As a parent, you have to be good coach and bad coach, and I think in the college-application process, I didn't want to be bad coach. 'This is amazing! I'm so proud of you!' That's the role I wanted with my kids.
Interpretation
Parents should balance encouragement and honesty in supporting their children during challenging times such as college applications.
In this quote, Laurene Powell Jobs reflects on the dual roles parents must play in their children's lives, particularly during high-stress situations like college applications. She emphasizes the importance of being supportive and proud, rather than harsh or critical, advocating for a nurturing approach that fosters confidence and positivity in her children.
In practice
In a speech at a parents' meeting about college-bound students.
It's not that our high school system was not designed well, but that it was designed in 1906 when the country was just out of the industrial era. There hasn't been a substantial systemic change the way we do high school since then.
There is a huge gap between what students want for their future and what their schools are offering.
Regardless of zip code, talent and IQ are evenly distributed, so we need to make sure that opportunity is evenly distributed, too.
Teachers have told us across the country that what's severely outdated is the teacher at the front of the classroom as the font of knowledge, because as we know, access to knowledge and information is now ubiquitous. So instead, teachers want to help students learn how to think so that they can be lifelong learners.
We cannot control what others choose to do, and so we cannot force our children to heaven, but we can determine what we will do. And we can decide that we will do all we can to bring down the powers of heaven into that family we want so much to have forever.
Be at your mother’s feet and there is the Paradise.
No government can love a child, and no policy can substitute for a family's care. But at the same time, government can either support or undermine families as they cope with moral, social and economic stresses of caring for children.
God bless my mother - she's long gone now, but she'd work all day and go to school at night. She started out in life as a housekeeper at 15 years old, totally on her own, and she retired as a college professor. But there were some hard times. It's not easy for a woman who's only trying to do the best for her kid but who could never be home.
A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.
In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.
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