Chapter 1: What I Learned on the Road to Mississauga: Democracy and Curriculum

In Rising Tide,John Barry (1997) writes; “a society does not change in sudden jumps. Rather it moves in small steps along a broad front. Most of these steps are parallel if not quite simultaneous; some advance farther than others, and some even in opposite directions” (p. 421). This July 2010, I left my home in Saginaw, Michigan and headed to Mississauga, Ontario to visit my sister Aurora, who is the chief financial officer of Havana Club Rum and was in Ontario to work on her English, and whom I had not seen since we left Cuba 1979. We spoke on the phone and emailed frequently—a powerful virtual bridge provided by technology that enables the embargo of Cuba to appear tolerable. As I speak to you I am reminded of the issues I always face when I cross from Canada back into the United States because of the hegemonic political authority of the Cuban embargo on American citizens who happen to be Cuban, but I will leave that story for another time, maybe tonight at the welcome reception. This story is about a journey that emerged from several experiences on the road to Mississauga, Ontario that speaks the current situation impacting higher education and ultimately the future of our nation and its youth. As Mary Oliver (1994) writes in Wild Geese, the journey we take and troubles we experience are ours—while the world continues; sometimes our tribulations seem more important than they are given the tragedies in Japan or the triumphs in Egypt and Tunisia—but the relationships we build and conversations we share among each other serve to connect our journeys and provide a context for us to share and understand that we are not alone. In this community that we live, values and ideas are eroding as those who would govern us label our American institutions and beliefs un-American.