few things about the purpose of schooling. Schools should be designed to teach the young and to develop each and every student to the maximum of the student's capacity. Teachers are not baby sitters nor are they social workers, they are there to teach. True, schools often have to deal with social problems because they are not addressed in the home but educating the young must come first in school. School years are not, or should not be, fun time but learning time. Today's world is difficult enough to navigate without young people being short-changed by their schools.

Students have a right to an education. What they do not have a right to, no matter how much they may demand it, is school certification of their mastery of subjects which they have not mastered. Students should not be promoted or graduated unless they achieve proficiency. Too often we pass through the school system students who have done little more than attend the school and then we wonder why they fail in the real world. Right now we all have in our midst young people who have great difficulty reading or writing but who have been deprived and passed through Bermuda's school system. Some have found it difficult to learn because of a lack of discipline in the schools.

Before they can teach subjects, schools must first achieve discipline. Without both personal and group discipline at CedarBridge there will be little likelihood of much learning. School is perparation for the demands of life and not for some fanciful world of self expression. Without discipline all of the dire predictions about CedarBridge will be fulfilled.

Yet we suspect that there are already preparations to follow the North American lead and gear CedarBridge to a low common denominator, the level at which the most students can "succeed'' with the least effort so that the school results will look good and the teachers can be lauded as successful and proficient.

Bermuda has spent millions on the new school to provide the best of physical facilities. Indeed, Government has spent so much on the new school that the Leader of the Opposition has been complaining about how lavish the school is.

But the physical plant is only a shell and will come to nothing if the school does not teach.

It is distressing that after years of planning there is now a scramble to staff CedarBridge only a month before its opening. We would have thought that the top priority should have been staffing, good staffing, to ensure a good education, yet the priority appears to have been the physical plant. It seems to us that successive Ministers of Education, notably Gerald Simons and Clarence Terceira, have been more concerned with demonstrating that the Government would build a first class facility for Bermudians than they have been with providing a solid education.

Right now we seem to have the "cart before the horse'' and that will not make for a good beginning.