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—Witthaya Prasongsin—Getty Images(SeaPRwire) - Certain leaders boil down America’s math crisis to just two words: test scores. For decades, hopes of progress have been crushed by stagnant or declining scores. There’s full-on panic over slipping global competitiveness, urgent demands for more drills, worksheets, and twice-weekly tutoring—anything to boost those test scores. But the actual crisis runs deeper: we’re teaching the wrong kind of math and assessing it incorrectly. We spend thousands of hours on outdated rote memorization-based math that’s everywhere in high-stakes tests—math most students will never use as adults—while completely overlooking the math that shapes our daily lives. This is a flawed plan crafted by policymakers who don’t fully grasp math, with a public that’s equally confused about the subject going along with it. The word “math” alone might transport you back to high school—algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus for the more advanced students. A flood of obscure concepts: factored polynomials, side-angle-side theorems, irrational numbers, the chain rule. Worksheets designed to sharpen our ability to do short, step-by-step calculations quickly and correctly, manually. This math curriculum was established for the U.S. by the Committee of Ten in 1893, when rote math was critical for many esteemed careers: architects, surveyors, civil engineers, weapons specialists, astronomers. Then computers arrived. From a handful of mainframes in the 1960s to the omnipresent supercomputer-powered smartphones of today, we live in a world drowning in data. Math permeates and shapes our lives via algorithms, optimization, statistics, probability, and artificial intelligence. These shifts cry out for a complete revamp of the math we teach in schools. Yet we’ve made the wrong choices, attaching increasing importance to rote math that’s becoming less and less relevant. We’ve turned rote math scores into the primary indicator of educational quality—a system that ranks, sorts, and penalizes students. But this isn’t unavoidable. Our schools could focus on teaching math that’s meaningful—the kind that influences what we watch, read, and trust. Math is the foundation of important financial and healthcare choices every American makes. It can either help civil society thrive or our lack of math knowledge could split us apart. The right math can captivate, empower, and lift up students, giving our people the skills to handle life-altering challenges. Take an example: suppose you’re ill and a medical test comes back positive. Your doctor says the test is 90% accurate, so you have a 90% chance of having the disease. But the doctor has mixed up two probabilities: the chance you have the disease given a positive test, and the chance of a positive test given you have the disease. They sound similar, but these odds can vary by 25 to 50 times. Without understanding this, you might make a life-or-death choice based on a flawed data interpretation. Or consider a young adult who opens a FanDuel account, sure they’ll outsmart the odds. They use a credit card to cover initial losses, not realizing the ruinous long-term effects of compound interest. To get out of debt, they pay for a sketchy online certification, making their financial troubles even worse.Beyond these personal financial situations, math has a huge impact on society as a whole. Every month, the U.S. unemployment rate dominates news and policy decisions, with all attention on the U-3 statistic: the total number of unemployed people as a percentage of the civilian labor force. The problem? Most people don’t understand this number. Someone is considered “employed” if they worked just one paid hour in the past month, and “unemployed” only if they had a job interview in the last month. Adults who’ve stopped looking for work are ignored. But it’s hard to find a news story that explains U-3 or mentions the more revealing TRU measure— which includes unemployed workers, part-timers who want full-time jobs, and those earning less than $20,000 a year—currently at 23.6%.Without a basic understanding of how these metrics are defined and what they exclude, Americans can’t correctly understand economic conditions or hold policymakers responsible.Every decade, the U.S. spends billions counting its population—331,449,281 in the 2020 Census. That level of precision (down to the last person) is a myth. The Census Bureau’s own research admits that Black and Latino communities are undercounted at rates several times higher than white communities. These inaccurate numbers determine how congressional seats, electoral votes, and over $2.8 trillion in annual federal funding are distributed. A population that understands math would demand better.Many Americans also mix up correlation and causation. Look at studies that claim math scores are crucial for future success. Few people know how success is defined in these studies, that the correlations are actually weak, or that both math scores and success are influenced by a common factor: parental resources. When we confuse correlation with causation, our education policies are built on an illusion.Our education system is built on a data illusion, which hurts all of us. We overload K-12 students with 112 standardized multiple-choice tests—rote math is ideal for these exams. The cost of these tests is kept low by using ones designed to be graded by computers. And if a computer can grade a task, it can perform that task itself. We actually define educational success using narrow skills that computers can do instantly and flawlessly. Then we casually force these test scores to fit a bell curve, setting kids against each other in cutthroat competition that harms their mental health and takes away the joy and meaning of learning. We treat America’s kids as data points, but what we really need is to teach them data analysis skills.This testing doesn’t prepare kids for adult life. Only 37% of U.S. adults have the math skills needed for everyday financial or medical choices. Around 93% of Americans say they feel anxious about math. And less than half can answer whether their money will buy more, less, or the same after a year if their savings account earns 1% interest and inflation is 2%.None of this has to happen. With the federal Department of Education being dismantled, states have a chance to fix math education. Our schools should focus on data and financial literacy, statistical thinking, and the impactful concepts of math. Let AI handle the rote work while students learn and apply the math ideas that are important—showing math’s relevance, creativity, and fun. If we do this, we’ll raise young adults with the math skills to help themselves, their communities, and our democracy grow and succeed. This article is provided by a third-party content provider. SeaPRwire (https://www.seaprwire.com/) makes no warranties or representations regarding its content. Category: Top News, Daily News SeaPRwire provides global press release distribution services for companies and organizations, covering more than 6,500 media outlets, 86,000 editors and journalists, and over 3.5 million end-user desktop and mobile apps. SeaPRwire supports multilingual press release distribution in English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Chinese, and more.

