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I was at a graduation ceremony on Thursday night. I was there at the behest of a young lady who was graduating from High School. I think there were about fifty youngsters graduating. They all looked and sounded happy. Their parents, as parents do at these times, had a look of pride and, I might add, also a look of relief.

I understand that look and feeling of relief. I am a parent. Actually one half - the male half - of a parent team. Two children. Well, they could once be described as children. One doesn't usually describe a thirty plus, muscular, two hundred pound six-footer as a child. So perhaps, I should say that my wife and I once had two children who are now fully grown adults.

Both graduated. So I'm familiar with that "Whew!" feeling. Less than a week after that evening of success, the teachers in the public school system were taking some kind of 'industrial action'. It's a pity that the Bermuda Union of Teachers [BUT] chose this time, this particular time, to wrangle over their pay and benefits. On Everest DeCosta's 1340 afternoon Talk Show, I heard one particular teacher, coming through loud and clear.

She raged about the fact that a teacher with a 'Master's Degree' should be so lowly paid and so ill-rewarded. She ranted about holiday and vacation time. She railed against uncooperative parents and unwilling students.

Perhaps she was right about it all. Perhaps she, and many like her - those with just Bachelor degrees and even some with Doctorates - are so unhappy with teaching, as a profession, that they should get out of the teaching trade.

Perhaps these well-educated people should take their superior educations which are, no doubt, accompanied by the promise of superior performance somewhere else in the private sector workplace. Perhaps they should walk into the first wide-open door in the private sector and demand a well paid job.

When asked what they will bring to that workplace, they should simply square their shoulders, lift their voices, and say: "I bring myself, a superior intellect, and a magnificent work ethic. I bring you the guarantee that whatever I do, I shall succeed beyond your wildest dreams. If you employ me, I will guarantee you huge profits. I am the best that there is!"

All those people who do that - and who actually get hired - would be a great loss to the public education system. But I know that won't happen. It won't happen because the overall quality of result that is produced from the entire public education system is so poor, so low, that even public school teachers place their own children in private sector education.

A big mess

The Hopkin's Report is still hidden and unpublished. (In fact it's better hidden than the BHC papers.) What little that has been let out has unveiled a big mess. There were two outstanding primary schools. Eight primary schools and one senior school that were graded as good. Eight primary schools, five middle schools, and one senior school were rated as just satisfactory or inadequate.

That means that eleven out of twenty-five [that's forty-four per cent] are performing adequately. Adequately, that is, for Bermuda's situation where Bermuda school graduates compete - in Bermuda - with graduates from India, Jamaica, Canada, etc...

But it also means that fourteen [that's fifty-six per cent] or the majority of the twenty five public schools are performing inadequately. Inadequately, that is for Bermuda's situation where Bermuda school graduates compete - in Bermuda - with graduates from India, Jamaica, Canada, etc...

After thirteen years inside Bermuda's expensive public education system, under the tutelage of the well-educated teachers who teach in that system, Bermuda gets a low graduation rate of about 50 per cent. This rate places Bermudian students at a distinct disadvantage.

There are over 800 'professionals' in the public sector teaching profession. How many are so good that they can walk out tomorrow and get better paid work in the private sector? How many are capable of getting better results from the 6,000 students for whom they're responsible? Bermuda deserves a better result - a much better result - from the taxpayer dollars poured into teacher pockets. Taxpayer parents must be far more demanding. Far more insistent. And teachers who feel so hard done by should move on to the greener, lusher, but far more demanding fields that they seem to see - just on the other side of that pretty fence.

Education Minister Randy Horton said yesterday all public school teachers had returned to work.[[In-content Ad]]

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