Mr. Chairman, BTI teachers, BTI Alumni and guests. This is a peak experience for me. The boys who went to the Technical Institute were part of my social group during the most pivotal period in my entire life. To have that same group, now as Tech old boys, invite me to be the keynote speaker at this most illustrious event, the BTI 50th Anniversary Gala Black tie/School Tie Banquet, is extremely validating. You haven't really made it this world until you are stamped with approval by your school chums. I am indeed honoured to be recognised in this way by my peers.

Every BTI graduate knows by now that the Tech was closed down because it became too successful. Those of you who were present at the Bermudiana Hotel on that Sunday in July 1987 heard Sir David Gibbons say so. How absolutely bizarre!

Former Bermuda College instructor Colin Palmer, in his research paper on Collaboration, the future of technical education wrote about it this way:

"Bermuda was once one of the most technically competent countries to be found anywhere on this globe. With the departure in 1951 of the Royal Naval Dockyard [Bermuda opened a technical school for the "academically challenged" in1956 and by 1972 it was producing some of the most proficiently educated graduates in Bermuda's history. It was then that [the school was suddenly closed."

We could condemn, even curse those who made such a decision, to close the most successful of new education ventures, probably in Bermuda's history. That damage is done and those who committed such folly are for the most part out of our reach.

What is left for us to do is to analyse, if we can, what made BTI so successful and, if possible, try to replicate those conditions.

Before I do that, however, please indulge me while I give a little personal background.

I was privileged to be one of the very first to register in the summer of 1956 for the brand new Bermuda Technical Institute. I had had a chequered academic history, having been asked to leave the Berkeley Institute (the official reason was that I asked too many questions ), run away from a boarding school, and living for months as a vagabond in the Island of Grenada. At the Tech, I was invited by then Deputy Principal Sid Rumbelow to come to the school daily in the weeks before its official opening, to help unpack the boxes of supplies and set up the physics lab.

That experience was magical, installing and monitoring the weather station: recording wind direction and speed, hours of sunshine, maximum and minimum temperatures and rainfall. Assembling the beam balances and light boxes, storing magnets and mercury and microscopes. It was idyllic.

But none of that magic dispelled an attitude I had ? only a vague memory now ? that got me into trouble with just about every teacher. I provoked geometry teacher Mr. Minors until he lost his temper. Chemistry teacher Mr. Clegg ejected me from his classroom several times. Finally I was suspended. Here I was in the best educational experience of my lifetime to date, and I was messing it up.

Sid Rumbelow arranged for me to meet with him. He told me that I was bright enough to be/do anything I wanted (he didn't tell me then but my IQ tested at 140). He reminded me that so far, most of my intelligence was being put to mischief. That was okay, he said, if it was what I really wanted to do ? to always be in trouble, being kicked out of schools and kicked out of jobs. Or, he said, I could use my intelligence in creative ways, having the same fun and excitement I was getting from mischief, but with a different result ? that I would be looked up to by my fellow students, I would be respected and solicited for help by the teachers, I would be viewed with pride by my parents.

The message got through. I agreed to give it a try. I was set to an academic-focused timetable. I had made-to-order classes in Chemistry and Physics and began grooming for international exams. Within several weeks I was appointed as a prefect. And by the end of my BTI career, I was almost a model student. I was the top student in that first graduating class. Even now, my mind goes blank when I try to remember the graduating ceremonies ? I was so pumped up that the entire event was a blur.

Well, that was a portion of BTI story. And if it was only story, it wouldn't mean so much. But many of those early BTI entrants were boys who had been abandoned or rejected by the education system. Some were told they weren't bright enough to go to high school; some that they wouldn't amount to much. Some, like me, were misfits. Yet all of them, the losers, the failures, the misfits, the slow learners, as well as the stressed out ones, the ones too slick or too smart for the existing high schools ? all of them (all of us) blossomed at the Tech.

Instead of closing it down, our leaders have asked, "just what was it that made the Tech succeed where other schools had failed or given up?" They could have used the Tech experience as a model through which to transform education throughout the island. They didn't. And we could curse them for not doing so. But rather than curse that darkness, let me try instead to bring some light.

