No sire, it's a revolution

In much the way 18th century France was ripe for a revolution, so are the two social systems within which we live and work: health care and higher education. In health care, too many are suffering so that a few might live lives of luxury. Higher education is structured so as to reproduce a social order of class privilege and patriarchal values. For a complex set of reasons, (some known to us, many more beyond our consciousness) we have chosen higher education and nursing education as our arena--as the place where we might contribute to the world order, to our society, to individuals and communities who are striving to be healthy. Our project, then, is to enable others so that they might enable still others: to teach and learn with our students who are our colleagues in creating a future; to teach and learn in caring ways that will serve as prototypes for caring communities. To those who would dismiss the curriculum revolution as a fad and those involved it as aging malcontents, I refer them to the diaries of Governor Morris, an American guest of Marie Antoinette who was at Versailles during the months before the fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789: Yesterday, it was the Fashion at Versailles not to believe that there had been any disturbances at Paris. I presume this Day's Transactions will induce a Conviction that all is not perfectly quiet (Pernoud, 1960, p. 45).