Think about your local school district. Can you think of any good programs, classroom or extracurricular, that your school has had to scale back or eliminate because it can’t afford them?
If you can’t, you’re probably not from South Dakota. But please, keep reading.
Think of a good program your school lacks, or maybe a program that your school is lucky enough to have but that you know other schools can’t afford.
Think of a class, a sequence of classes, a sport, a club, some kind of educational activity that helps kids develop really important skills. Think of a program so vital to kids’ intellectual and cultural and social development and their ability to participate helpfully and self-fulfillingly in the economy and in civic life that you would say not just that local communities should offer it if they can but that the state has an obligation to mandate and raise taxes to fund it to ensure that every public school offers it to every child in the state.
What school program would you say is that important? Orchestra? Painting? Debate? Foreign language? Robotics? Household repair? Sewing? Psychology? Personal finance? Cooking? Gardening? Fitness and nutrition?
Representative Herman Otten (R-6/Tea) and Senator Jim White (R-22/Huron) address that question with House Bill 1256. Their single educational priority, the program they will not only require every school to offer but also create a new revenue stream to fund, is guns.
There is established in the state treasury the shooting sports fund, which is continuously appropriated to and shall be administered by the Department of Game, Fish and Parks. The secretary of the department shall divide the money placed in the fund into as many equal shares as there are public school districts in the state and, following such division, each public school district shall use its share to establish, improve, or operate a shooting sports program. At least one-half of the money placed in the fund must be used for expenditures authorized by this section by the end of the fiscal year following the fiscal year it is placed in the fund, and the balance of the money must be used by the end of the second fiscal year following the fiscal year it is placed in the fund. Any money placed in the fund may not be transferred to any other fund [emphasis mine; 2020 HB 1256, Section 4, as introduced 2020.02.06].
Of course, Otten and White lack the courage to put our own money where their mouths are. Instead of asking the Legislature to approve a general tax on all South Dakotans, they ply the cowardly route of raising this revenue from a dollar-a-night tax on motel rooms and campsites during tourist season, June through September. They lack the guts to turn to their own voters and say, “Teaching every kid to shoot a gun is important, and every one of us should pay for it.” Even for this vital educational priority, they hide from the inevitable and proper criticism of, “Hey, you’re Republicans! How come you’re raising our taxes?” by saying, “Oh, we’re not raising South Dakotans’ taxes. We’re getting folks from out-of-state to pay for it!”
We may not pay up front for Otten and White’s sally into curriculum mandates, but I have the bad feeling that someday we will pay for making guns more central to our public school culture.
What could possibly go wrong ???
Well, y’all keep pointing to Minnesota as the gem of the Midwest.
Minnesota is the genesis of the High School Clay Target League, with 1,042 teams across 25 states. The league reports that since 2008, over 70,000 students have fired over 42 million shots without a single injury.
Objectively, trap shooting is safer than football, basketball, and cross country.
I’d much rather that youth interested in shooting sports be introduced and cultivated in a structured environment. It’s a great way to inculcate our youth in a culture of sportsmanship and respect for firearms, and serve as an inoculation against the “rampant gun fetish” (Cory’s words).
It also helps drive conservation funding, as there’s a tax on all firearm and ammunition sales which goes straight to conservation efforts. Since all the bird watchers, mountain bikers, campers, and other hippy types don’t actually contribute to preserving the nature they enjoy, we need some way to keep conservation efforts alive.
Wayne B Foolish has a wonderful idea in that “big brain” of his. Forcibly force all the bird watchers, mountain bikers, campers, and other hippy types who don’t actually contribute to preserving the nature they enjoy to buy an “undesirable humans” permit, every year. These unwanted SD’ers should pay to support the normal natural people! (grudznick approves this idea)
Every county in South Dakota has a 4-H program. Shooting sports is part of 4-H and is open to every kid ages eight to eighteen. We don’t need to fund this in schools.
There was a time that the NRA would sponsor programming like this.
Wayne, does the Minnesota HS League (their SDHSAA) run the Clay Target League? Is it paid for through the schools?
How about paying for all the destroyed, target practice road signs that are destroyed every year by adding tax to the shells purchased that deface them? Why do motorists pay for macho gun play?
The high school sport of trapshooting is popular here in Minnesota and I have no problem with it. However, there is no special state tax dedicated solely to it. In addition, funding for conservation activities in Minnesota is declining along with fewer hunters.
High schoolers shooting clay targets is not leading to more hunting, nor making up for the declining numbers of predominantly old white guys who hunt.
I believe schools do not pay taxes on supplies for their shooting team any more than they do for their volleyball or robotics teams.
A trap team is a good idea. A special statewide tax dedicated solely to one school activity is a stupid SDGOP idea proposed to kiss the enormous a$$ of the NRA.
Great idea Wayne, lets cultivate more toxic masculinity and combine that with firearms. What could possibly go wrong? Count me out.
