I offer to pay you $200 in one year if you give me $190 today. Good deal or bad deal? It’s the kind of math problem you might encounter in real life, _________, say, whether the cosecant (余割) of a 30-degree angle is 1 or 2. You can imagine students _________ their spirits and paying attention when they realize that they need to know algebra (代数) to avoid being cheated on a loan. Math and personal finance make a _________ fit. Students grasp concepts in math much better when they see how those subjects _________ their daily financial lives.

A survey in 2022 funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found that 61 percent of parents of students said math education should be “relevant to the real world” _________ that only 21 percent said it was. The drive for relevance goes beyond K-12 education. Some of America’s top universities are _________ personal finance into their curriculums.

Harvard has a personal finance course in the _________ department that’s taught by John Campbell, a past president of the American Finance Association. “_________, personal finance was regarded as a very sort of hands-on skill that you might teach to people who were going to a technical high school,” he told me. “There is, I would say, a modern movement to _________ of personal finance as a subject with actually a lot more intellectual content.”

In most high schools, personal finance classes are light on math, and math classes are __________ in personal finance. The FiCycle curriculum has plenty of each. “The personal finance component is incredibly __________ for our high school students,” Philip Dituri, the director of education at Financial Life Cycle Education, who has a doctorate in math education, told me. He believed that quite a lot of students would be stimulated by the __________.

There is a __________ standard for personal finance education that was put together by the Council for Economic Education and the JumpStart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy. It emphasizes how to __________ one’s finances. FiCycle focuses more on the underlying concepts. It’s about “how and why individuals and households transfer consumption over time,” Financial Life Cycle Education says.

In conclusion, the integration of math and personal finance in education is not just an academic pursuit, but a __________ necessity for students to guide their real life. It is time for educational institutions to take note and adapt their curricula to better prepare students for the financial challenges of adulthood.

2 . Recent years have seen a small increase in unemployment rates due to slowing of the economy. The fact that many college graduates are finding it difficult to land a job has sparked online discussions on the cost of education and the returns on it, with many agreeing with the notion that “education is useless”.

Stories like a person with a doctorate’s degree from Zhejiang University is delivering food, and overseas-returned graduates are selling hot-pot ingredients have caused many to question the value of education. Moreover, the fact that about 36,000 fewer candidates have applied to take the postgraduate exam in 2024, the first decline in numbers in years, has also fueled the “education is useless theory.

Is education truly worthless? This question has resurfaced due to several factors.

The wide spread of higher education has significantly increased the number of college graduates, reducing the value of college degrees. As the job market becomes over-crowded with graduates, the scarcity of high-level talents has become apparent, particularly in fields such as the humanities. For example, more than 900 institutions in China offer English major, making it the most common degree program, yet there’s a shortage of top talents who are proficient in English and have a good knowledge about the differences in Chinese and foreign approach to fields such as international relations and journalism.

The declining returns on the investment in education have given rise to the “education is useless” theory. Given the challenging job market, many believe college education does not guarantee any sort of employment, let alone a suitable job. And with various economic opportunities available, the notion that one can become financially successful even without formal education is becoming increasingly acceptable.

In light of these developments, combined efforts need to be made to change the situation. For instance, universities must take measures to integrate education, research and industry, while enhancing cooperation with enterprises through tailored talent training programs. Additionally, the authorities need to pay greater attention to vocational education, an important part of China’s educational system. Students, parents and society, on their part, should abandon their bias against vocational training, because it integrates education with career prospects throughout the learning process, offering targeted, technical and practical training which allows students to master their skills which can get them well-paying jobs in the future.

Developing a correct view of employment and career choice is key to abandoning the notion of “education being useless”. People, especially students, must understand the current employment landscape, their positioning, and strengths and weaknesses. While realizing that a college degree is no longer a ticket to employment, college students should leverage education resources to enrich their professional knowledge and competitiveness. And youths should approach vocational education with an open mind in order to make the most of what the job market has to offer.

Education is not synonymous with earning money, nor does a college degree guarantee financial success. The value of education is knowledge, which we need to make informed decisions not only in our professional life but also in our social and other fields of life.

