This Halloween brings a genuinely frightening economics lesson: candy inflation has reached terrifying new heights. For IBDP Economics students, this real-world example perfectly illustrates inflationary pressures and consumer behavior shifts.
The Sweet Truth About Rising Prices
3 Musketeers now tops the charts at $0.93 per ounce, making it 2025’s priciest chocolate treat. More startling is Laffy Taffy’s 44% price surge and Skittles’ 25% climb, though they remain relatively affordable at $0.40 per ounce. Only M&M’s bucked the trend, dropping 3% from last year—a rare example of deflation in a specific product market.
Cost-Push Inflation in Action
What’s driving these increases? Classic cost-push inflation. Rising input costs—cocoa, sugar, packaging materials, and transportation—force manufacturers to pass expenses onto consumers. The wide variation in price changes across different candies reflects how various supply chains face different cost pressures. Laffy Taffy’s dramatic 44% jump suggests particularly severe supply chain disruptions or ingredient cost increases.
Consumer Response: Demand Meets Reality
Halloween costumes mirror this trend. Mr. Fantastic’s $87.99 price tag versus Stitch’s $23.54 shows extreme price differentiation. These figures demonstrate how inflation affects discretionary spending—Americans are reconsidering what’s “worth the splurge,” classic rational consumer behavior when purchasing power declines.
For Economics students, this Halloween snapshot provides textbook examples of inflation’s real impact. When candy prices shock more than horror movies, you know economic theory has jumped straight from the textbook into your trick-or-treat bag. The question remains: will consumers substitute cheaper alternatives, reduce quantity demanded, or skip Halloween celebrations altogether? Watch consumer behavior closely—it’s economics in action.
As one study concluded: “Inflation has finally done what horror movies never could. It made adults too scared to celebrate.”
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.”
Carl Gustav Jung
Hello Everyone,
Just a quick update on how I think the roll-out of the new Guide is going.
The more I teach from the New Guide, the more I realise it requires far more careful handling when it comes to classroom communication and student tasks than the old one. It’s not just about changing what we teach, it’s about changing how we talk to students about it and standardizing language.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks I’ve encountered is terminology.
The 3Cs (Content, Concepts, and Contexts) may seem clear to us as teachers, but in practice, they cause confusion, especially with EAL students. This is because each of these words already has familiar meanings and etymologies outside of their specific IB usage. If we’re not intentional with language, students end up blurring these lines and losing precision in their understanding.
I’ve found it helps to standardise how we use these terms in class:
Context refers only to the four Context Units. For anything else, I deliberately use the phrase “in the area of…”. I explain the idea of Contexts to students by stating that it is just another word for “Topic” or “Unit”. I wish the IB would go back to old fashioned, basic language rather than co-opt existing words and attempt to recalibrate what they mean. But here we are!
Content refers strictly to the knowledge from the three Approaches. For other situations, I use the word “material”.
Concept refers only to the six IB Concepts and their related terms (see posters). For everything else, I use the word “ideas”.
This kind of language discipline might seem like a small detail, but it has made a noticeable difference in how clearly students understand the course and how confidently they approach assessment tasks. I now have students pausing before speaking to make sure they get the language right. I don’t like this hesitancy (particularly from my EALs) but this has been caused by the wording of the Guide not by anything we are doing wrong.
Eventually, it will help reduce unnecessary cognitive load because students will know exactly what I mean when I say “Concept” or “Context.”
My sense is that, with this Guide, the clarity of teacher language matters more than ever. As we move deeper into the new assessment structure, precision in communication will be as important as precision in content. I am looking more than ever to decorate my classroom with posters which offer basic and clear meanings for the new vocabulary. Find attached the Concept posters.
Mathematics is everywhere. It explains why some sports records fall like dominoes while others stand for decades. It reveals the alarming truth about climate change through simple patterns. It’s in the music we hear, the buildings we construct, and even the sticker albums we collect. So why, when it comes time for students to choose their Extended Essay topic, do so few pick mathematics?
