I think, therefore IB

Schools love a fad. Every decade or so, a new “miracle cure” for student stress, distraction, and bad behaviour sweeps through classrooms. Right now, that fad is mindfulness. Teachers dim the lights, tell kids to breathe deeply, and pretend that ten minutes of pseudo-meditation will fix everything from exam anxiety to playground bullying. Let’s be blunt: it won’t.

The problem starts with the fact that no one can even agree on what mindfulness is. Is it meditation? Is it breathing? Is it yoga? Is it colouring in? The definition is about as slippery as “healthy eating” at a fast-food outlet. If researchers can’t pin it down, what exactly are schools teaching? Unsurprisingly, the evidence base is a mess. Studies are tiny, short-term, biased, and riddled with inconsistent outcomes. Meta-analyses say the same thing over and over: low-quality evidence, weak effects, nothing to get excited about.

Worse still, the way schools actually deliver mindfulness is a joke. Teachers aren’t trained psychologists or Buddhist monks; they’re just told to lead kids in a “calm breathing moment.” For some students—especially those with trauma—this isn’t relaxing at all; it’s disturbing. And while everyone is busy pretending to be Zen, valuable teaching time evaporates.

Here’s a radical thought: instead of wasting time on pseudoscientific fluff, let’s give students something that actually builds brains and resilience. I’m talking about 10–15 minutes of fast mental arithmetic at the start of every school day, for every student, at every level.

This isn’t about turning kids into human calculators. Rapid-fire arithmetic sharpens working memory, strengthens focus, and trains the brain to think clearly under pressure. These skills don’t vanish when the session ends. They seep into everyday life: deciding quickly in a shop, managing time on the fly, weighing risks before acting, resisting impulsive choices. In other words, the very skills that mindfulness claims to improve—but backed by decades of hard cognitive science, not vague spiritual waffle.

And unlike mindfulness, which is passive and often exclusionary, arithmetic is active, universal, and measurable. Students can feel themselves getting quicker, sharper, more confident. That’s real progress—not just sitting cross-legged with eyes shut, pretending to be calm while silently worrying about their maths test.

Mindfulness in schools is just the latest shiny fad, long on hype and short on evidence. Arithmetic is timeless, effective, and transferable. If schools are serious about giving students stronger minds, it’s time to dump the pseudo-meditation and get back to the numbers.

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