What was it about the Bermuda Technical Institute that transformed the lives of over 600 Bermuda boys? What made the BTI so successful?

This is not an easy question to answer because there are many facets to the school's success. Some of the reasons are supported by research; some are conjecture, some anecdotal. But because of BTI's legacy, and because of the troubled times in our current education system, this question is worth asking and worth trying to answer.

In my analysis there are four core reasons for the Tech's success, each of which could, and should, be considered when we're looking for solutions to today's educational crisis.

Now let's look beyond the material aspects of a new school, the physical plant, the brand new desks and equipment. As a totally new institution, the Tech had no baggage of an existing school culture. What happens in most schools, and did eventually at BTI, is that the older students operate by an unwritten code that prescribes how students interact with each other, how students interact with their teachers, how students interact with the institution and with the outside world. That school culture gets passed down from the crop of older students to the new students. In far too many of Bermuda's schools, that culture is one of anti-learning, where students who do well are labelled, derogatorily, as geeks or nerds. The "in crowd" culture is one where the prime values are of clothes, hairstyles, rough or hip talk, and bikes. The effect of this culture is that it works against good education and discourages any striving for excellence.

At the Tech, there was no pre-existing culture. And the excitement most of us experienced drove us to take pride in our school (we were actually building parts of it). We took pride in our vocational and academic achievements. We took pride in our prowess on the sports field. The school's culture of engagement and excellence and success started with us and was very much pro-education in its broadest sense.

Now the main reason for that may well have been that the vocational training being delivered at the Tech was focused on the trades - a "boy thing". Whatever the reason, the result was that all the distractions that tend to be triggered or exacerbated by the presence of girls were eliminated, at least during the school day. For those hours of the school day, our hormones weren't driving us to distraction with trying to impress, attract, amuse, hoodwink or woo the girls. Numerous studies show that boys and girls have different rates and styles of cognitive development. It just makes eminent educational sense to separate boys from girls during their adolescent learning years.

Their priorities, for the most part, were educating and caring for the students. They cared about us, were interested in us, tried to stimulate our development at every turn ? they had a stake in our success. There was also a high proportion of non-Bermudian teachers who brought a progressive approach to education and discipline, versus the punitive approach that pervades Bermudian culture. The foreign teachers also had fewer pre-conceived expectations that might have stunted our potential.

Think about it. Too many of our students just aren't motivated ? particularly our male students of high school age. Motivation is the key to all endeavours. When students are not motivated, even the best of teaching has difficulty getting through. When students motivated they will stampede over their teachers in their quest for knowledge. What better way to motivate our boys then to let them experience success.

This is a harsh society. The competition for success and recognition is fierce. You see it every day in fashions, decorations on motorbikes and cars, conspicuous consumption, grand houses ? everyone wants to be recognised, to be validated. Our community climate, however, is a punitive one more so than a nurturing one. We notice and pick on every little mistake ? in our families, in our homes, in our schools, in the newspaper, on the radio.

If we can provide adolescent boys with opportunities for little successes, for self validation, we will give them a powerful antidote to the ragging they get directly and indirectly every day in this little pressure cooker of an Island.

Let me take this thought further:

At the Tech, one of the first projects I remember was hammering a flat piece of copper sheet into an ashtray. To be sure, some of the ashtrays we produced didn't look so sharp - mine was grotesque. But when it was done I took it home, and the very next time my dad lit a cigarette, my Mom put my ashtray in his hands. I was so proud, and I couldn't wait for the next project.

But to make those ashtrays, we got to do many of the things that really interest adolescent boys. We got to hammer to our heart's content (boys do like to be beating on things, don't they?). That metalwork class was filled with the tink - tink - tink as we shaped the copper.

We got to play with fire because we had to anneal that copper sheet many times so it would be soft enough to shape. We got to wear shop aprons and goggles ? we looked industrious. We learned to saw metal; to file it, and polish it. And we to learn about angles and curves, and the chemistry of metal polishes. We began to grasp the need for plans, and steps, and sequences.

