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A recent newspaper story caught my eye.

It was about a Bermuda born Bermudian doctor - a black Cox's Hill 'bye - who was excelling at John's Hopkins Medicine.

Now forty-three, he'd received his high school education at Warwick Academy. That means that he did his twelve GCE O-Levels at Warwick Academy around 1981.

In 1981, Warwick Academy was a PUBLIC SCHOOL. From the late 1970s to 1992, Warwick Academy was as open to the public as was the Berkeley Institute. The only barrier to entry was academic excellence because both schools - Berkeley and Warwick - used similar test and exam results as the selector for their student bodies. In order for any PUBLIC SCHOOL student to get into either school, that student had to be in the top quarter of his or her class. So entry was based entirely on academic performance. Not money. Not race.

In 1992, for a variety of reasons, Warwick Academy opted to return to its 1960s status as a private school(*). That left Berkeley Institute and the newly built and lavishly equipped Cedarbridge Academy as Bermuda's only PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOLS.

By 2001, neither Berkeley nor Cedarbridge offered a curriculum that could lead to success at GCSE/O-level work.

So by 2001, Bermuda's Public Education System no longer offered - had, in fact, STOPPED offering - the kind of opportunity that, twenty years before, was regularly available to this - and other - Bermudian public school students. So by 2001, twenty years later and only six years ago, 1981's open door of opportunity had been closed.

Starkly and precisely, in 1981 Public Education offered a high quality of opportunity. Twenty years later, in 2001 Public Education was denying that same high quality of opportunity. In 2007, Public Education still denies that quality of opportunity.

In 2007, going into 2008, and even into 2009, Bermuda's Public Education system will continue to offer a lower quality of opportunity than actually existed and that was taken advantage of over twenty-five years before. In 2007, going into 2008, and even into 2009, Bermuda's Public Education system will maintain the triple padlocks of Ministry mis-management, professional under-performance, and widespread intellectual dishonesty on that once open - but now closed - door of opportunity.

Bitter irony

In all of this, there is a bitter irony. In my newest book, "FINE AS WINE"(**), I tell of being born into a segregated society that disadvantaged me simply because I was black. I show how my life changed as Bermuda changed. I show how closed doors were opened and how my two children were born into a better Bermuda. I show all of that.

But this Doctor's story reminds, re-illustrates, and freshly re-demonstrates that the door of opportunity that was once closed to me, and that was once opened to all, has now been re-closed.

I am reminded that black Bermuda came out of closed-door segregation into open-door integration. I am reminded that open-door integration meant that all opportunity was open to all. That colour no longer determined what doors could be entered and what doors would be closed. I am reminded that education and knowledge opens all doors. But this hard cold world also reminds me that a lack of education leading to a lack of knowledge and skills creates the thickest and least penetrable of all locked doors.

Ultimately, I am reminded that the door of opportunity that was wide open in 1981, had, by 2001, been firmly re-closed and newly and freshly padlocked. Opportunity taken away. Opportunity removed.

This happened in my lifetime. It happened in your lifetime.

In 2007, going into 2008, as some people say we're 'fixing education', I'm beginning to hear polysyllabic words and convoluted phrases. But I cannot see or perceive anything that is being done to rip the padlocks off that re-closed door. Instead, all that I see - all that I perceive - is that we've hired an 'expert' who is merely fondling and caressing the padlocks.

As long as that once open door of opportunity remains padlocked, we Bermudians are damning hundreds of our own young Bermudian people - majority male, majority black - to a bleak life in a social and economic underclass with the likelihood of predictable sojourns in Westgate. In 2007, going into 2008, Bermudians have re-created and are sustaining some of the primary racial conditions into which I was born. But these new racial conditions were NOT created by, nor are they being sustained by, a white power structure.

Come on people. Unlock that re-locked door. n

(*) See my explanation last week.

(**) "FINE AS WINE. From coloured boy to BERMUDIAN MAN." Available in all bookstores.[[In-content Ad]]

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