Consider the fascinating case of world records in athletics. When Swedish pole vaulter Armand Duplantis cleared 6.3 metres at the Tokyo World Championships, he broke his 14th world record – an astonishing achievement showing how technical improvements can drive rapid progress in sport. Meanwhile, the men’s long jump record has been broken just once since 1968. What explains this dramatic difference? The answer lies in mathematical concepts like stationary systems and the harmonic series.
The Maths Behind the Records
Mathematicians use a clever rainfall analogy to understand record-breaking in stationary systems – situations where there’s no overall trend, just random variation. Imagine tracking annual rainfall across different cities with no climate change affecting the results. The first year automatically sets a record. In year two, roughly half the cities will exceed that record. By year three, only one-third will beat both previous years.
This creates a mathematical pattern known as the harmonic series: 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4, and so on. Despite adding infinitely many terms, this series grows incredibly slowly. After 100 years, you’d expect only about five records total. After 1,000 years, just seven. The message is clear: even with pure chance, records should become increasingly rare over time.
Real-World Applications
This isn’t just theoretical number-crunching. Scientists use these mathematical principles to prove climate change is real and accelerating. If our climate were stable, hot temperature records should become rarer over time, following that harmonic pattern. Instead, they’re being broken four to six times more often than expected – mathematical proof that our planet is warming at an unprecedented rate. Cold temperature records, conversely, are falling half as quickly as they should, further confirming the trend.
The same mathematical thinking applies to athletics. Are we approaching peak human performance, or can we keep improving? The data suggests different answers for different events. Duplantis’s pole-vaulting dominance indicates that event hasn’t reached its stationary state – there’s still room for technical improvement. The stubborn long jump records (unbroken since 1991 for men, 1988 for women) suggest that event may have plateaued.
So Why the Shortage of Maths Extended Essays?
This brings us back to our central question. Mathematics offers incredibly rich material for Extended Essays. Students could explore the statistics of their favourite sport, analyze patterns in climate data, investigate the harmonic series in everyday contexts, or examine countless other real-world applications. The maths isn’t impossibly difficult – these concepts are accessible to IB students – yet somehow, maths Extended Essays remain rare.
Perhaps students don’t realize how applicable mathematics is to the real world. Maybe they think a maths EE means pages of abstract equations with no connection to anything tangible. Or possibly they haven’t encountered teachers who can show them mathematics as the beautiful, explanatory tool it truly is – capable of revealing why Katie Ledecky breaks swimming records, why climate change is undeniable, and why you need to buy so many more sticker packets than you’d intuitively expect to complete your collection.
The irony is profound. Mathematics explains the world around us with elegant precision, yet students overlook it when choosing Extended Essay topics. They gravitate toward subjects that seem more “real-world” without recognizing that mathematics is the ultimate real-world subject.
An Opportunity Waiting
For students considering their Extended Essay options, mathematics offers a golden opportunity. Unlike humanities subjects where you’re competing with countless similar essays, a well-crafted maths EE stands out. You can tackle genuinely interesting questions, use real data, and reach meaningful conclusions – all while developing analytical skills that will serve you throughout university and beyond.
So next time you watch Armand Duplantis soar over the bar or hear about another climate record falling, remember: there’s fascinating mathematics behind it all. And it’s all waiting for someone to explore it in an Extended Essay.
When someone proudly announces that they speak three, four, or even six languages, it can sound impressive. There’s discipline, commitment, and plenty of practice behind that achievement. But every so often, I find myself wondering: what if all that effort went into the mechanics of language learning, without much substance to fill the conversations? It’s like listening to a virtuoso pianist who only plays scales—technically dazzling, but not especially engaging.
This thought has broader relevance to what we do as IB educators. We know that knowledge acquisition matters. Students must learn the structures, the frameworks, the technical skills of our disciplines. But if their entire focus rests on collecting skills—whether it’s mastering a language, memorizing formulas, or perfecting essay templates—they may miss the deeper purpose: using those tools to explore ideas, make meaning, and engage with the world.
The International Baccalaureate reminds us of this balance constantly. The Learner Profile emphasizes not just being knowledgeable, but also being thinkers, communicators, and principled. A student who can flawlessly recite definitions but never apply them to a real-world situation is just as limited as a polyglot who can switch between six languages but has nothing to say in any of them. The point is not how much knowledge is acquired, but how it is used to generate understanding and insight.