Don't you see? Every project for our hands captured our interest, and motivated us to use our brains. We were eager to learn welding so we studied metallurgy and more chemistry. And for arc welding we wanted to know about electricity, which led to physics and magnetism and calculations using Ohm's Law.

We were making our own drawing boards for technical drawing classes. So in addition to the fine woodworking skills of kerfs and expansion slots and chamfers, we were soaking up the techniques of measuring lines and angles, and learning the value of geometry and algebra. Then in wanting to describe our projects, our interest in English and grammar, was lifted ? not sky high to be sure, but we began to see the worth of speaking and writing well.

Let me make one final quote from Colin Palmer's research:

"The depth of learning increases when new concepts and skills are useful for meeting current needs or problems. This allows for immediate application of the theory to a practical situation."

These four ingredients are missing from our current educational efforts. While the efforts to include technical training at the Bermuda College are laudable, the programmes there are essentially add-ons to a student's achievements in high school. We need to reach Bermuda's males at a far earlier age, preferably as they are leaving elementary school. Why? Because it is in middle and high school that their interests are diverted, that their attention to humdrum academics flags, that their motivation dies.

We have in the past looked down our noses at vocational schooling (remember, the Tech was originally for "academically challenged" boys). However, according to Lorin Smith in a September '93 issue of RG Magazine, the Tech was pumping out "skilled technicians in the motor vehicle trades, design and construction industry, various engineering fields and other professions. Young men who attended that unique institution have gone on to become presidents of private firms, top civil servants, senior managers of banks, garages, Cable & Wireless, Belco, Telco (BTC) as well as entrepreneurs who operate their own businesses."

This vocational school, the Bermuda Technical Institute, has left an unmistakable stamp of excellence on virtually every profession this Island has to offer (and many it does not). Don't get me wrong; not every boy who went into the Tech's doors came out a raging success. But Tech graduates were successful enough to prompt these words in a 1963 Royal Gazette editorial, "?although its objectives were probably deliberately misunderstood by many people in the initial stages, there is no doubt now that the Technical Institute is a permanent and most valuable fixture in our education system."

Most valuable? Yes! Permanent? Unfortunately no. However, now is the time to look to the re launching of a technical school. I am hearing suggestions that the now empty site of the old Berkeley Institute be resurrected as a daytime technical school for boys, and a nighttime technical training centre open to the public.

This would be an opportunity to set up the ideal conditions I identified for success. Now some in our community may resort to calling this another pie-in-the-sky fancy. What makes anyone think, they might ask, that it would work?

They want proof?! Look around this room at the successful crafts persons, tradespeople, entrepreneurs, schoolteachers, legislators, business leaders ? there's your proof. We don't have to depend on speculation or wishful thinking. We have the evidence - right here, in the flesh.

These graduates of Bermuda Technical Institute are our very own proof that if we provide

1) A fresh-start school,

2) For boys only,

3) With high level technical and academic training,

4) Using teachers that treat students as humans with potential.

The results can be overwhelmingly positive.

So let's make it happen. Our public school system is in crisis. That should cause our educators to welcome a model that has been proven to succeed. And, just in time. Education has a new Minister, one who knows from her own experience the value of alternatives to the existing system.

Let's send a delegation of Tech old boys to see her and move her to our way of thinking.

Why not? We are here not just to celebrate the past fifty years; those first 50 years were just the beginning. They shut down the Technical Institute, but they can't shut us down. Our success so far is nothing compared with what we're going to do.

I'm going to stop talking now. It's time for action. When we next gather, in ten years or five or two, let it be on the occasion of the opening of a new school, a reincarnation of the Bermuda Technical Institute.

The Tech should rise again! Should? The Tech shall rise again.

Today at the Cathedral Hall at 5.30,, the Bermuda Technical Institute alumni will reenact the typical school assembly they experienced from 1956 through 1968. All alumni are welcome and school ties and crests are available for purchase.