—Photo-illustration by TIME (Source image: Getty Images; Juanmonino)(SeaPRwire) - When stress keeps you awake, counting sheep may not be enough. Instead, experts recommend a simple mental technique that can calm even the most active thoughts. They rely on it themselves.This method is called “cognitive shuffling.” It’s a mental exercise that gives your brain something neutral and mildly engaging to focus on, helping it relax into sleep rather than staying stuck in overthinking mode. Here’s what you need to know—and how to determine if it could work for you.What is cognitive shuffling?The idea was introduced more than ten years ago by Dr. Luc Beaudoin, a cognitive scientist who first developed it due to his own struggles with insomnia.Here’s how it works: After following your usual bedtime routine, pick a word that doesn’t carry strong emotional weight and consists of five to twelve letters. “The word should be emotionally neutral—avoid anything linked to stress or intense feelings,” says Patricia B. Pedreira, a health psychologist and postdoctoral associate at Duke University Medical Center specializing in behavioral sleep medicine. “Stay away from words like ‘money,’ ‘deadline,’ or anything that might trigger anxious thoughts.” Some of her preferred choices include blanket, garden, bedtime, and kitchen.Once you’ve chosen your word, go through each letter one by one, coming up with as many unrelated words as possible for each. For example, if your word is “bedtime,” your list might look like this: B: butterfly, basket, bagel. E: envelope, Egypt, emerald. (In practice, continue until you run out of ideas.) “The key is keeping them unrelated,” Pedreira notes. “If your mind starts making connections or building stories, you’re missing the point.”Every time you name a new word, take a few seconds to briefly visualize it. If you landed on “goat” for the letter G, for instance, “you’d picture a goat in your mind,” Pedreira explains. “You don’t need to create a highly detailed image—just a quick mental snapshot will do.” Hold that image for a moment, then move on to the next letter.Ideally, you won’t finish the entire word—instead, you’ll drift off to sleep. “You might fall asleep mid-letter, complete the whole word, or lose track of where you are,” Pedreira says. “None of that matters. The goal isn’t to finish perfectly.” If you reach the end of the word still awake, simply choose another word and start over.If you find yourself stuck or repeating the same words, the issue might be your initial choice. Nina Kaiser, a psychologist in San Francisco who teaches cognitive shuffling to both children and adults, suggests avoiding words with repeated letters. Once you’ve exhausted all options starting with a particular letter, encountering another instance of that letter later in the word forces you to repeat the same list—which can easily lead to mental looping. This makes “Google,” with its double Gs and Os, a poor choice, while “planet,” with six distinct letters, is much better.Why it worksWhen your brain is replaying or analyzing recent events, those thoughts can keep you in an alert, problem-solving state that prevents sleep. “Your task is to shift gears and redirect focus toward something more conducive to falling asleep,” Kaiser explains. “You’re choosing something deliberately dull instead of stimulating—giving your brain a clear activity rather than just telling it, ‘Don’t think about what’s worrying you.’”The method also provides a constructive alternative to lying awake watching the clock. “It replaces rumination with purposeful action,” Pedreira says. “Instead of passively obsessing over sleeplessness, people have something active and positive to do.”There’s also a neurological explanation. During the day, your brain operates with faster waves tied to focused attention; as sleep approaches, these slow down into slower, more diffuse patterns. “It’s a gradual transition into a relaxed, loosely connected mental state,” explains Sarah Gray, a psychologist and instructor at Harvard Medical School who specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. Cognitive shuffling helps guide your brain through this shift instead of keeping it trapped in analytical mode.That’s why it often outperforms counting sheep, according to Gray. Counting quickly becomes monotonous, allowing stressful thoughts to resurface. In contrast, cognitive shuffling offers just enough stimulation—generating words, holding onto letters, imagining objects—without overexciting the mind. The visualization component is especially important: briefly picturing each item keeps the brain occupied enough to block intrusive thoughts. “It genuinely helps the brain disengage and settle into a softer, more open state,” she says.Who benefits mostCognitive shuffling is most effective for individuals struggling to fall asleep due to repetitive thinking or racing thoughts. “I frequently see this in otherwise good sleepers who bring daytime stress into bed with them,” Pedreira observes.In other words, it’s not a cure-all for sleep disturbances. It doesn’t address chronic insomnia disorder, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, circadian rhythm disorders, or insomnia caused by medication side effects or hormonal changes—all of which require medical treatment. It also tends to be less effective for people with aphantasia, a condition characterized by difficulty or inability to form mental images. Similarly, it may not suit anyone for whom visualization feels taxing or activating rather than calming.One crucial reminder: avoid turning cognitive shuffling into a chore. “If someone believes they must perform it flawlessly or visualize with perfect clarity, they’ve undermined its purpose,” Pedreira warns. “This technique should feel effortless and gentle, not like a test.”If you don’t nod off within the first minute or two, don’t panic—and certainly don’t start fixating on the clock. “It’s completely normal to remain awake with an active mind for ten to fifteen minutes,” Gray points out. The real problem arises when people become anxious about not falling asleep immediately, as that worry perpetuates wakefulness. That’s precisely why cognitive shuffling exists: to offer a low-stakes activity while your brain gradually unwinds, rather than adding another layer of stress. This article is provided by a third-party content provider. SeaPRwire (https://www.seaprwire.com/) makes no warranties or representations regarding its content. Category: Top News, Daily News SeaPRwire provides global press release distribution services for companies and organizations, covering more than 6,500 media outlets, 86,000 editors and journalists, and over 3.5 million end-user desktop and mobile apps. SeaPRwire supports multilingual press release distribution in English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Chinese, and more.