15 years and counting

May 6, 2014
by Björn Jeffery
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For over 15 years the newspaper industry has been looking for “the right business model” for digital.

Think about how many hours have been spent by bright people at New York Times and all the other fancy places. The smartest people in the industry have been thinking about this for over one and a half decade. And yet they have not found anything that works well enough to even be able to keep their colleagues employed. Real growth was a long time ago.

What if there isn’t a business model for news? Think about it. Because it is not the same thing as saying that news has no value, which is the knee jerk reaction. What would it mean? Perhaps it is time to start thinking about that scenario at least.

April 13, 2014
by Björn Jeffery
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In fact, there were more instances in which children had higher levels of achievement when their parents were less involved than there were among those whose parents were more involved. Even more counterintuitively: When involvement does seem to matter, the consequences for children’s achievement are more often negative than positive.

(…)

Conventional wisdom holds that since there is no harm in having an involved parent, why shouldn’t we suggest as many ways as possible for parents to participate in school? This conventional wisdom is flawed. Schools should move away from giving the blanket message to parents that they need to be more involved and begin to focus instead on helping parents find specific, creative ways to communicate the value of schooling, tailored to a child’s age.

(…)

What should parents do? They should set the stage and then leave it.

Very suggestive and thought provoking

New York Times – Parental Involvement Is Overrated