January 30, 2013 at 5:54 p.m.
Education system must catch up in the global race
It’s the only way to Bermudianize the workforce
In layman's language, a Bermuda business - Argus Insurance [Gerald Simons, CEO] - has bought out another foreign company. Other local businesses, Butterfield Bank, BF&M, Gibbons Group, are also buying overseas companies. These overseas buyouts are a sign of local business success, and point to the huge impact that globalization has already had, and will continue to have, throughout Bermuda. That impact is as big on Bermuda's 'big' businesses as it is on Bermuda's indigenous Bermudian workforce.
A recurring complaint is that there is insufficient black male Bermudian representation in the upper echelons of Bermuda's vibrant, thriving, growing International Business community. That IB community now consists not only of IB giants like ACE, XL, AIG; but also of fast-growing sprouts like Argus, Gibbons, BF&M and other well-managed locally owned businesses.
Argus and the others stalk the globe looking for good buys. Argus and the others stalk Bermuda looking for good 'byes'. They find good buys overseas, and snap them up.
They find far fewer good 'byes' in Bermuda, so they don't hire. Instead, they hire foreigners.
They have to. The whole national combination of Bermuda's public and private system has been operating to educate and graduate far fewer boys than girls. If for twenty consecutive years, there has been an under-production of Bermudian male graduates; then twenty years on there has to be a relative shortage of Bermudian male Vice-Presidents and Managers and Brokers and everything else. Yesterday's 18-year-old non-graduate cannot be today's 38-year-old Vice President. It's arithmetically simple.
WASPs R.I.P.?
But in the last twenty years, cheaper, easier air travel has combined with the crashing of the Iron Curtain and the hatchet-burying by those old warring tribes of the Gauls and Goths and Celts. The Aryans from India, and the Mandinkes from Africa have streamed across the now diminished geographic separators and have flooded into everywhere. On CNN, Dr Sanjay Gupta displaced Dr John Smith - or whatever WASP it was that once had the job.
Globally, change has happened. The rate of global change is still accelerating.
But here, at 64W32N, we're still stuck on race. We're still lamenting the fact that black males are under-represented in the upper echelons of IB in Bermuda. We should not be crying over the spilt milk of lost and wasted opportunity. Neither should we be thinking of asking IB companies to make extraordinary or special cases of Bermudians. Yesterday's under-educated black male is today's unavailable Vice President of Marketing or Vice President of Sales or hot young CEO. And yesterday will never return.
Ten years ago, when I first visited Microsoft's Redmond Campus in Seattle, I learned that in the upper realms of Software Design, there were virtually no indigenous Americans. No American whites. No American blacks. No Americans of any colour. However there were lots of Asians, Indians, and a growing stock of East Europeans - and one lone Bermudian.
As far as I know, Microsoft is a robustly progressive equal opportunity employer. Microsoft also scours all of America, and all of the rest of the globe in order to hire the best and the brightest. Generally, and relative to the rest of the world, the American education system underperforms. Thus Microsoft's non-American vs American balance is driven by quality. Not race. Not nationality. Not special favour.
Bermuda's IB is - by definition - globally competitive. Its employment policies and practices are driven by the need for quality. Not race. Not nationality. Not favour.
If Bermudians, in Bermuda, are to compete fairly with the outputs of other education systems in other parts of the globe; then Bermuda's education system must ramp up many degrees in order to provide a better chance for all Bermudians - which, of course, includes black male Bermudians.
Like Microsoft, IB will seek out and pay for brainpower. No race has a monopoly on brainpower. Education is the developer of brainpower. Other countries are out-developing Bermuda.
Bermuda has to play catch-up - and in December 2006, Bermuda still hasn't started! Here it is, December 2006. Bermuda still doesn't even know what the public system graduation rate for 2006 was![[In-content Ad]]
Comments:
You must login to comment.