Schools urged to teach math that fights gambling

teach math – With gambling ads, influencer marketing and push notifications reaching teens everywhere, educators and researchers are arguing for one practical shift: teach students the probabilities and critical thinking to spot how betting is rigged, and how their own min

In schools where probability units usually feel like worksheets and chalkboard diagrams. one former gambler is trying to make the lesson matter. Isaac Rose-Berman. now in his 20s. spends time writing. advising and talking to high schoolers about gambling—not because he thinks it’s evil. but because he believes young people need the math to recognize what betting companies are doing to them.

Rose-Berman had gambled a lot before he was 21, the legal gambling age in most states. After deciding not to pursue a doctorate in political science, he worked as a professional gambler for a time. Today. he’s a fellow at the American Institute for Boys and Men. an organization that advocates for policies supporting the well-being of those groups. His pitch is personal: he knows the highs, the lows, and the tricks companies use to keep players engaged.

That urgency is driving educators and researchers toward a core idea—if gambling has become pervasive, school learning has to meet it where it enters students’ daily lives.

Jérémie Richard. an assistant professor and clinical psychologist at the University of Ottawa. describes a world where gambling is no longer confined to physical casinos. After the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to sports betting less than a decade ago, gambling now seems pervasive. Richard says the shift isn’t only about sports. On the internet. he points to advertising and marketing. plus social media influencers—“gambling influencers.” And with “everyone” having access to a casino in their pocket. he warns that push notifications. a technique also common in social media platforms. can overwhelm children. teens and even young adults.

Underage gambling is illegal, but it’s also common. A recent report from Common Sense found that more than a third of boys will gamble before they turn 18. The report also found that around 60 percent of boys saw ads or gambling content pop into their social media feeds. Yet most of the students in the report didn’t feel the ads made them gamble.

That gap between exposure and perceived impact is part of what makes researchers uneasy. Sarah Clark. a research scientist in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan. says gambling addiction can be especially hard for adolescents to deal with because the consequences are delayed. Teenagers are more prone to take risks and to feel invincible. Clark says. and for gambling. the devastating outcomes of addiction can seem far away. She describes how the addiction story can fit adolescence itself—the fun. the daredevil mood—saying. “It fits well with the fun. adolescent. ‘sex. drugs and rock ’n’ roll.’”.

Common Sense has come to view boys’ gambling as a public health issue. in part because of the patterns in the organization’s research. Michael Robb, head of research for Common Sense, is the one who frames the work that way. But Clark expects the gender picture may shift. She says more girls may gamble in the near future. driven by changes in what is being offered and how it is presented. While sports betting has largely driven the recent betting boom, Clark points to online casinos. She also cites “hiding gambling inside of games that girls play. ” along with prediction betting. as factors that could draw more girls.

The taboo around youth gambling has also weakened. Clark says that in earlier years, most teens couldn’t access a physical casino easily. Now, many have straightforward access through their phones. That changes what students have to “sneak” to do: they might still sneak off to smoke pot or have sex. Clark says. but not to gamble. And she adds that students can even gamble during class on their phones.

Clark also emphasizes a different kind of harm. Beyond financial losses, she argues that popular forms of gambling can feel personal in a destructive way for teenagers. Sports betting and prediction markets often give bettors someone else to blame when they lose. And students, she says, aren’t developed enough for those stressors.

If schools are part of the response, the training being discussed goes beyond warning posters.

Researchers have started pushing for tougher regulations on ads promoting gambling, as well as addiction screenings in schools. One randomized controlled trial in six secondary schools in Scotland found that gambling curricula can boost awareness of gambling addiction among students. But it also suggested that this approach may have limited success at preventing gambling behaviors.

In Canada, Patricia Conrad developed early education interventions for drug and alcohol abuse. Conrad’s strategy focuses on the fact that because the number of people who will develop a gambling addiction is small. identifying and targeting high-risk youth allows for a more targeted approach. Richard believes a similar approach could help with gambling addiction.

