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Editor's note: This column was originally due to run last week, but was held over due to space limitations.

The great education debate finally happened. I heard MP's whimpering, whiffling and wandering away from reality. And just what is reality?

Bermuda has a public education system that the Minister admits costs $13,600 a year for each of the 6,000 students - the raw material - who now spend thirteen years in the system's stifling embrace. The workers in the system are the teachers plus education system managers and administrators. The consumers-cum-shareholders are the parents who send the raw material - the students - into the system.

Public sector parents, as consumers, are not getting what they're paying for. Public sector parents, as shareholders, are not getting an acceptable level of benefits or return on their human or dollar investment. Educators, politicians, parents, and foreign 'experts' - Professor Hopkins in his Report - all agree that the system is bad.

Next move? Fixing it. But now I'm worried. Worried stiff.

The Minister for Education tried to set the tone. I heard MP Louise Jackson spell out some clear and basic truths. I listened as Minister Perinchief argued for radical change. I fully agreed with MP 'Maxie' Burgess as he laid out the 'black facts'. 'Maxie' made it clear that it is black Bermuda that is most heavily victimized and damaged by the failure of Bermuda's black led, black staffed, black administered, majority black student, public education system.

Out of all the speakers, I thought that only these four speakers were honest and forthright. From all the rest of the speakers - the majority - I heard varying degrees of whimpering, whiffling, and vacillating. That bothered me then, it bothers me now.

There are over 800 well-paid teachers and other professionals in Bermuda's public education system. Collectively, all 800 are not producing. Collectively, all 800 are failing. The Hopkins Report: "...an unacceptably high proportion of teaching - about one lesson in four - is inadequate and there is little which is outstanding."

It's as if a car factory, managed by experienced and well-paid managers and staffed by well-paid skilled workers, was producing cars with bad bodywork; and everybody, from top management right down to the last car-polisher knew that.

Yet the factory kept churning out these bad bodywork cars. The workers kept drawing fat wages. The bosses kept getting even fatter salaries. The shareholders kept pouring in more capital. And the customers kept walking away.

In private industry, that behaviour might last for two years before there was some drastic change. In Bermuda, this has been happening for almost twenty years - without change.

It's straightforward. There is a very clear quality problem. There is a problem with the quality of teaching. There is a consequential problem with the quality of student output.

The quality of teaching must improve - and it must improve fast. The quality of student output must improve - and it must improve fast. In the private sector - either in education or in industry - it certainly would improve. Or the school would stop getting students and the company would go bankrupt!

Getting the kind of change that has needed will require strong action. Strong action will result in strong reaction - especially from Bermuda's well-paid public sector teaching professionals. These well-paid teaching professionals will fight back with their ready-at-hand, well-rehearsed, well-practiced, and frequently heard bleats about their problems and difficulties. Teachers will strike. Teachers will sick out. Teachers will work-to-rule. Teachers will moan. Teachers will grumble. Teachers will plead for sympathy.

Battle looms

There'll be a battle. There has to be a battle. The kind of change that has to come, and the speed at which it must come, will not allow for our traditional Bermudian niceness. There will have to be some un-traditional ruthlessness.

In all the words poured out during the House debate, I heard enough to believe that on the Government side, there were only two people who made the sounds of ruthlessness. One was Minister Perinchief. The other was Minister Horton.

Six months from now, by December 2007, you and I will see if they and their colleagues actually possess the individual strength of character, as well as the political will, to carry on with the kind of leadership for the kind of change that must come.

In the same time, we'll also see if our Bermuda community - particularly Bermuda's self-victimizing black community - has the good sense, the common sense, and the collective wisdom to back a regime of strong reform and rapid raising of educational standards in Bermuda's expensive and failure-prone public education system.

We'll see! We'll see![[In-content Ad]]

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