Austin

Thanks to the AAAS conference, I have been in Austin for the last couple of days. With two courses finishing in Sweden, it has been a strange but blissful combination of student e-mails, climate science and breakfast chalupas with Fredi, plus some of the most awesome running trails I have seen anywhere in the United States.

In the Uber back to the airport, the driver told me that she used to work as an elementary school teacher but decided to quit as the job was no longer about teaching but only about documentation and preparing the kids for different standardized tests. It is scary to think how global these trends actually are since everything she said would be equally true for Sweden. It is not that I have all the answers to these questions but we really have to do something, and that fast, if we are to stop this downward spiral of de-professionalization. Before I get too depressed, here are a few more snapshots from Texas...