Outside the box

Last night, Johanna and I had a slightly beastly dinner with steaks from Argentina down in the port of Kalmar, talking about how the prevailing documentation hysteria is stealing time from the kids in the pre-school where she is working, and how much bigger the children groups have become over the years, resulting in higher noise and stress levels for both kids and staff. It is interesting to reflect on how these dynamics in turn feed into each other. With more staff away doing paperwork, pressure on those still with the kids increase, making it increasingly necessary for the staff to take “breaks” with yet more paperwork in order to cope. While one should not entirely dismiss the need for documentation in early childhood education, it simply seems odd that pre-school teachers should put more time into writing assessments and evaluating different learning objectives than I do as a university teacher. At some point, one has to step outside the box, and start questioning these macro-trends and where they are taking our audit addicted society.

Waking up to another day with clear skies and cold northerly winds today, I got a chance to run around Stensö with my mother, almost succeeding in persuading her to sign up for a 10k race in late July, before jumping on train 336 to Gothenburg around lunch time.