Menu:

 

Education theft

Date Posted: Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Author: Robert Stewart

A few weeks ago the Premier expressed concern at the poor level of attainment in the local public school system.  One of his solutions was that it was necessary to create more local black heroes.  Alas, he did not reach the conclusion that one of the main reasons why so many of our young people fail to reach an acceptable level of education is the dead hand of the government that he himself leads.

Dissatisfaction with public education is, of course, not confined to Bermuda.  In the United States the President has established a “No Child Left Behind” policy. It may be too early to say what the success of that programme is likely to be, but it would be a reasonable bet to say that just as many children will be left behind in the future as there were in the past.

In the UK, Tony Blair would like to be remembered as the education Prime Minister. That will not be much of a legacy as children who attend public schools there have the same dismal results as their counterparts in Bermuda and USA.

What is going on in the educational world?Well it is not that people are unaware of the facts.  In Bermuda in the late 1980s, an Educational Planning Team was created – of which I was a member.  It came up with several recommendations to improve the quality of government education the most notorious of which was the creation of CedarBridge Academy.   Whatever the accomplishments of that school are, it is reasonably clear that enhanced educational standards is not one of them. In general, things got worse – not better.

Indeed, when one looks at some of the nonsense that takes place within public education it is not surprising that there so many failures, and so many blighted lives as a result. There are many ways to ruin someone's life, but few are as effective as ignorance. And ignorance, by and large, is what public schooling guarantees for too many Bermudian children.

Let me mention just three recent nonsensical decisions:

1. In 2005, the Department of Education discovered that the person they had appointed to implement information technology in schools had acquired a mail-order qualification; as a result, the system was set-back a number of years.

2. In 2004, the Department of Education took the view that St George’s Preparatory School was too successful, and because of that success, the number of pupils that could be accepted was reduced, whilst the numbers at a less successful school were increased.  This was educational madness at its zenith.

3. The apex of the Bermuda educational system is (or should be) the Bermuda College.  In 2006, the head of the College Dr. Charles Green was discovered to be spending College money on free drinks for his mates at the Yacht Club rather than concentrating his attention on improving the performance of his students. This issue has yet to be resolved.

The common denominator in these three outrages (and in many, many more) is political interference in the educational system. 

Let me explain further. 

Public education in the Western world was, until around 1870, the private concern of parents not the government.  Much of this changed mainly because of the influence of the Prussian (then a state in what was to become Germany) military and its strongman Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck, and his disciples in Britain and the US, decided that parents were too stupid and irresponsible to be trusted with the education of their children and that responsibility for education should be taken over by the experts in government. 

For much of the 20th century governments became more and more involved in education and social engineering.  The corollary of this was that parents became less and less involved, leaving the education of their children to government experts.  The next stage was that professional educrats determined that parents were just not up to the job of deciding what was in the best educational interests of their children and that the job must be handed over to them and their political bosses. 

Anyone interested in this historical process should read:

1.      “The Tyranny of Compulsory Schooling” by John Taylor Gatto.

2.      “Education and the State” by E.G. West.

3.      “The welfare state we’re in” by James Bartholomew, chapter 4.

This was an odd turn of events for the late 19th century was a period when the influence of the Church was at its height.  The fifth commandment is one that established the authority of the parent over the child and recognised the family as the primary human relationship but in education the state took over the role of God.  

Bermuda clearly followed the example of the rest of the world who in turn had followed the examples of Prussia, UK and the USA. Bit by bit government took over the responsibilities of parents with the result that politics trumped education.

All of this might have made sense if children in 2007 were better educated than their counterparts 130 years ago, or even 30 years ago.  However, the evidence is quite clear that there has been a noticeable decline in standards, especially for those who are the most vulnerable.     

What has improved over the years is the quality of the buildings, despite the mould at CedarBridge Academy.  Politicians love buildings because they can have their picture in the newspaper, safe in the knowledge that parents will think that there is a close association between palatial schools and education.  Of course, there is not and never has been. CedarBridge and Berkeley are political showpieces, prestige projects, that generate votes but little education. 

The best educated President of the United States was Abraham Lincoln whose education was in a one room log cabin with only candlelight.  Mark Twain was known to have remarked “Although I went to public school, I never let that interfere with my education.”      

