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I attended Commencement exercises at the Bermuda College this week and witnessed the college’s largest ever graduating class. Certificates, Diplomas, Associate and Bachelor Degrees were handed out to some 170 young and not so young students.

I was impressed with the number of males among the achievers. We don’t often get good news about our young black men but this was one of those occasions.

Commencement speaker, Dr. Terry-Lynne Emery, herself a Bermuda College graduate, gave an inspiring address in which she highlighted the potential each student was born with. That potential waits to be realized. She praised the graduates for having the courage to begin to tap into that potential. She encouraged them to view their graduation as not only an achievement but also as a step towards converting more of their potential into reality. Dr. Emery cheered them on to make a difference, in their own lives and in the future of their country.

This message is a good one for our young male population. Given the differences between males and females in the maturing of their learning-abilities, there is a desperate need to get young males hooked on acquiring tools for all the things they want to be. Education is the fundamental tool. With education, all avenues are open, without it, the future is a dead end.

The Bermuda College is restoring technical and vocational education to a place of legitimacy. Fifty years ago Bermuda discovered, with the enormous success of the Bermuda Technical Institute, that vocational training was a gateway for many boys to academic achievement. Boys seem to have an affinity for manual play and tasks. Once they discover how math and science, and even art and literature, can enhance their command of technical subjects, doors open for academic progress.

I am an advocate of taking this gender/education relationship a step in another direction. I believe that exposing young women to vocational training gives them a comfort and skill that can help dispel some of the gender biases that permeate our culture. Whether or not women want to be auto mechanics, for example, they should not be denied a familiarity with the technology merely because we believe, as our fore-parents did, that it’s a “man’s job”.

The Bermuda College has moved to expand its delivery of programmes, and its catchment pool. Local partnerships include the Bermuda Regiment, The Ministry of Telecommunications and E-Commerce, and YouthNet. Overseas partners include institutions of higher learning such as Mount Saint Vincent University, Wheelock College, Hampton University, and Arcadia University.

This growth in the college’s network is to be applauded, as is the growth in facilities worthy of a college faculty. It will be useful for us to remember that the college is a community in microcosm, experiencing all the tensions — cultural, racial, gender, ethnic, performance, financial, and so on — of the larger community. We can encourage the college to resolve these tensions and even to take the lead in showing the larger community how this can best be done.

Of course the college could do better. The same is true for all of us, individually and collectively. But one ingredient of doing better is getting recognition for what has been done. Just like its graduates, the Bermuda College has a signal achievement in this year’s Commencement. And, as we congratulate its graduates, we ought as well to congratulate the faculty, administration and staff at the Bermuda College for this job well done.[[In-content Ad]]

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