Drawing High Schoolers to Science

A group of educators and plant scientists at Michigan State University (MSU) are connecting to reshape science classes. And this particular partnership isn’t just helping students get a better understanding of biology; it’s turning them into young scientists, even if only during class.

It doesn’t take long to see that the curriculum born from this collaboration makes for a much different experience than the traditional high school biology classes. For starters, it has a comic book for a workbook. Secondly, students are getting their hands dirty growing plants. MSU researchers are also studying the plant. The high schoolers are asking some of the same questions professional plant scientists are trying to answer.

“We’re getting them engaged with science in science practices, not just having them learn about science,” says Hildah Makori, a researcher at MSU. “They learn to look at things differently. That’s a life-time impact.”

The main characters of the comic book are a pair of young field scientists. They invite the high school students to help with plant research inspired by a real project at MSU. By growing their own plants, the students learn about genetics, evolution and how these interact with the environment.

The team has seen how this practice could keep students in the driver’s seat of their learning. To help the characters out, students set up different experiments to test their ideas.

The program is working. “This comic personally gave me a click that sparked my curiosity,” reads one student’s survey response. “The comic book put a lot of creative atmosphere into the story instead of just looking at words, instead of just listening to the teacher talk,” says another.

Teachers also had positive reviews. In a survey, one remarked how helpful it was to have the comic to refer to. The students could see the comic’s characters doing something in the lab and realize, “I’m able to do this right here at my table and I can do the same thing,” the teacher says.

4 . How Young Americans Spend Their Money

Young people have always puzzled their elders. Today’s youngsters are no different; indeed, they are confusing. They have thin wallets and expensive tastes. They prize convenience and a social conscience. They want shopping to be personal.     1     As they start spending in earnest, brands are trying to understand what these walking paradoxes with conflicting features want and how they shop. The answers will define the next era of consumerism.

Their absolute numbers are impressive. The European Union is home to nearly 125m people between the ages of ten (the youngest will become consumers in the next few years) and 34. America has another 110m of these Gen-Zs and millennials, a third of the population. The annual spending of households headed by American Gen-Zs and millennials hit $2.7trn in 2021, around 30% of the total.

    2     Forrester, a market-research firm, found that most users of “buy now, pay later” apps are around 20. Megan Scott, a 20-year-old student from London, speaks for many of her peers by admitting that, when shopping, she has no self-control—until the bill arrives.

The light-speed online world also appears to have lowered tolerances for long delivery times. A study by Salesforce, a business-software giant, found that Gen-Z Americans, who prefer to use their phones to pay for shopping, are the likeliest of all age groups to want their groceries delivered within an hour.     3    

The Internet has also changed how the young discover brands. Print, billboard or TV advertising has given way to social media. Instagram, part of Meta’s empire, and TikTok, a Chinese-owned app, are where the young look for inspiration, particularly for goods where looks matter such as fashion, beauty and sportswear.     4     Such apps are increasingly adding features that allow users to shop without ever leaving the platform. According to McKinsey, six in ten Americans under the age of 25 had completed a purchase on a social-media site.

5 . In the roughly 250 years since the Industrial Revolution, the world’s population, like its wealth, has exploded. Before the end of this century, however, the number of people on the planet could shrink for the first time since the Black Death. The root cause is not an increase in deaths, but a drop in births. Across much of the world the fertility rate, the average number of births per woman, is collapsing. Although the trend may be familiar, its extent and its consequences are not. Even as artificial intelligence (AI) leads to optimism in some quarters, the baby bust (婴儿荒) hangs over the future of the world economy.

Whatever some environmentalists say, a shrinking population creates problems. The world is not close to full and the economic difficulties resulting from fewer young people are many. The obvious one is that it is getting harder to support the world’s pensioners. Retired folk draw on the output of the working-aged, either through the state, which requests taxes on workers to pay public pensions, or by cashing in savings to buy goods and services or because relatives provide care unpaid. But whereas the rich world currently has around three people between 20 and 64 years old for everyone over 65, by 2050 it will have less than two. The implications are higher taxes, later retirements, lower real returns for savers and, possibly, government budget crises.

