 
     School, one of New York's most prestigious private schools. 
     There is every reason to believe that there are many students 
     like Sharu--especially nonwhite students who may have 
     absorbed a false message about the supposed limits of their 
     intellectual abilities--who can benefit enormously from 
     learning a game that requires of its practitioners analytic 
     reasoning, mental discipline and strategic skill.
       Mr. Rose dismisses the recent attention given to hereditary 
     factors in intelligence sparked by controversy over ``The 
     Bell Curve.'' He strongly believes that environment plays the 
     decisive role in intellectual achievement.


                            a firm grounding

       Mr. Ashley's personal experience lends support to this 
     view. His family arrived in the U.S. from Kingston, Jamaica, 
     when he was 12. In Kingston he was immersed in an environment 
     where, as he put it, ``I didn't have the word `disadvantaged' 
     pummeled into my brain.'' So when his mother brought him and 
     his two brothers to live in the Brownsville section of 
     Brooklyn, he had a firm enough grounding to keep himself 
     focused on his studies, even though drug dealers plied their 
     trade nearby. ``I just dealt with it,'' he says. He later 
     graduated from City College and soon after became the 
     chessmaster he is now, capable of leading classrooms of 
     Harlem junior-high-school students to major chess 
     championships.
       The following weekend, it happened again. The Dark Knights 
     of Mott Hall captured first place in the New York City Junior 
     High School Chess Team Championship. Team members received 
     the top five individual awards as well.
       Whatever Maurice Ashley is doing to register these 
     victories, his efforts obviously help to demonstrate that 
     private philanthropy and talented individuals have a crucial 
     role to play in improving the quality of education in our 
     public schools.
     

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