…a chicken in every pot, two cars in every garage.
With that in mind, our Illinois Chess Association is considering a chess in education initiative, the catchphrase being:
“A chess set in every school, two ___ in every classroom.”
“A chess set in every classroom, two ____ in every ___.”
Words to this effect.
Ideas, please.
Many thanks,
Rachel Schechter
Downstate VP, ICA
I think it was Coolidge, not Hoover, who wanted a chicken in every pot. And I doubt if either ever envisioned two cars in every garage.
Anyway, how about:
A chess club in every school, at least two chess players in every classroom.
Bill Smythe
Putting chess sets in each classroom always sounds like a good goal but is challenging, I’ve done it at a school and by the end of the next school year over half of the rooms no longer had them. Some had been moved around the building, but at least a half-dozen of them were apparently just discarded at some point. Another school threw away the vinyl boards I gave them, but not the pieces.
I’m also not convinced it makes much sense above elementary school. And if you don’t have the support of the teachers and the building administrators, they’ll often just gather dust.
Jerry Nash noted that most scholastic chess programs are only one retirement or death away from collapse.
You have the quote wrong. It actually came from a political ad of Herbert Hoover’s put out October 30, 1928:
iowaculture.gov/history/educati … hoover/chi
The relevant part is paragraph six, which reads:
Republican prosperity has reduced hours and increased earning capacity, silenced discontent, and put the proverbial “chicken in every pot.” And a car in every backyard, to boot.
The fact that “chicken in every pot” is in quotation marks above led me to think that it wasn’t original to the 1920s.
American Heritage dates it over 300 years earlier. https://www.americanheritage.com/political-slogan
Alex Relyea