Why is it that 40 per cent of parents in Bermuda send their children to private school?

The answer is clearly because they have no confidence in the existing public school system despite an annual expenditure of $120 million in the fiscal year 2005/06.  They prefer to pay personally around $12,000 per child per annum to avoid what they correctly perceive to be a sub-standard education.  The absence of confidence also extends to politicians and senior civil servants who tend in respect of their own children to avoid the public schools which are their responsibility.  There is no more embarrassing a question to ask the Department of Education than, “How many children of the education officers attend private school?”,   The answer is cosmic top secret.   

Are they correct? Is public education sub-standard?  The answers are quite clearly – yes. It is a personal tragedy when so many capable youngsters are cheated of being able to achieve their potential.  The evidence is pretty clear to anyone who takes a walk around the bus station around 4 in the afternoon.  Or take a walk around any business in Bermuda where most top jobs are filled by non-Bermudians, or by those who went to private school.      

Why do private schools do better than public schools, not only in Bermuda but in most other countries? 

The most important reason is that parents who subscribe to private schools have a choice, and those who run private schools know that they do not have a captive clientele.  Schools must respond to the wishes of parents or they lose students. Parents, whether poor or rich, want the best for their children and they are able to influence events.  Rich parents can afford to make a choice and hold those who educate their children accountable.  Poor parents are left out in the cold.

Those who are poor, and who are compelled by circumstances to send their children to public schools, are not able to hold politicians and civil servants accountable and the politicians and civil servants know this. Taxation ensures funds for operations. That is why in scandal after scandal in the public school system nothing happens.  And nothing ever will.  Schools are run for the benefit of those in power, not for the children who are supposed to be educated there.  

When it is a choice of education of children or preserving the prerogatives of the educational establishment you do not have to be Einstein to know that children will come bottom of the heap. Politicians prefer the circus of power over the impulse to improve the health of society.  The only way to hold those responsible is to give schools control over their own affairs, and to give parents the right of choice as to where they send their children to be educated.      

One way to do this is through the voucher system, endorsed by late Professor Milton Friedman, where parents are given the financial resources to send their children to a school of their choice. Space does not allow me to elaborate on this but anything must be better than what we have at present.  Would you keep going back to a restaurant that served you a bad meal? Or a barber that gave you a bad haircut? Competition makes everything better. Why would schools be different?

In the few places where vouchers have been allowed, like Milwaukee, the kids who used vouchers did better. How can that be? In 2001, Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby found that Milwaukee's private school vouchers made the nearby public schools (which were competing for the same students) change. "Public school principals were allowed to have a lot more autonomy," she said.  "They counselled teachers out of teaching altogether who really weren't performing or showing up on the job - they put in new back to basics curricula in some primary schools that really needed that so that reading skills and math skills would go up."    

In the 1980s, a report from the US National Commission on Excellence in Education entitled “An Open Letter to the American People - A Nation at Risk” stated that "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."   

A similar conclusion could be reached about Bermuda. The great tragedy for Bermuda is that social mobility and racial integration is about as bad as it was in the 1960s, and much of this is due to the fruitcake policies of the Department of Education.  The objectives of the Department of Education are noble; they want to educate children so that they can realise their potential. However, they have adopted a series of policies and programmes that have achieved the exact opposite of their objectives. If the Department had set out to prevent Bermudian children from achieving their potential the policies pursued over the past 20 years were probably the most efficient they could have chosen.  

It is time to rid ourselves of outworn dogma that those in authority are better judges than parents of what is good for their children. We have relied on the professionals for a least 30 years and it has not worked.  For the sake of our future, the sooner we return responsibility for education of their children to parents the better.  If we continue with our irrational system of falling for the hokum that the Department of Education is staffed with cadre of philosopher kings who know what is best, the more likely it is that the children and grandchildren of the poor will continue to be disadvantaged. Whilst those who have rich parents see the world as their oyster.  

Bob Stewart was chief executive of the Royal/Dutch Shell Group of Companies in Bermuda until his retirement in 1998. Subsequently, he was President of Old Mutual Asset Managers and retired from there at the end of 2002. He is a director of several Bermuda companies and investment funds, and the author of A Guide to the Economy of Bermuda.

Copyright © 2006 MediaCom  ::   About Us   ::   Contact Us   ::   Privacy   ::   Home