I had a discussion on reddit /r/chess, on which one told he was going teach chess to children. He was a 1600 ELO Fide. I argued that that score is a little bit low for starting teaching. 1600 means to me a player with still many leaks, and I said I wouldn't teach chess with that rating. Someone agreed with me, someone didn't. The players who didn't agree said that the score is high enough to teach the basics.
What do you think about? What score is "high" enough to start teaching to kids?
I have no idea what my Fide ELO score would be, I don't have an official live rating as I play mostly online, but I have a friend officially rated ~1550 and my wins against him are about 80% on 15+0 games, but I still have no idea what my live rating would be. Is there any relation between Lichess' Glicko rating and Fide ELO's?
I'd say that's good enough to teach kids. At 1600 i'm sure they at least understand most common openings and patterns and traps which is probably all a kid would need to know. They'd learn the rest themselves. You don't have to be amazing to teach someone, you just have to know how to explain things well.
My dad was probably 1000 when he taught me chess.
Not considering factors like "how clear and charismatic you are", to teach someone you only need to be better than him at something. You can even learn from lower rated players...
Yeah! Can anybody remember the name of Beethoven's dad? Einstein's?
Apart from Mr Beethoven :D
To be fair - I don't think Einstein's dad would've been that happy on sports day right enough - but jeez - you can't win them all right?
Most elementary school teachers can barely multiply single digit numbers, yet most of them manage to teach kids a thing or two about multiplication itself. As long as you are more skilled at the subject than the student you are teaching the subject to, I think the student may be in a position of improving his skill with regard to the subject you are teaching.
My first chess teacher in school was probably rated about 1200-1300 at best. Despite that, he taught me chess well and I even surpassed him in about 6-12 months, with the help of playing a lot of games with my friends. I owe much of of it to my first teacher.
Kids are natural learners. You don't need to be high rated to teach kids. Even stuff that is beyond the basics. Most adult club players have a general understanding of positional play as well. It is only the tactics that separate most players at the <2000 level. So if you are positionally knowledgable (even if you are not tactically and good and have a 2000 elo) you can teach a lot to a kid.
It also matters how good of a teacher you are...
Not to mention, you usually learn a bit when you teach someone something (not necessarily from the person you're teaching, just from putting it in a different perspective, and thinking about WHY you do things, as opposed to just always knowing to do them)