As teachers, we see this tension daily. A mathematics student might become obsessed with solving increasingly complex problems but struggle to explain why the method matters. A language student might focus on vocabulary drills but never engage with the cultural ideas behind the texts. A history student might learn every date and treaty but fail to reflect on how those events shaped today’s world. These are all variations of the same challenge: skill without substance.
So how do we, as IB teachers, help students move beyond scales to symphonies? One approach is to design learning that requires transfer. Instead of just drilling formulas, we ask students to use them to model a real-life scenario. Instead of focusing solely on vocabulary, we ask them to discuss a contemporary issue in the target language. Instead of memorizing dates, we ask them to evaluate perspectives on a historical event and connect it to present-day conflicts. Depth grows when students are pushed to apply their skills to problems that demand reflection, judgment, and creativity.
This also has implications for how we model learning ourselves. If we celebrate multilingualism, it shouldn’t be just for the number of languages learned, but for the opportunities it gives us to encounter new cultures, challenge assumptions, and hold richer conversations. If we celebrate a student’s mastery of equations, it should be because they can use those equations to make sense of a phenomenon that matters. The aim is always to shift the focus from “look what I can do” to “look what I can think about, question, and contribute because of what I can do.”
Perhaps that’s the deeper reminder here: in education, as in life, substance matters more than surface. It’s not about how many languages you know, but whether you use them to say something meaningful. Not about how many formulas you can recite, but whether you can use them to illuminate a problem. Not about how many facts you remember, but whether you can weave them into a story that makes sense of the world.
In the end, our role as IB teachers is to keep pushing students beyond the mechanics of learning into the messy, complex, and rewarding realm of meaning-making. Because while scales and drills may build skill, it is the music—and the conversation—that truly lasts.
90+% of students now use AI in their academic work, but only 36% have received formal guidance on how to use it effectively. We were obsessed for a while on how to use AI correctly, i.e. referencing etc., and we neglected to discuss how to use it effectively, so let’s address that now.
The real issue isn’t that students are using AI, it’s that they’re using it passively. When they copy and paste entire paragraphs into assignments, they’re not learning; they’re outsourcing their thinking. The result is generic, shallow work that misses the point of education entirely, although it meets the student’s immediate assessment demands.
Here’s the good news: AI doesn’t have to undermine students’ learning. Used thoughtfully, it can enhance students’ critical thinking skills.
The Psychology Behind the Problem
Research suggests that AI use often triggers what psychologist Daniel Kahneman called ‘System 1 thinking’: fast, automatic responses that bypass deeper reflection. Students treat AI like an all-knowing System 2 tool, but they’re being nudged into heuristics, mental shortcuts by time and stress constraints. The cognitive struggle that builds understanding gets quietly erased.
This isn’t just about grades. Studies show that students who rely heavily on AI demonstrate reduced neural engagement in regions associated with memory and executive control. They produce less original content and struggle to recall what they’ve supposedly ‘written’.
A better approach: Be actively curious
Instead of asking AI to do your thinking, use it to support and enhance your thinking, for example:
Start with your own ideas first. Map out your problem-solving approach before firing up AI and then compare your reasoning with AI’s results. This creates valuable learning moments about your own thought processes.
Interrogate AI’s responses. Ask, ‘Where does this information come from?’ ‘What assumptions is the AI making?’ ‘What would I change and why?’ If you can’t answer these questions without AI’s help, the learning hasn’t happened – yet.
Use AI as the starting point, not the end point. Generate preliminary ideas with AI, then critically evaluate and refine them through independent research. Compare AI’s suggestions against reliable academic sources.
Practise reflective annotation. When you use AI-generated content, annotate it. Explain why you chose to include it, what limitations it might have, and how it connects to broader themes in your field. Just as you would do with material from academic sources.
The goal isn’t to avoid AI – Luddites would want to do that. The goal is to maintain intellectual ownership of your work while leveraging AI’s capabilities. Used appropriately, AI can support your thinking. Used passively, it will replace the cognitive work that deep learning requires.
