Education, Math, and More with Mr. Allison

In his 2022 book, The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale , economist John List, the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago , defines the Sunk Cost Fallacy as the idea that one must continue to pursue an idea based on money previously invested. The basic idea is that the money previously spent is already gone and no longer recoverable. As humans we have a tendency to feel like that money is wasted if we decide to abandon the effort we spent that money on, even after the project appears doomed for failure. Too often, people continue to pour good money into a failing effort, because they don't want to waste the bad money they've already dumped into it. Teachers are prone to this same fallacy. The year was 2019. I sat for the ACT for the first time since I was a junior in high school, way back in 1984. Thirty five years had passed since the one and only time I'd ever actually SEEN the test. Ov...

 From a letter to Abigail, 1775. "It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives."  Education matters!

 The Land of Opportunity. That's what I always considered our country. I was taught that I could be anything I wanted if I was willing to work hard enough. I've made a good living as a blue collar worker--driving a truck and as a chicken farmer. I've also made decent as a teacher in the white collar world.  As a kid, I never really saw myself going to college. I never thought I'd need it, that I could do whatever I wanted without spending the time and money for school. I went for a year right after high school because a lot of people expected me to, but I only lasted a year. I didn't flunk out, but I spent all my money and as a student I was less-than-stellar enough to lose my tuition scholarship.  So I went back to what I knew best, hard work. And I was good at it. After 17 years bouncing around from the Marine Corps to driving a truck to raising chickens and cattle, God made clear to me that He was calling me to teach. I tried to convince Him He was wrong, but fai...

  Students going into 8th through 12th grades will soon be choosing which classes to take next year. Many of these students have no idea what they will do when they get out of school. Some who think they know will change their minds at least once before they graduate. Many of these students are also being told by friends, family, and maybe even some educators, to take the easy way, not to push themselves, not to challenge themselves. Here's some unsolicited advice. Take it or leave it. If there's any chance you might enter a STEM field after high school (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), take all the math and science you can get. Don't stop taking math and science classes because you passed the bare minimum number of classes to graduate. If you do, those college level science and math classes are going to bury you. Even if you don't think you're going to college, take college prep courses, regardless where your interests lie. They'll require you to...