Tony Hollowell's blog

I never thought of myself as an artist. To this day, I draw stick men that would not get awarded an honorable mention at a kindergarten art contest. I eventually resigned to the fact that I must be a scientist because I am good at math and because I think Shakespeare’s writing is boring. I always thought that these two qualities (good at math and bored by Shakespeare) thrust me into an inevitable life of crunching numbers and talking about graphing calculators for eternity. continue reading this post

The act of creation takes work. It is demanding. It calls forth. It is not “easy”. It is not necessarily “happy”. It demands something. Energy must be invested in order to create, and the same is for discovery. To discover something, you must invest energy. It takes work to discover something.

If you want to create a work of art, prepare for stress and anxiety. If you want to discover new lands, prepare to get bruised, mentally and physically. continue reading this post

I often think that if I never learned to say “no”, it would have been the death of me. continue reading this post

I have a secret: I’ve been employed for 9+ years in various jobs, and I have never turned in a resume to get a job. Ever.

How did I do it? It was very simple: I realized that nobody hires a piece of paper. They hire people. continue reading this post

Dear Person in Charge:

I’m so sorry I was late for your meeting. I was so busy doing important work that I didn’t have time for “necessary” work. I know this meeting is important to you. I know we are going to change the world with the objectives we talk about (but do not act upon) in this meeting. I know we are now left to desperation and despair because I missed the fist 10 minutes of the meeting. I know these 10 minutes were jam-packed with the casual opening salvo of introductions and the obligatory opening joke.

Please permit me to, just this once, explain why I was late. continue reading this post

This past year, I had to make a difficult decision: take some time away from teaching to go explore a foreign country and do some things that I always wanted to do, or to keep teaching at a school that I really liked. The reasons for continuing to teach were obvious: I enjoyed doing it, I had worked at it for 5 years and was just starting to hit my stride, and my school was awesome. However, there was this nagging feeling inside of me that I needed to go on an adventure. I wanted to go study Spanish in a Spanish-speaking country, and I wanted to do some things that I had never done before, such as go Scuba Diving and ride a horse at full speed. I had a tough decision to make, but in the end, it was the easiest decision I ever made. It started with a simple realization that there is no such thing as “risking it all”. continue reading this post

Hitler was an idiot.

Hitler strove to create a perfect society, the Arian race, but if he ever reached his goals, the very fact of having a perfect race would mean that this race is perfectly flawed. The very fact that it is “perfect” suddenly makes it flawed, because by being perfect, it is now vulnerable.

This is because “perfection” is dependent on external conditions. A “perfect product” is matched to a person’s wants and needs. A “perfect coat” is matched to a person’s body. A “perfect species” is matched to its surroundings. But because perfection is dependent on this ideal match between an object and its environment, any changes in the external conditions will change the match between the object and its environment, and thus making it no longer “perfect”.

Since external conditions change, what was once perfect is now flawed. A perfect gene pool will never exist because the external environment changes. Sure, if you lived during the Ice Age and you were a dude who was so harry that you had to shave your back on your 11th birthday, you were perfectly matched to your environment. However, the environment has changed. A hairy back just isn’t quite the social symbol (and survival symbol) that it used to be. continue reading this post

Some people reject the idea that a school should be thought of as a business. Thinking of schools as a business apparently conjures up haunting images of greased-back hair, “market share”, and Enron. However, where there is the exchange of money for resources, there exists an institution that is influenced by the properties of a business, and any viable business knows that it should listen to its customers. In the business of school, the customers are the students (not the parents), but we usually do a pretty poor job of serving them. We spend a lot of time making the parents happy, the school boards happy, and the teachers happy, but the students who should be receiving the education often get put to the side as a secondary concern. This is problematic for (hopefully) obvious reasons.

There is one customer that is a product of American education to whom I think teachers should pay special attention. Her name is Jessica Mah. Her website states “Jessica started her first internet company at the age of 13, finished high school at the age of 15, and studied computer science at Berkeley. She is a member of the TED conference and has been featured in TechCrunch and Inc. Magazine for her work on internshipIN.com. She's now the founder and product architect of Indinero.com (a company that helps businesses manage finances).” So in case you missed it, she graduated from high school early and she continues to dominate college while ALSO running a successful business that she started. Is it just me or does anybody else think that this independence, entrepreneurial savvy, and desire to learn is something we should be striving to cultivate in our students?

When I run my own school (if I ever get around to it), I’m going to talk to people like Jessica. People like her are going to be the fundamental rudders that help steer the ship to uncharted lands. Instead of waiting for the day when I run my own school, I figured I would ask her some questions now, and she had some profound insights. continue reading this post

Our nation doesn’t need more school. We don’t need more classes, more principles, and longer days. We just need more education. In “Weapons of Mass Instruction”, John Taylor Gatto explains just how far removed “school” and “education” are in his experience in 30 years of public school teaching, and if you care about the future of this nation, you should read what he has to say.

A note of caution: if you get your feelings hurt easily, if you want to read books that are non-confrontational, or if you think compulsory education is the greatest thing since sliced bread, then you probably should not read this book and instead return to doing homework.

However, you are a probable candidate for finding value in this book if any of the following are true:
1. You have surmised that working hard and gaining valuable life experience are more important than getting perfect grades.
2. You felt that the work you did in school was disconnected from your life outside of school.
3. You have met a lot of people with college degrees and certifications who you would never hire in a million years.
4. You think that a reference from someone who has a brain is more valuable than a list of past accolades on a cookie-cutter resume.
5. You sat in a classroom and asked yourself, “Why I am I learning THIS?”

If this is you, then read on... continue reading this post

It is amazing what you learn when you are by yourself.

A few summers ago, I went to Santiago, Chile to improve my Spanish and to visit a foreign country. There were many things that I wanted to do in Chile, but I was most excited about the opportunity to go to a big-time soccer game.

I had been told by other Chileans that soccer in Chile is "just not as exciting" compared to soccer in other South American countries, but after attending this game, I realized that South Americans have a radically different understanding of the word "excitement".

Allow me to set the scene. I am about 2 miles from the stadium, and my first sign of "crowd enthusiasm" was a group of 30 Colo-Colo fans. At first, I just thought they were loud and excited and simply thought that throwing toilet paper and paper confetti EVERYWHERE was a good idea, 2 miles away from the stadium. Then, when one of the buses refuses to pick them up and tried to drive right by, they started spitting at the bus, kicking it, and throwing their whole wads of toilet paper at the windshield. Luckily the light turned green before they could do too much damage, and it sped off.

I knew it was only going to get more interesting from there. continue reading this post