And at the end, ask yourself: Do I truly understand the content I’m submitting? Can I explain it without AI’s help? If not, I’m missing the point of my education.
Sweden is gearing up to impose a nationwide mobile phone ban in schools and after-school clubs starting autumn 2026. Children aged 7 to 16 will have their phones collected at the start of the day and held until school ends. The measure is part of a broader reform package: Sweden also plans to change the curriculum, grading systems, and teacher training.
The government says this is the biggest education reform in over 30 years, coupled with major budget investments (whaaaat? not budget cuts???). Their argument: current phone usage undermines learning environments, concentration, and overall study conditions.
It’s refreshing to see a government drilling into the nitty-gritty of its education system. Not just policy-level slogans (and budget cuts), but specifics: phones, but also what is taught, how teachers are evaluated, how students are assessed.
If one accepts that smartphones and social media are harmful, e.g. distractions, mental health risks, fostering comparison, etc., then maybe incremental bans like this are just a first step. Why stop there? Could we imagine a policy where owning or operating a smartphone (or using social media) requires a licence, much like for driving or buying certain regulated items? Would that make sense, or is it overreach?
On one hand, licensing would force society to take responsibility: what training do people get about digital literacy, mental health, privacy, social media harms? On the other hand, it raises questions: who grants the licences, what criteria, how enforceable? Would it stifle freedom or exacerbate inequalities (if some can’t afford the “licence” or meet requirements)?
Still, Sweden’s government is at least showing willingness to imagine what school can look like without omnipresent screens—not just tinkering around the edges. That kind of seriousness is rare, and whether you agree or not, it’s compelling to see.
As IB Diploma Programme teachers, we are committed to encouraging students to think critically, question assumptions, and use accurate language. One term we need to handle with particular care is “race.” While the word is common in everyday conversation, it is not a scientific concept—and in academic contexts it can reinforce misconceptions rather than deepen understanding.
Why “race” is unscientific
Modern genetics has shown that humans are remarkably similar at the DNA level. Around 99.9% of our genome is shared across the species, and the small variations that do exist do not line up neatly with the socially constructed categories we call “races.” For example, two individuals from different regions of Africa may be more genetically different from each other than either is from someone in Europe or Asia.
What we call “race” is therefore not a biological fact but a social construct—a way that societies have historically divided people based on superficial traits such as skin colour, hair texture, or facial features. These traits are shaped by environmental adaptation and a handful of genes, not by deep divisions in the human genome. Moreover, ideas of “race” shift depending on place and time: in the United States, Irish and Italian immigrants were once considered non-White; in Brazil, dozens of categories exist based on skin shade; in other contexts, different boundaries are drawn. This fluidity underscores its lack of scientific grounding.
The risks of using “race” in class
If we use the term uncritically in our teaching, we risk reinforcing the false impression that humanity is divided into fixed biological groups. Historically, such thinking has been used to justify slavery, colonialism, and eugenics. For students learning to question and evaluate knowledge, this would be a serious step backwards.
What to use instead
As IB teachers, we can model more precise and meaningful language. When discussing human variation, identity, or population differences, consider terms such as:
Cultural or linguistic groups (e.g., Spanish-speaking communities, Francophone West Africa)
In the sciences, the word “population” is widely preferred. For example, biologists may refer to “populations of West African ancestry” or “South Asian populations” when describing genetic studies. These terms avoid the pseudo-biological weight of “race” while allowing for accurate discussion of human diversity.
A classroom example (Psychology)
In IB Psychology, students often study cultural influences on behaviour and cognition. A student might write: “This study compared memory in two different races.”
As teachers, we can guide them to phrase it more accurately: “This study compared memory in participants from collectivist East Asian cultures and individualist Western cultures.”
This not only avoids the misleading term “race” but also draws students’ attention to the real variable being studied—cultural dimension and context. It also reinforces the IB aim of encouraging critical thinking about research design and interpretation.