I don’t like top-down command and control mandates from fat-headed legislators. Jim White needs to get off the steroids, by the way. I suspect if something like this came from students, it might be accommodated with time. I have to wonder if this is just a way for the gun manufacturers to get more government welfare. Stupid GOP taxes for their political donors is not good government.
Wayne, while trap shooting may be gaining popularity in Minnesota schools, did Minnesota impose a new tax to fund it, and does Minnesota mandate trap shooting in every school?
The South Dakota Republican Party has become a liberal tax and spend party.
…at which point, Sam2, you’re better off joining and voting for the Democratic Party, because at least we’re honest with you.
Cory, I think it is more than “being honest”; it is about how the taxing and spending flows. The GOP wants to tax least those who can pay most and spend least on those in the most need. I saw on FOX this morning that the GOP is ready to get serious about deficits (they created) and will be looking SERIOUSLY at entitlement cuts. So, back to the old playbook of spend on the rich and cut services from the poor.
Hi friends,
For the last three years I’ve been teaching elementary school children at the Harrisburg School District how to play chess. Playing chess helps students practice important mental abilities like concentration, sound reasoning, thinking ahead, attention-to-detail, double-checking your work, forming a plan of action, and evaluating plans for strengths and weaknesses. It’s also a great place to learn some hard lessons about life… like how it feels to lose when you can’t blame luck or your teammates… and how no one’s going to bail you out if you blunder away your material.
Apparently I’ve been going about this the wrong way. I’ve been donating my own time, talents, and money. Sporting clays is fun, too. And while I agree that a shooting club is safer than football and hockey, I’m certain that the game of kings has an even lower liability premium and lower equipment costs. With bigger academic benefits.
Kind regards,
David
David, your efforts are admirable! How were you able to obtain permission and put together a program to teach the kids chess at the school? It sounds like a wonderful project!
If you can share the tactics you used to achieve such a highly desirable strategical objective perhaps some of us would be inspired to follow in your footsteps! Chess is a great alternative to guns and video games.
First and foremost, above all else your state, and every other state, needs a serious curriculum of Civics, government and a serious study of the constitution, starting as soon as children can read.
Gawd I’d hate to have to explain the criminal enterprise in the kremlin annex behavior to a group of impressionable youngsters striving hard to be honorable grownups. This just must be a really long, really bad episode of Dallas.
Hi BearCreek!
Thanks for the encouragement! Teaching chess has been a joy for me. I love the game, I love teaching, and I love kids. I’m blessed to have the opportunity and a career that can accommodate it.
I first got involved when my neighbor (one of the teachers at Endeavor, my son’s school) asked me to help with a weekly chess club they were starting after school. After doing that for a few weeks, Dr. Wenger, the principal of Tiger Reserve (Harrisburg’s advanced elementary program) asked if I would be willing to go to the 4th-5th grade classrooms at Liberty (the other school building that has advanced classes) and teach them from the ground up during their math rotations, since they didn’t have a chess program at all at that school. I said yes and started volunteering my Friday mornings (every other week) to teaching groups of 5-10 students for about 20 minutes each.
Year 2 expanded in a couple ways. First, the star player from Endeavor graduated to 6th grade and asked me to help him run a chess club at the Middle School. The North Middle School principal, Mr. Fesler, could not have been more enthusiastic. Second, Dr. Wenger asked me to be involved with all the Tiger Reserve classes (2nd-5th grade) at both buildings. The way that worked was that each classroom basically got me for 30 minutes every other week, and the teachers used me however they wanted. For example, my son’s teacher would stop the whole class and gather all 25 kids around me for the full half-hour. Other classrooms would rotate half the class to me on a given day. And some teachers used “chess with King David” as an incentive for the kiddos to get their math done early. Therefore my commitment was basically a morning a week, plus an hour every other Monday for the Middle Schoolers. At the end of the year I received the biggest, most heart-melting thank you notes from the 2nd & 3rd graders.
For our 3rd year, the Tiger Reserve focus is on just the new 2nd graders, since the other students already learned how to play from me last year. So my commitment there is down to just an hour a week. The big new thing this year is that North Middle School started hosting K-8 school-district-wide tournaments. Again, Mr. Fesler has been a huge help. He blocked off the building for us, showed up early to unlock the doors and chat with parents, and at our latest tournament, he even called KELO TV to interview us for the 6pm news.
I was expecting about 10 students at the first tournament, but 25 showed up. At our second tournament we had 37, and 43 at our third. Altogether more than 70 different kids have participated in the tournaments. And the best part was that a lot of these kids were from schools that I hadn’t worked with yet. One of these other elementary schools, Horizon, has since started a weekly chess club, where a student’s grandpa volunteered to team up with his grandson’s teacher. That club has 32 kids participating.
