The other day I was talking to a Korean friend of mine (from Republic of Korea of course) and I asked him about the baduk schools in his country. He told me that though there are numerous baduk institutes that take on promising kid players for pro training, the vast majority of parents enrolling their kids in baduk programs do so with the intention of having them develop a strong work ethic and social skills. In his words, "to learn to be polite." A few weeks after having had this conversation, I began to think about how such a baduk program would fare in the US or other Western country.

Most parents in the US and in other Anglophone countries enroll their children in after school programs involving martial arts, sports, art, music, Chess, and other recreational activities with the intention of having them learn important social skills, cultivate virtuous behavior, and develop strong work ethic through participation therein. With that being said, I wonder if a baduk program with the same general purpose in mind can become successful in said countries.

I am from Western Europe. I did some teaching recently for (young) children. I am sure a go / baduk programme aimed at a general / broader purpose can be succesfull.

Doesn't hurt to dream, at least that's what they used to say back in my hometown.

I don't think that is the case. Mostly the kids just want to explore stuff and have fun and the parents support them in that. The mindset is *very* different from Asian countries.

Sports has long been seen as a way for kids to have fun and learn important life skills at the same time, so I'm not too far off. For many parents, having the child in an after school program is better than having that same child engaged in mischief after school - or at least that's the idea. (When I was young I usually never did any after school programs, but rather went straight home after school.)

Though, you are right about Asian and North American mentalities being very different. In North America parents will enroll their children in a program only if the child wants to participate in it. In Asian countries the parents will enroll their children in a program and the child has to participate regardless of his/her own view on the matter.

That being said, any baduk program for school children in a Western country would have to be a fun activity before anything else. No need to teach pro-level moves, at least until advanced level. For beginners, teaching liberties, capturing techniques, and saving techniques - followed by a couple of hours of capture Go or regular Go on small boards - is good enough. After a while the kids understand a few things about the three aforementioned themes and they are ready for life & death and tesuji. A few daring souls will try their hand at the full-size (19x19) board.

Keep the comments coming!

Well, it does matter of course how you define 'successful'.
It is not about how many children pick up go, also after the end of such program. It also is not the Western competition-driven idea of 'success' like how many wins, winning first prize or gaining a certain rank.
For children, it is more like in this recent thread here and EdLee's comment http://lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=213670#p213670 (click Show to see it), I think.

I saw the post and its hidden content. The idea of first developing desirable personal traits in the student sounds like a good one. At least it helps establish classroom discipline, something not often seen in many Western schools.

I had considered dispensing with the focus on acquisitive success and instead having a competitive atmosphere without prizes or trophies. Just a win/loss chart and that's it. The focus would be on the actual competition itself and the self-improvement that happens in the process. Perhaps we will end up with a curriculum similar to what existed in the Go schools of Edo Era Japan. Maybe not. Not that the program has to produce pros, of course, but the curriculum should encourage class participants to put in their best effort and pursue excellence in earnest, regardless of whether one gets a prize or not.

In any case, there is the issue of funding. Even the best Go program will require money for its operation.

This Falun Dafa article on weiqi got me thinking about this topic a good while ago. I recommend reading it before commenting further on the topic of this thread. Below is an extract.

Link: http://en.minghui.org/emh/articles/2005/9/1/64468p.html

They had no curriculum. They weren't that kind of school. Ditto modern pro teacher-pupil relationships.

The Dan Zhu story you quote is modern apochrypha.

Neither point necessarily invalidates your remarks about the value of go as education, of course. But Takemiya's modern international go school with a modern-style syllabus does not seem to have lasted the course.