Low proportion of workers to pensioners are only one problem resulting from collapsing fertility. Younger people have more of what psychologists call “fluid intelligence”, the ability to think creatively so as to solve problems in entirely new ways. This youthful energy adds to the accumulated knowledge of older workers. It also brings change. Patents filed by the youngest inventors are much more likely to cover breakthrough innovations. Older countries and their young people are less enterprising and less comfortable taking risks. Because the old benefit less than the young when economies grow, they have proved less keen on pro-growth policies, especially housebuilding. Creative destruction is likely to be rarer in ageing societies, restricting productivity growth in ways that compound into an enormous missed opportunity.

Eventually, therefore, the world will have to make do with fewer youngsters—and perhaps with a shrinking population. With that in mind, recent advances in AI could not have come at a better time. A productive AI economy might find it easy to support a greater number of retired people. Eventually AI may be able to generate ideas by itself, reducing the need for human intelligence. Combined with robotics, AI may also make caring for the elderly less labour-intensive. Such innovations will certainly be in high demand.

If technology does allow humanity to overcome the baby bust, it will fit the historical pattern. Unexpected productivity advances meant that demographic time-bombs (人口定时炸弹) failed to explode. Fewer babies mean less human genius. But that might be a problem human genius can fix.

6 . I’m pretty good at sticking with things even when they get hard. Bad relationships, unpleasant workplaces, ______ sports — I’ve hung on for months and even years longer than I should have, convinced the situation would ______ if I refused to give up.

After all, isn’t every success story littered with ______? Didn’t Beyoncé lose Star Search, and didn’t Oprah get fired from her first TV job? Quitting is a sign that you lack patience and strong will, or so I was raised to believe.

______, if I look back on all the things I eventually quit, my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. I’ve wasted immeasurable time and energy dragging my heels, determined that I could ______ everyone if I just kept going.

All of us are constantly making tricky choices between going further into familiar territory and ______ to expand our horizons. This is known as the exploration-exploitation trade-off. When we are younger, it’s advantageous to go far on the side of exploration, trying lots of new things because we have plenty of time to ______ later. But as we age, it’s often smarter to double down.

Of course, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t quit something just because you’ve put a lot of time into it. Economists call this the sunk cost fallacy (谬误): People are more likely to ______ something if they’ve invested a lot of money or effort into it, even when it’s clear that they should ______ their losses and jump ship. This practice is normal and ______, but it’s also unreasonable. If an activity or relationship is making you miserable, that’s important information you shouldn’t ignore.

If you don’t get energy out of doing something, it can be a(n) ______ that this is not for you or that there’s something better you could be doing. Or it could be a sign that you should ______ your goals. Maybe your yogurt startup might not win over investors, but you could still make and sell yogurt at the farmers’ market on weekends.

In fact, dogged persistence in the face of energy-sucking disappointment can ______ depression, and then make you suffer from diseases in the long run.

But the good news is that people can learn to pay better attention to these moments when they’re happening and make ______. The art of quitting isn’t about just letting go whenever there’s an obstacle. It’s about being able to let go when there’s no ______ to success anymore.

7 . Riding the bus to school could be keeping some kids out of class. Most school buses run on fuel. Those buses send out pollution, including tiny particles and gases. Bus riders get exposed to high levels of this pollution. When breathed in, it can lead to breathing problems, such as asthma (哮喘), which may keep kids home from school. But replacing the worst-polluting buses should cut down on student absences, a new study shows.

The study focused on schools that were asked to take part in a U. S. government program. The program offered schools cash back for money spent on cleaner school buses. The 2, 816 school districts in the new study all asked for the money. But not all got it. Only 383 were picked to receive funding. Winning districts could buy new buses and desert old ones.

The program started in 2012. From 2012 to 2017, the winning districts very likely had less bus pollution. And a year after getting new buses, student attendance had improved in those districts. For an average district of 10, 000 students, about six more students attended school each day in the winning districts. Districts that replaced the oldest buses had an average of 45 more students in school each day.