Elementary school kids love chess. They just want to play and play and play. When they have indoor recess, the chess sets are the first to be snatched up. The hump is getting kids from level 0 to level 2. Once they’re at level 2, they don’t want lessons from me anymore, they just want to play against their friends. And so the after-school chess club doesn’t need a chess expert, they just need a babysitter. The kids can sort out the chess rules on their own.
But there aren’t many teachers who feel comfortable teaching chess from level 0 to level 2. Chess is a big and complicated domain, and even if a teacher kinda sorta remembers how the pieces move, they don’t have the confidence of someone who’s played in tournaments and knows why, for example, we start by moving the King pawn and not the Knight pawn. Some of the teachers last year, bless their heart, participated in my lessons with the kids and tried to learn for the first time.
I think chess is the perfect extra-curricular for elementary school. It’s cheap, it’s international, it teaches great mental discipline, kids won’t tear an ACL, they can play chess in all weather, they can play chess until they’re 100, and it’s an excellent vehicle for teaching sportsmanship. From the sermon I preach at the beginning of our tournaments:
It’s exciting to be a part of this. Just imagine what we could do with a buck from every hotel reservation in the state. ;)
Kind regards,
David
PS In case anyone’s curious, the lesson topics go like this. We start with how the pieces move, and then study the Scholar’s Mate (every kid’s favorite… “Thanks for the lesson last week Mr. Bergan, I beat my Dad!”). Next I explain the value of the pieces and how to add up who’s getting the better deal in a trade. After that comes my favorite lesson, how to win with 2 rooks. It’s my favorite because it’s a process, and none of them initially know how to do it. But after 15 minutes, they all know it and could do it in their sleep. Then I move to the trickier algorithm: how to win with 1 rook, because if you can win with 1 rook, you now have the confidence to trade off all the pieces in any game once you’re ahead by a rook.
Next we flip back to the beginning of the game and discuss basic opening principles (when the Scholar’s Mate fails) and basic tactical ideas (pins, forks, discovered checks, etc). At some point I also throw in a quick history lesson on Bobby Fisher and the Cold War. And on that one let me just say that if you want to test the bladder control of a classroom full 2nd graders… all you have to do is describe a nuclear missile and tell them that the American-hating Russians have enough of them pointing at America to destroy it several times over. The room was so full of dread, you could chew it. But eventually the kids get curious and ask questions… and before you know it these political science savants understand the concepts of mutually-assured-destruction and peace-through-strength.
David, Thanks so much for the information and history of your experience. I reside in the Rapid City area, am retired, and would love to volunteer for a similar teaching activity. Unfortunately I don’t know any current teachers or administrators seeking to recruit a chess teacher. But if the opportunity ever arises I will keep your lesson plans handy and use them as a guide.
And if through your chess teaching and touraments you happen to encounter someone seeking a volunteer chess teacher in my area, please contact me, or have them contact me. Cory has my email address and has my permission to forward any request to communicate with me. Meanwhile, I greatly admire your efforts!
Brilliant, David! The Game of Kings!
As Coach Bergan says on KELO-TV, chess teaches “Concentration, calculation, a lot of attention to detail….” Chess fits perfectly into our schools’ duty to sharpen our children’s minds, and as David points out with his story of talking about Bobby Fisher and the Cold War, the game provides opportunities to put the game in historical context (or to put history in the context of a game that excites them!) and get kids thinking about history in ways they might not in the regular classroom.
Move to amend: strike every instance of “shooting sports” in HB 1256 and replace with “chess.”
The funds are managed by the Department of Game, Fish, and Parks, and chess is a game, so the amendment is germane.
Thanks BearCreek and Cory!
We’ll see where things lead. There is a loose scholastic chess network in the state, but it’s mostly just a few hotspots. The Sioux Falls school district has always had some chess program since De Knudson funded it back in the 90s, but I haven’t noticed strong enthusiasm there right now. Not sure if Rapid City has ever had a formal chess program going, but there have been some strong chess kids from Rapid that won the state scholastic title. The schools that are doing the most right now (that I know of) are the Pierre Indian Learning Center and Great Plains Lutheran High School. There are also several strong home school students.
The next state scholastic tournament is coming up in April. I’ll ask around and if I hear of something around Rapid, I’ll let you know, Bear!
Kind regards,
David
PS Thanks for the offer to amend HB 1256, I hope the cash doesn’t go all Gear Up on me. :)
Thanks David! Meanwhile today I just discovered the beginnings of a chess club that focuses on young scholastic players that started up in Rapid City on February 1, 2020! Apparently they have meetings with lessons and equipment scheduled for each Saturday at 1:00. I plan to attend next Saturday and learn more.
By the way, are you a USCF and/or SDCA member? I am a life member of USCF, but my SDCA membership is not current as I have not participated in tournaments, etc, for several (almost 30 – ugh!) years. Despite that unfortunate history I still love the game and have enjoyed studying the available game collections and stories on the chess.com and SDCA web sites, and trying to best exceptionally strong online AI opponents (in the spirit of former world champ GK vs Deep Blue).