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I think I'm beginning to smell something. It's the odour that comes from paper stored too long in a damp place.

It's the smell of decay and rot. I think the smell is coming from the May 2007 Hopkins Education Report, and from other reports that have been stashed away in some damp dark corner in some deep hole somewhere in the Ministry of Education. There may even be a fierce-looking guard posted on these papers!

  In September 2006, having been born seventeen years before in 1989, there were about 436 Bermuda boys available to start Public school year S4. But by the time that Middle and High school came around, and just as they did on Tuesday 18th December 2007, Bermudians voted.

  Just as absolutely as the PLP was voted back in with 22 seats, with their Nikes, their Adidas, and their hard-won dollars, Bermudians voted for Private education. Bermudians voted by sending up to six out of ten of their children into one form or another of private education.

  By year S4, out of 1989's birth-group of 436 male Bermudians, about 262 ended up in some form of private education with 174 left in public education. So there should have been about 174 male Bermudians in the S4 graduating year that ended in June 2006.

  But what happened in June 2006?  

  To get the answer, you have to find the deep dark dungeon, sneak past the fierce looking guard, grab the damp musty papers, crawl out into daylight, and then let the light of day shine on those papers.

  I actually do believe that someone has actually written down the names of those males who've actually graduated from the public system. But I believe that they want to keep that a deep dark secret. Not from me and you. From themselves!

  But that's what I can't figure out because I can work out how many males did graduate. I can work it out for every year.  

I can actually collect the printed graduation programmes given out to all parents and attendees at the school graduations. I can count the numbers. I can work it out.

So I'm completely puzzled. Why try to conceal a number that can be worked out anyhow? Why?

  Getting past all that, in 2006, just how many boys did actually graduate from the public education system? Out of the 174 boys who should have been in the system, only 53 - that's right, fifty-three (53) - turned up as graduates. That's a boy's graduation rate of 30 per cent - that's right, thirty percent (30 per cent).

That means that in June 2006, about 120 Bermudian boys became Tossed Out Males [TOM's]. Males who were tossed out with numeracy and literacy skills  too low to compete for even the low paid jobs in Bermuda.

  That's right. In our Bermuda, what people call 'hamburger flipper jobs' are actually filled by low-paid global workers. But these are global workers who are high-school graduates with some tertiary vocational training and who are fluent in TWO languages.

  Obviously, a non-graduating barely literate, barely numerate, Bermudian male cannot land a better paying job as a bank teller or financial analyst or lawyer either. So he's stuck, and stuck firmly, on the social trash heap onto which he's just been tossed.

Trash heap

On that trash heap, just as nature does with a compost heap, our TOM ferments, and gets angry, and metamorphoses into something else. Our TOM changes into an AYM [Angry Young Man]. In our black majority society, most TOM's are black. So the AYM actually shows up as an ABM.  So, just as a compost heap changes piled-up vegetable waste into fertilizer, a Bermuda TOM changes into an ABM.

  The community sees ABM's sitting on walls, forming gangs, and now shooting at one another.  The community musters the Police and the Law to deal with the ABM. But that's like putting fertilizer into the soil and then working to prevent plants from growing faster.

  Many people understand nature. You should talk to them about fertilizer and plant growth. Ain't no point talking to that lot over in Education. They're too busy hiding stuff!

  Oh! By the way. Male graduating figures for 2007 were just as bad. And June 2008, a mere five months away, is shaping up to be no different. We're still creating TOM's and growing ABM's.[[In-content Ad]]

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