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What is a school? Plato and Socrates would have taught outside, in the fresh air. Nature was often their subject so they had the best facility possible to teach it. It cost them nothing and they left no structure to be revered unless you count the foundations of the western world.

My grandfather and my father helped build and then attended Howard Academy versions two and three respectively. Like many now prominent Bermudians, my father’s life was transformed under the tutelage of Edward DeJean, a Canadian with a no nonsense approach to his calling. Only the original Skinner School / Howard Academy still stands on Jubilee Road, in Devonshire. To say the building is physically humble is an understatement, you wouldn’t notice it if you didn’t know what to look for. Culturally however the school in each of its incarnations was monumental for its impact on the lives of black students of the era.

I started out at Boaz Island Primary, a prefab, sheet metal school for the mostly black children of low income families, prior to the formal desegregation of public schools in the early ‘70s. While hardly meriting comparison to Howard, it was another humble building which served its purpose admirably. When its function was complete it was erased completely to make space for condos. Mrs. Richards and later Mrs. Bassett made the most of their humble facility to not only educate, but also to instill a sense of worth and self respect in their students.

Warwick Academy is the oldest school this side of the pond and the original building still forms the heart of the school. I had the privilege to attend during the tenure of Dr. Zach Marshall, a man of absolute clarity of purpose. You could tell by the ancient, scarred desks and the creaking floorboards that the focus was on results, not appearances. The wisdom of that prioritization of resources is still borne out in the results they enjoy today.

Those are just my perspectives but I am certain that everyone who came through the public school system can recount similar experiences whereby the quality of the education they received was almost entirely a function of the dedication of the teachers and the standards set by the administrators. Students all over the world in countries far less developed than Bermuda are achieving equivalent or better results in facilities that would make Howard or Boaz look luxurious, simply because the students, teachers and parents recognize the value of education as the only way to improve their lot in the world.

With $120 million committed to the physical plant, Bermuda’s new senior high school has yet to hire a teacher, buy a book or install a computer. The scandal that swirls around it does no service to the honourable institution that it is to replace.

While weathered and worn, the Berkeley Institute wears its age with distinction. The value of a legacy of achievement and the implicit obligation to continue it lives in its walls but has been discounted in the push to be bigger, grander and flashier.

Superficial

Its replacement stands as a monument to embarrassing overcompensation, the product of a superficial mindset that has forgotten that education is about what passes between generations, not the size of your atrium. The new school has a Herculean task ahead if it is to live up to both the legacy of its namesake and the outlandish amount of money filtered through it.

Time eventually reduces everything to dust and the only legacy we can leave is the knowledge we accumulate and pass on to our children.

The Egyptian pyramids are revered today, not for the folly of seeking eternal life through monuments but for the knowledge and ingenuity displayed in building them. The Egyptians also had the good sense to stop building once they realized that their monuments to vanity and ego were financially ruinous and the expenditure was not delivering the desired results.[[In-content Ad]]

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