Whether you’re a parent or a teacher, you’ll be very concerned about the growing number of children and young people suffering mental health problems.

I can see many possible reasons for this, but I’d propose to you that one reason is that we as a society have our priorities wrong.

In my opinion we’re misunderstanding the nature of childhood and the place of education and schooling in a post-industrial world.

On the one hand, we’re valuing children – and encouraging them to value themselves, by how successful they are, how much money they will earn as adults, how famous they are, even how good looking they are. We can see this in the way some parents use chess for its perceived extrinsic benefits which, they hope, will enable their children to earn more money later in life.

At the same time there’s the idea that everything has to be fun, which we can see in primary school chess clubs. Parents and teachers alike would tell me it didn’t matter if their children were playing badly as long as they were having fun.

I don’t very much care for either approach to chess.

I’ve thought for a long time that the twin priorities of schools should be to provide a strong moral compass, teaching children compassion and empathy, and that they should ensure, as far as possible, that children grow up to be happy and both mentally and physically healthy. Academic success should only be a by-product of this approach.

Perhaps I’ll set up another website at some point asking some questions about education, schooling and childhood, but, for the moment, the idea of Chess Heroes clubs is based on this. We believe that, for many people, hobbies are vital for maintaining mental health. We’re promoting chess clubs for children and young people which will provide friendship and a sense of community, making them happy and healthy.