also, there is a very common effect among people who learn at a young age that is not so good. when they get to high school age, which is about when they can really wrap their brain around positional intricacies for most people, they will be much stronger than most of the people their age, so tactics just become even more appealing, and they fall in love with the style of play.

i won a lot of tournaments in high school by virtue of having more experience than most of my opponents. think i was playing the queen's gambit and the pirc? of course not. why would i do that when i could just kill everyone in under 20 moves with things like the fried liver attack? all of that only served to to bolster my one sided view of the game, and of course, when i got into real tournaments, surprise surprise, i got kicked around mercilously.

if a person does not value positional chess early on, then when will they value it? it certainly won't be anytime soon, as they will generally be stronger than their opponents for a long time, and then they end up being guys like me, that not only hate positional games, but actually hold positional players in contempt for trying to bore up their games. there are a lot of us!

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I should also like to add that there is some good material for children, plus some controversial chess -pedagogical articles, at

http://www.chesskids.com/

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I think you've completely misread my intentions with this thread.  If you read my posts, my question was designed as a pedagogical one, inspired by our playing through a few games with the Pirc.  It's provoked some very interesting--and contentious--responses about how children should approach chess and how adults might guide them.  If you look carefully, I've been trying to steer my personal interests away from the competitive nature of the game (what is a good killer repertoire for my kid?) and toward inspiring and capturing my son's imagination.  He loves to play chess.  He's surprisingly good and he's getting better with each game.

While I have no experience in chess instruction, I have a strong background in teaching and pedagogy.  My question was designed to provoke a theoretical discussion about chess instruction praxis, which it succeeded in doing, in relation to how children learn.  Children can absorb tons of material, but what they retain best (like stories) are the things that capture their imagination.  Chess can do this on all kinds of levels, and the spirit of my question was not to antagonize long time chess teachers by goading them into defending their methods, but rather to ask whether examination of closed games wasn't just another way of opening doors through which their imaginations might enter.

I'm grateful to all respondents, but I don't take kindly to the notion that I'm building a chess automaton out of my son.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

And only if these kids understand about piece coordination, the teacher can show them some lines - based on that very same piece coordination. Then the kids will understand these lines and have no problems to memorize them.
This process is very similar to teaching mathematics. It is very unwise to teach children derivatives before they know what equations and functions are.

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These are words.  To me, it seems that you have many more words than experience teaching chess to children.   I suggest that you watch your son playing some other kid and ask yourself, what does my kid need to learn to win his games? 

Take junior and ask him to make White's move after 1. e4 e5  2. Nf3 Nc6  3. Nc3 Nf6  4. d4 exd4  5. Nxd4 Bb4.  If he's like 90% of the middling 7-year-olds I know, he'll play 6. Bd2 or 6. Bd3 or 6. a3.  He won't think of 6. Nxc6.  And if he does think of 6. Nxc6, after 6...bxc6 he'll play 7. Bc4 and hang his e-pawn.  Oh, and as Black, he probably will play 5...Nxd4 instead of developing his bishop.  You see what kids need to work on?  It isn't some closed defensive system.  The antidote to all that ignorance isn't "Play the French." 

"Losing miniatures?"  Children lose short games all the time, no matter how they open the game, usually from flagrant blunders.   Short games occur, but "miniatures" do not occur because very few kids have the skill to pull off the winning side of one.  With much more freqency, Qh5+, with mate in two, is on the board and the kid instead plays b3.  Then the other kid plays h6, leaving Qh5+ on the board, and Bb2 is played instead of the killing move.

The closest thing to a miniature occurs in children's chess when one player overlooks checkmate on f7 or f2.   The antidote to that is not playing the French.  Between players more or less able to see one-move mates and to hang onto their pieces, games typically are won because one player gets his pieces out first and uses his surplus activity to produce a good tactic.  The antidote to that is not avoiding sharp positions, but being the one to get your pieces out first.