Our responsibility
The IB emphasises international-mindedness, respect, and critical thinking. Avoiding the term “race” is part of that responsibility. Instead, we should help students appreciate the complexity of human diversity and recognise that identities are multiple, overlapping, and dynamic. By choosing our words carefully, we not only uphold scientific accuracy but also encourage our students to think in ways that are more inclusive, respectful, and intellectually rigorous.
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If there is one debate that overshadows every other in education, it is the question of respect for teachers. Once regarded as pillars of the community, teachers today often find themselves dismissed, distrusted, and demoralised. And let’s be honest: some of this is unfair, but some of it is self-inflicted.
Start with the basics: salaries. In real terms, teacher pay has fallen across the last two or three decades. The result? The brightest graduates and postgraduates—people who might once have seen teaching as a noble calling—simply aren’t interested in a profession that pays badly and offers little prestige. Add chronic underfunding, and you have classrooms where teachers don’t even have the materials to deliver great lessons. Whiteboards without pens, computers that don’t work, books ten years out of date—this is not how you build a high-performing system.
Meanwhile, technology companies are quietly infiltrating schools, selling flashy gadgets and software that rarely improve learning but always increase costs and workload. Teachers now spend more time wrestling with broken logins and buggy “learning platforms” than actually teaching. Far from empowering teachers, ed-tech often undermines them.
And then there is the government obsession with evidence. Teachers are now buried in paperwork, forced to churn out endless “data” to prove they are doing their jobs. It’s not about trust, it’s about surveillance. Add to that the curse of performance-related pay, which rewards teachers for lessons that “sparkle” in front of an observer but may do little to embed long-term understanding. Style over substance, performance over pedagogy.
The leadership problem is just as corrosive. Too many school management roles are being filled by people who can’t or don’t want to teach. These careerists treat classrooms as a stepping stone to an office job, where they issue diktats from on high without ever demonstrating mastery of teaching themselves. Respect cannot survive when leadership is divorced from practice.
And let’s be blunt: teachers themselves sometimes undermine their own professional standing. When staff rooms turn into political soapboxes, when activism takes priority over instruction, public trust erodes. If teachers want to be treated like professionals, they need to behave like professionals—mastering their craft, focusing on students, and leaving personal agendas at the door.
Respect for teachers has been lost through low pay, poor resources, political meddling, and self-inflicted wounds. If it is ever to be restored, both systems and individuals must change. Pay teachers properly. Fund schools adequately. Cut the gimmicks. Demand professionalism. Only then will teaching recover the authority and honour it once deserved.
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.
Mindfulness.
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.
South Korea has taken a bold step by banning the use of mobile phones and smart devices during class hours. Beginning in March 2026, students will no longer be allowed to scroll, swipe, or stream in school. It’s a move that many argue is long overdue—and one that should spark a wider global conversation: should children under 16 even have access to smartphones and social media in the first place?
Hello? Is there anyone there?
The evidence is overwhelming. Smartphone overuse is damaging young people’s ability to focus, build real friendships, and even regulate their emotions. Studies cited by South Korean lawmakers show clear links between phone addiction and stunted brain development. Parents report their children losing sleep, neglecting studies, and falling victim to online bullying. Teachers, meanwhile, say classrooms are increasingly disrupted by students unable to detach from their screens. These aren’t minor inconveniences—they are serious risks to learning, mental health, and safety.
And yet, society continues to hand these powerful, addictive devices to children with little more than a shrug. Would we give a 13-year-old the keys to a car without requiring lessons, supervision, and a licence? Of course not. Cars are dangerous in untrained hands. But so are phones and social media. They can kill attention spans, damage mental health, and in tragic cases, drive young people toward self-harm.
It’s time to treat digital literacy like driver’s education. Before gaining access to social media—or even owning a smartphone—young people should have to complete a course on healthy, responsible use of technology. They should then pass an exam, just as they would for a driving licence. Only by demonstrating that they understand the risks and responsibilities should they be allowed full access.
The South Korean ban is an important first step, but it doesn’t go far enough. To truly protect the next generation, we need to reframe phones and the internet not as harmless toys, but as powerful tools requiring education and regulation. A digital licence could be the key to ensuring that children grow up with control over technology—rather than being controlled by it.
I think, therefore IB 