[aaron695]

I can say from my experience with engineers any that have only studied "Electrical Engineering" are in general crap or mediocre. They have very little ability to problem solve.

All the good degrees that I've seen will start engineers off studying 'engineering' including a wide variety of topics then specialise later in the degree. Yes it takes longer but it clearly pays off.

These are not engineering student that are being taught chess, these are children, at this level they are probably tossing up between arts and craft and other timing killing activities or chess.

Time in primary and high school is often wasted due to constraints.

Yes teaching them high level mathematics would be better, but where do the teachers smart enough come from? How do you teach it to classes at multiple levels.

Chess is easy to teach, students can quickly get to their own level and pair off.

I'm not saying chess is the answer even in the imperfect society we have to run schools in, but certainly teaching to the subject is absolutely not.