Food for thought that is healthy must include some inconvenient truths. Education, or what has become known as public education, is a mix of private and public institutions at present.

It would be an interesting academic research if one were to chronicle education from its inception, starting from the 17th century onwards. I know from folklore that families such as that Robert Rich, the Earl of Warwick, brought special tutors to educate their young.

That may have been the trend for the landed gentry for most of the 17th century, aside from the Church. The early 19th century also saw the valuable contributions of the friendly societies that used their buildings for educational purposes and were a tremendous resource for the enslaved and recently freed individuals.

Interestingly, owing to the abolitionist movements in the late 18th and early 19th century, the idea of educating the formerly enslaved and Native Americans gained traction, resulting in what would become the Devonshire Academy. The idea was not a failure, but the established White oligarchy did not support it. Thus, it became the “lunatic asylum” in or around 1840, and was later named St Brendan’s Hospital.

Imagine where Bermuda would be intellectually if it had continued the internationally sponsored Devonshire College concept. Rather, 80 years later, in 1920, the Bermuda Union of Teachers was formed because of the lack of resources for education. Education was a privilege for the privileged. Although there have been improvements, unfortunately, education in 2025 is still for the privileged for the most part.

The funds committed to developing the Devonshire school were reused and split to facilitate The Berkeley Institute and Saltus Grammar School. Much of what I am writing is folklore. However, concerning education, two very distinct modes evolved from those institutions.

Education is a tool, and as a tool its function is to produce a product. As an observation, Berkeley was designed to make students useful vassals for society and its function — speak well, write well and coherently, perfectly suited to become future civil servants and administrators.

Memory and the ability to regurgitate are the principal attributes to excel in that learning environment: “By their fruits you will know them.” (Matthew 7: 15-20)

Saltus, on the other hand, seemed to produce another type of student, one more inclined to become the captain of industry. Critical thinking from trial and error that develops observation skills is a different type of learning. Leadership needs to have critical-thinking skills.

A full-bodied Bermuda needs both skill sets to prosper. The British naval presence at the Royal Naval Dockyard was a very important injection into the education and tradesmanship of Bermudians. A full debate on Bermuda’s educational needs raged after the Second World War. The result was the Nicholl Institute and, finally, the Bermuda Technical Institute, both funded by Albert Nicholl.

“Tech” was a hybrid for its time, desegregated years before formal desegregation, and provided the kind of education that stimulated critical and innovative thinking to all students, including Blacks. Soon, the new captains of the industries — whether the Department of Marine and Ports, transport, or the construction industry and telecommunications — almost overnight became these new technical students. So what did we do? We closed the school, never to be reopened.

The reason for the closure will be contested for ever, but it lay between the crosshairs of racism and the Board of Education led by Berkeleyites who believed the technical school got special attention.

This was a systematic blow to the thinking process of the entire community that returned the island to its pre-20th century designs, where Berkeley was created to fulfil the role of creating suitable civil servants. Look around; that's what we have. For the most part, they are the Civil Service of Bermuda. Yes, a few rebels here or there and some notable exceptions, but again, the rebels didn’t contribute much to the business industry because it was not their orientation.

Where do we go from here? To begin with, we need an intellectual dialogue about what education is and how it needs to be applied with an understanding of what product as a student is being generated. Are we creating parrots, robots or thinking creatures? Rather than grabbing systems from different countries because they seem to work in those countries, let’s understand how and why they work, and then adapt to what is achievable.

There are consequences for how education has been manipulated in Bermuda. We have created a new class war, which is a ticking time bomb that is already showing signs of exploding. Hopefully, I will cover the fallout in subsequent episodes.