There is also an argument for what happens inside a student’s head. At the school level, part of the solution is teaching students to recognize their own thoughts and feelings. Richard’s goal is for students to understand how their minds and ways of thinking can fall into emotional traps. so they can make informed choices in their lives. He compares that to clinical work: it resembles what clinicians do when people receive cognitive behavioral therapy for a gambling disorder. But he also describes it as “in a sense, it’s nothing new.”.

The math connection is the most direct thread tying all of this to classroom instruction.

Gambling, in the way it is structured by betting companies, is mathematical. Algorithms track odds in a way that keeps companies profitable. Clark says math is what separates gambling from other forms of addiction like vaping. And in schools, probability instruction has long referenced gambling—students calculate odds and probabilities. Even before the Supreme Court decision that expanded advertising. addiction experts had flagged youth gambling as a problem that math skills could help control.

A couple of decades ago. with funding from public health offices in Massachusetts and Louisiana. that idea became a research-backed math curriculum. Its authors argued it could boost critical thinking while reducing the likelihood that students become “pathological gamblers.” The curriculum focused on number sense. data. statistics and probability.

Those advocates are pointing to a changed classroom reality. As American student math scores slide on national and international assessments. they argue the need for these skills has only grown. Teaching students to use math to make clear. rational decisions—along with knowledge of basic probabilities and how the mind can be tempted into mistakes—is framed as critical for student success.

Richard also says there’s a practical irony: the prevalence of gambling could make learning math more digestible to students. He argues it can be more interesting than abstract probability lessons like comparing slices of pie. Bringing math into real-life problems students face—rather than sterile examples—might motivate them to learn.

The goal isn’t only to calculate odds, though. Clark argues students need skills to identify when they or a friend has a problem, and to critically assess how companies market gambling.

She points to gambling companies pushing parlays. Clark says the probability of hitting on a parlay is low, yet these promotions are common. She adds that. beyond basic math. students need the ability to understand the tactics themselves—like the “free money” offers that companies provide. which she says are supported by sophisticated data systems designed to convince players they will lose more than they win.

Richard expects some parents or teachers to resist teaching how gambling works, fearing it could expose students to gambling. But he argues abstinence isn’t a realistic shield. “Your kids are being exposed to gambling already, through advertising, through marketing, and so there’s nothing new there,” he says.

The marketing scale can be startling. One study of professional sports, published last year by researchers at the University of Bristol, found that the NHL exposed viewers to an average of three sports betting ads per broadcast minute.

Rose-Berman’s message to students is built around that same mismatch between what betting promises and what math says is likely. He emphasizes that understanding probabilities alone won’t fix everything, because addiction isn’t purely a numbers game. There’s complicated psychology to becoming addicted. and even when students know the math doesn’t work. they can still fall prey to it.

Still, he tells students to approach these activities with skepticism and to understand that companies are not their friends. When he presents at schools. Rose-Berman explains the basics of math to students. including why roulette and sports betting are rigged against bettors. He says many boys are pulled in by ego—believing that because they know sports. they will come out ahead in sports betting. He says that nearly half of the time. after he presents. boys share their gambling strategies with him. and he then explains why they would still lose money.

Sometimes that explanation is simple: he says it can involve why betting a dollar and then doubling the bet when you lose is a poor strategy. Other times, it gets more complicated. He describes explaining to high schoolers why the fact that LeBron James has gone over his point total in eight of the last 10 games won’t help them place a profitable bet. pointing out that it isn’t a reliable-enough indicator.

Rose-Berman also tells students that some young men who gamble see it as a long-term way to earn money—an overconfidence he attributes to the way the activity can be imagined. His work, he says, aims to help students understand that these are large companies trying to take advantage of them. If students are “good at sports betting,” he tells them, those companies will kick them out. “They have really. really smart people whose job it is to figure out if you’re good at this. ” he says. “If they haven’t kicked you out, it means you’re a sucker.”.

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