Have you noticed that very new players don't know how to arrange mate?  That many young players can't defend against the lone queen?  How often they get out-tacticked?  How easy it is for them to get mated on f7?  How many of them lose a rook to a simple Nc7+ or to Nxc6, bxc6, Bxc6+?  All that is because the can't coordinate their pieces.  Tactics is the highest form of piece coordination, but piece coordination in general and moderately respectable tactics are about 95% of what a seven-year-old needs to start winning games against good opposition.  Pawn structure is way, way down on the list, except for not having a gaping hole on g7.

You are talking through your hat in your remarks about children having to "memorize lines" if they answer 1. e4 with 1...e5.  Nobody responsible exposes kids to trees of variations until they get up to around 1000 -- which is quite strong for a kid in grades 3-5 -- because doing so would just daunt the blazes out of them and would not help their game.  Yes, you do show them a few variations, such as the "fork trick" and a few ideas for playing against 4. Ng5 in the two knights.  Then you watch their games and see what comes up, and tailor your instruction to what these kids need to know to win their games.   They will remember how to handle positions that come up, because they really do want to win.  From that to memorizing trees of variations is a long and very gradual transition, and one made by only the best players.   

When you talk about 1...e5 having too many variations you sound more like a 1700-rated player wringing his hands over his choice of repertoire than someone interested in teaching chess.

"I have friends who started out as children playing the French because they were sick of losing miniatures."  Yeah, right.  That must be why, when I go to my six or seven scholastic tournaments each year, I see all these chess kids playing 1...e6.  That must be why kids just fall over themselves coming to me and asking how to avoid losing miniatures.  Yup.

"Chess is chess."  Yeah, O.K., go ahead and teach junior the French or the Dragon.   Just be careful with his heart, because the poor kid will go into his games thinking his dad has given him some actual magic for winning, when something more like the reverse will be the case.

By the way, I teach all my kids to meet the French with 2. d4 d5  3. exd5 exd5  4. c4.  In this way White can insist on an open position right out of the box.  But of course, it seldom comes up since so few of their opponents play the French.

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I fully agree that you shouldn't give a kid a way of playing that is too complicated, in the sense of being utterly beyond his powers to play well.  My own view is that acquiring strength in tactics is probably the single most critical factor in chess development.  If it is true that whoever fears an isolated d-pawn should give up chess, it is 1,000 times more true that whoever fears tactics should do so.   So I don't hestitate to steer kids toward systems that lead to red-hot tactics (the Belgrade Gambit, for example).  I do hesitate to steer them toward systems, like the French, that assume pretty good understanding of pawn structure and which are not easy to play well if one doesn't know how to play reasonably well in open positions.   

You don't need to know much about pawn structure, minority attacks, and whatnot, to play the Belgrade or the Ulvestad 2 Knights well.  Teach a kid all about pawn structure if you like, but for reasons that I have explained, it won't do much to help him win his games of chess.

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I don't disagree. 

This reminds me that Bob Wade (for many years the Chief National Coach of the BCF and one of the key figures in the "English Chess Explosion" of the 70s and 80s) always argued that the division Opening/Middlegame/Endgame is not a particularly useful or real one, and that youngsters should first be taught the sort of skills and concepts that tend to come in useful at ALL stages of the game (i.e. mainly tactics,  mating patterns, and all sorts of double attacks, e.g., pins, forks, double and discovered checks, etc.).

As for learning position play, Wade maintained that at first this should arise natural­ly out of dialogue between the coach and the player about how pieces (and pawns) co-operate; why this attack worked but that one didn’t; how come White's position became so overwhelming; why this opening seems dubious, etc. etc.

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Some coaches argue that the "stodgy" Giuoco Pianissimo is just a natural stage in the development of  most juniors. This may well be so, but the main problem is that  there are no files opened for the rooks, so rook play in the middlegame tends to be a neglected area of their chess education. Therefore I suggest that as White they should be helped and encouraged to move through this stage as fast as possible by teaching them an opening that opens at least one file for the rooks!