To the shock and dismay of many chess fans, Waitzkin left the competitive chess world at age seventeen. As part of stepping back he took time to find his true self by studying Tai Chi Chuan as he continued to explore his interest in Eastern philosophy. This study lead Waitzkin back to a life of high-level competition. This time he focused on and became a world champion in Tai Chi Chuan Push Hands Competition.Waitzkin’s successes have caused many to question how one person could become a champion in what seems like completely unrelated pursuits. Waitzkin answered this question for himself and others in his 2007 book “The Art of Learning”. In the year following the book’s publication Waitzkin has seen his life take another turn. “My real passion is for education now; that’s what I am really excited about in life,” Waitzkin told me in May 2008 during an interview at the National K-6 Elementary Chess Championship in Pittsburg, PA.
The Birth of a New Passion
“When my book came out, I started getting approached by a lot of education groups, psychology groups, urban youth groups, gifted organizations, and groups that work with kids with learning disabilities. They were all interested in integrating the ideas in my book or the book itself in their curriculums and classrooms. Of course, a lot of groups don’t have funding for it, or to buy supplies or anything.” This is why Josh Waitzkin started the JW Foundation.
Through the JW Foundation, Waitzkin hopes to give the tools to professionals to inspire a love for learning and creativity in the lives of the children with whom they work. Waitzkin’s end-goal is to have the unique potential of every child tapped and to have it encouraged to grow while they learn and develop the ability to face challenges head on. His foundation will provide the knowledge and support to educators, educational institutions, and parents to see this change made a reality. In his own words, “The thing I am trying to do with my foundation is to open up the idea of excellence or success or mastery to children who are being told that they can not succeed, because we all can.”
Josh on Chess
Some people may feel that Waitzkin has grown away from chess, but he has not. In fact he knows that, “Chess families are often very embedded in the educational situations in their schools.” While autographing copies of “The Art of Learning,” many chess parents who were also teachers stopped to talk educational shop with Waitzkin. “There has been a really powerful response about integrating the book, or chapters of my book, into curriculums. If schools would like to do this, too, but cannot afford supplies, I can donate copies of my book.”
I asked Waitzkin if feelings of nostalgia rise when he visits scholastic chess tournaments. As we sat and talked at the end of a long day he told me, “I don’t feel terrible nostalgic right now. I do sometimes. I think if I went into the playing hall I would. It’s funny, right now, honestly, what I am looking at are the parents. I’m noticing the difference in the shine of the kid’s eyes depending on the parents. I am seeing parents who have the beautiful points, who are saying the right things, who have a good spirit. I’ve seen the parents who are just such nightmares, and you see how the kids are a product of their home environment in such a dramatic way. In this particular situation, I am isolated sitting at a table with people coming over to me while I am signing autographs. . . . I’ve seen so many parents ruin kids, and so many teachers ruin kids in the chess world. I am really thinking a lot about that while I am here. I am noticing what looks healthy to me and what looks unhealthy to me.”
Waitzkin, who speaks in a soft voice filled with passion, paused to reflect. He continued, “When I think about chess now, I think about how beautiful it can be for children, but it also can be terribly destructive for children if it is done the wrong way. Just like anything else. Something with Tai Chi - people talk about Tai Chi being health. Tai Chi is healthy if you do it with good alignment. If you have a bad teacher that teaches you slightly wrong alignment, it would be just as unhealthy as it could be healthy. I am beginning to feel like this is the central fight of my life right now. All the stuff that is going on in the ring, World Championships and other stuff that is one fight. The real fight is this. I think a lot of well-intentioned parents and teachers are destroying their kids. It is not that they have bad intentions. They just don’t know what the questions are. They don’t know what the important things are to focus on. That’s what I have been thinking about. I am not feeling nostalgic.”
The Truth
Many people feel that they know Josh Waitzkin. For many he has been part of their lives since he was a child and they have watched him grow into a distinguished young man. While we sat and visited, I couldn’t
help but feel that I should myself know who he is, but I didn’t. I don’t know who Josh Waitzkin is. I know something about his chess life and that he is good at Tai Chi. I can feel his spirit and respond to his kindness, but I don’t know Waitzkin anymore that any fan does. I asked him what he wanted people to know about him since false beliefs are bound to follow anyone elevated to celebrity status. “I wasn’t a very talented player, I don’t think, and I wasn’t a very talented or am a very talented athlete either. I think I am a moderately-talented athlete and a pretty talented kid in the chess world, but there were other kids who were more talented. I just worked hard. I loved the battle. I loved putting myself on the line, and of course there is a time when I stopped loving the battle. I think that a lot of people when they look at those who have succeeded or have been put on pedestals for one reason or another tend to focus on the results - on the glory, the championships, or the medals. A central idea about my life for people to understand is that I think that my success was defined by my disappoints and by how I dealt with loses. Every big win in my life, in my mind, has its seeds in one or two major disappointments, a lesson learned coming back. Losing my first national championship before I won the next one. Losing in the marshal arts my first world championship and my second world championship and coming back to win my third one. All of these years of work coming back integrating lessons from painful losses. I think that kind of reality liberates kids, or people too.”
Final Thoughts on Education
Waitzkin recently wrote an insightful essay on one of the growing harmful trends in education, the multitasking virus. Along with the multitasking virus and placing children into cookie-cutter molds, there is one word that Waitzkin feels needs to be eliminated from the educator’s vocabulary: perfection. “Perfection is the most dangerous word in the learning process and I hear people use it all the time, “you played perfectly,” or “you did this perfectly.” Perfection is devastating. It doesn’t exist. Creativity comes out of imperfection. All of the most beautiful creations are born out of something going wrong, and you just roll with it and you come up with something beautiful. That’s what inspiration is all about.”
Waitzkin feels that is it is far too easy for teachers to just teach their students in the same way that they were taught. The fact is that not all people learn in the same style. When a teacher only teaches in one tradition, two-third or three-quarters of the class is alienated. “You can teach a class and it can be a beautiful creative experience, the teaching of it, or you can teach a class, regurgitating information but that isn’t going to be good for the students.”
On the journey from child chess star to world Tai Chi champ Waitzkin has seen, lived, and learned a lot. His path has brought him now to a new road. This road is one of educational enlightenment and improvement. Waitzkin is hoping many will travel this road with him. It is wide and long with room for everyone. In the near future Waitzkin plans to build an online learning environment where people can share how they are using the principles from his book “The Art of Learning” in their classrooms and homes. The book is already being used for teacher training in Belize, in the New Jersey public school system, and in urban youth groups in San Francisco. It is time to move from education crisis to enlightenment.
Read the Multitasking Virus in our Classrooms
by Josh Waitzkin
http://main.uschess.org/content/view/8478/463/
Learn More about the JWFoundation
www.JWFoundation.com
