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Dear Sir,

Larry Burchall is right — the Bermuda public school system does not educate, it de-educates. This means that much of the talk about black empowerment is empty rhetoric — it will not happen so long as Bermuda’s young people are consigned to the Pembroke dump.

I have often said that any racist bigot who sought to hold back the black population need only come out in support of the dunderheads at the Department of Education.

Its main function is simply to make the Minister look good, and it is not even good at that. Week after week, we are subjected to full page adverts in the press extolling its non-existent virtues, and trumpeting what great things Government is doing to educate our young people. This is nothing but propaganda, as Mr. Burchall has so clearly demonstrated by pointing out the flaws in the Terra Nova tests.

Let me just mention three instances of when the Department and the Minister have shown their contempt for sound education:

n In 2002, they tried to impose absurd regulations on home schooling in an attempt to force parents to send their children to government schools.

n In 2003, Dr Sean O’Connell, a 29-year veteran of successful teaching of mathematics, was wrongfully dismissed from the Bermuda College for using the slang term ‘grease monkey’ (used by the Royal Gazette and Time Magazine) in a private conversation. Premier Scott was racially offensive to Tony Brannon, but excuses himself by appealing to Shakespeare.

n In 2004, the annual intake of pupils to St George’s Preparatory (a school with a remarkable record of educational success) was reduced — thereby forcibly increasing the number of pupils assigned to other, less desirable, schools.

I won’t even mention the fiasco at Berkeley Institute.

Many parents (about 40 per cent), both black and white, instinctively understand what Mr. Burchall has written, and have rightly decided to send their children to private schools believing it is futile to buck Government bureaucracy. They are unwilling to sacrifice the future of their children to the bureaucratic view that the individual is simply a means to serve the political ambitions of the Minister.

The remainder, mainly, although not exclusively, poor and black, are dumped into schools whose standards are determined by the bureaucrats not the parents. Too often they receive a sub-standard education that means they will remain poor for most of their lives. No doubt, Government will then excuse itself by blaming institutional racism.

Year after year, young people in Bermuda get shafted by an incompetent Government educational system. Nothing is done, no-one is held accountable. The Ministry pats itself on the back for doing a fantastic job, when it is an absolute disgrace. Thank you Mr. Burchall for pointing that out — yet again.

Robert Stewart,

Flatts





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