Those numbers may sound small, but they can add up, says Meredith Pedde, an environmental epidemiologist (流行病学家). Almost 3 million U. S. kids ride school buses more than 20 years old, her team figures. Replacing all of those old buses could mean 1.3 million fewer student absences each year, the data suggest. And school attendance matters for student achievement.

Now the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a new program for school buses.   It’s offering $5 billion through 2026 to replace old fuel buses with cleaner ones. Almost all U. S. school districts can apply for the new rebates. But schools in low-income areas and in rural areas will get priority. Kids in these areas tend to face the most health risks from old buses, EPA notes. And anything that cuts air pollution, Pedde says, should improve student health.

9 . “The worst gift is a fruitcake,” said Johnny Carson once in his popular TV show. “There’s only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.” Most Chinese have never heard of Carson, a beloved American television host who died in 2005.     1    

Mooncakes are often dense, cloyingly sweet — and, as Carson suggested, re-gifted. Chinese people usually eat them with their family members. They play a central role in celebrations of the traditional midautumn festival, a popular Chinese holiday that falls on September 10^th.     2    

Despite the outbreak of the pandemic, this year China is expected to produce 437,000 tones of mooncakes, according to iiMedia Research, a consultancy. Sales are likely to reach 24bn yuan ($3.5bn), up by 11.8% compared with last year. As most industries are gradually accustomed to functioning along with the pandemic, the mooncake industry, likewise, is now bouncing back to its pre-pandemic norms.

Most bakeries and restaurants offer mooncakes in their traditional form, with a heavy crust that puts in fillings such as red-bean paste, egg yolks or lotus seed. But expensive fillings, such as shark’s fin and edible bird’s nest, are sometimes added.     3     Some people use these luxurious mooncake packages as a clever bribing way to buy themselves up the ladder towards fame and power. That has led to new concerns over corruption and is out of step with the government’s drive to reduce inequality and control ostentatious (炫耀的) wealth.

Officials, therefore, have been inspecting mooncakes for sale in malls, supermarkets, hotels and restaurants.     4     Whoever sells a mooncake gift set for over 500 yuan must store the transaction data for 2 years in case of investigation.

10 . Last year, Liu Xiang, who lives alone in Shanghai, wrote an analysis of nearly 3,000 words on small home appliances that make living alone all the more pleasurable. Her take on these items, ranging from desk lamps and hair dryers to cooking machines, drew more than 100 replies, unusual for that specific section of the discussion group where 50 replies would normally put the topic in the hot category.

However, the interest shown to what to some may seem like a trifling matter should not really be that surprising given that in China 77 million people live alone. These solo dwellers, aged 20 to 39, are mostly engaged in high-paying jobs in fields like finance, so as a group they have tremendous spending power.

Home appliance makers and sellers are one of the main beneficiaries of the solo economy. Take Little Bears Electric Appliances. It has been expanding and updating its product line to target at the solo market, and half its 40 product categories are now singles-friendly.

A New York University sociology professor, Eric Klinenberg, said in his book Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone that the single society is becoming hugely powerful and an indicator of social change.

In 2018 and 2019 the Japanese video game Travel Frog became a hit in China. Actually, Travel Frog was a game that seemed to speak directly to those who keep the solo economy ticking. In it, a wayward (任性的) frog has become a baby people are keen on looking after. The frog never interacts with the player, eats alone, reads and does craft work at home and often sets out on journeys, sending postcards to the player letting him or her know its new location. The Travel Frog phenomenon was just one more sign of the increasing importance of the solo economy, with more and more people actively or passively accepting and enjoying their solitude.

Travelling alone is becoming a strong market opportunity. 75% of Ctrip’s self-operated tour groups have opened options for one-person travel, and it plans to develop more innovative products and services tailored to solo travelers.

In entertainment and recreation, too, the solo economy is changing how things work. Minikaraoke booths, self-service photo studios and self-service gyms have popped up on many comers in many cities.