That the rapid and general spread of knowledge in our days has rendered necessary an education as thorough and extended as possible. -- Berkeley Educational Society, 1881 The class of 1900 was ill equipped to compete in the exciting and demanding new century, to savour its fruits or to contribute to its making. Most of the students were only 13 years old and their schooling was over.

It was the prevailing opinion of the Colonial legislature then that secondary education was unnecessary for girls, who would soon be married and bearing children, or for poor boys who would have no use for it in the working class.

Secondary education was for the privileged few, university a dream for a fraction of the few.

Today's state-of-the-art CedarBridge Academy and the Bermuda College were as inconceivable as men walking on the moon. State-of-the-art in 1900 was slates and kerosene lamps, outdoor privies and tin cups on the school water tank.

There were some 30 schools in Bermuda in 1900. Most were one-room schoolhouses run on a shoestring by dedicated, under-paid teachers. All schools were private, 24 of them aided in varying degrees by the Colonial Treasury and small amounts from the Parish Vestries, Lodges and Friendly Societies.

All schools were segregated. Attendance was not compulsory.

Free public education was unknown. A child had to pay a thrupence or a sixpence each week. Even such a small sum was a hardship for many poor families, prompting the Inspector of Schools to write in his report for 1900: "Is it asking too much at the beginning of the 20th Century that schools attended by the very poor children throughout the islands may be made free?'' While Government aided schools, it was parents and teachers who managed the schools. At the turn of the century, two groups of concerned parents set for the future.

As the mother of six girls, Mrs. Grosvenor Tucker was highly motivated. With other parents of daughters, she founded a school based on the novel idea that girls were just as smart as boy. In 1894, the Bermuda High School for Girls opened in two gloomy rooms on Reid Street. Presided over by the awesome Miss Tothill, who had been recruited from revolutionary Cheltenham Ladies College in England, BHS offered a rigorous academic programme.

"When I was at BHS, Miss Rose Gosling was headmistress,'' Mrs. Joy Bluck Waters recalled. "She was a dear lady, except when you misbehaved! The teachers were fabulous. I was at the same level as the English girls when I went abroad to school.'' Another concerned group, the Berkeley Educational Society, had been working for some 18 years to create an academic secondary school open to black children. Its founding committee was composed of prominent black men, including schoolmaster Joseph Henry Thomas, lawyer Engenius Jackson, printer Samuel Parker and MCP William Joell. Its first chairman was the Rev. Mark James, white rector of Pembroke and Devonshire.

"All 11 members of the founding Committee were militant proponents of racially integrated schooling,'' writes historian and educator Kenneth Robinson, OBE. They contemplated a school which would look to the better education of all the people, as distinct from that of coloured people only.'' The Berkeley Institute opened its doors in 1897 at the new Samaritan Lodge in Hamilton under the inspiring leadership of George Da Costa. Its first class consisted of 15 boys and 12 girls. Unfortunately, only one white child attended the first class and Berkeley did not become an integrated school as hoped. Instead it become a symbol of black pride and produced many Bermudian leaders, teachers and scholars.

Over the coming decades Berkeley and BHS would be visible, constant reminders of the false premises of Bermuda's discriminatory, segregated, system of education.

Other schools would come along as the century progressed. The Excelsior, run by Miss Edith Crawford, was one of many beloved little schools. Sandys High School, resolutely revived in the 1920s by Alice Scott, brought opportunity to children isolated in the West End, in an era when the most common form of transportation was the feet. And later in the century Howard Academy which took the overflow from the Berkeley which had limited spaces.

In the first half of the century there was not a great, grassroots outcry against the deficiencies of Bermuda's educational system, but single strong voices were constantly raised on the issues, most often by black men educated abroad such as Dr. Eustace Cann and the charismatic Dr. E.F. Gordon. Teachers began to organise, forming the first union in 1919. They petitioned for better salaries and compulsory school attendance.

Historian and teacher Dr. Eva Hodgson state the Government practised what she termed "financial strangulation of Negro education'' during this time, aiding white school far more than black schools.

Free education Dr. Gordon's 1948 White Paper Petition to the British Secretary of State included a section on education that argued for the core issues of integration and free public education. It described Bermuda's educational standards as "low for whites and lower for the coloured'', school condition as "crowded'' teachers salaries as "too poorly paid to attract the best brains'', and vocational training as "insufficient''.

In 1948 primary education was made free by Act of Parliament. This seminal legislation embodied the principles of the public's right to education and the government's responsibility to provide it. Free secondary education and future financing, which would grow into many millions, logically and inevitably flowed from this Act. The compassionate school inspector of 1900 would have been gratified. However, the Act also began the erosion of direct parental control.

Howard Academy Howard was one of many examples in this century of the value Bermudian parents and students place on a good education, the sacrifices they are willing to made to get it, and the power of a great teacher to transform lives.

"I went to Howard in the mid-1950s,'' Kenneth Richardson recalled, "and during the five years I was there we had dances every weekend to raise money to pay the teachers and buy books. There was never enough money. We had no janitorial services. The kids cleaned the halls and classrooms themselves, mowed the grass and cut the hedges. The parents and students constructed the new building themselves.'' "I do not know of anyone who went to Howard who does not treasure their time there,'' Mr. Richardson said.

"Most of us ere from working class families,''he called. "The headmaster Edward DeJean, was inspiring. A role model. One of the great things he did was through sport, which he used as a sort of morale booster. I remember he used to tell us that we won a football game with Berkeley through brains not brawn, and so we could beat him in the classroom too. He coached the Devonshire Colts.

"The team was mostly Howard Academy boys, with three or four students from Berkeley. The games drew the largest crowds! We used to play Goose Gosling's team, the Ramblers. This gave us some social contact with white boys, which is what Mr. DeJean intended.'' Segregation The 1953 Inter-Racial Select Committee Report opened a chink in the wall of segregation athwart the road to the future. It recommended the creation of a technical school that would be open to all. This was also the year that Queen's University Extension courses were first offered, available without discrimination.

However, the House Report termed integration a "radical departure'' that would cause "social difficulties and resentments''. It rubber stamped the status quo "until changes in social thinking should invite reconsideration.

The Hon. W. L. Tucker, MCP believed the opposite. "He felt'' writes Dr.

Hodgson in her book Second Class Citizens, First Class Men, " that as long as a dual school system was perpetuated a change in social thinking was not even possible.

Scarcely had the ink dried on the House report, when the US Supreme Court declared "separate but equal'' was "inherently unequal'' and about a decade later the US Civil Rights Bill was signed into law by President Johnson.

During this time, television brought the American civil rights movement to Bermuda. Scene of virulent hatred against America Black children trying to enroll in white schools in the South brought the issue of Bermuda's segregated schools into sharp, prominent focus.

Integration Bermuda's schools began to react unilaterally. Mount. St. Agnes, a private Catholic school, announced integration plans in 1960. In 1961, Mr. John Plowman, chairman of the Board of Warwick Academy announced plans to institute an entrance exam for its secondary school, open to all. Whitney and Gilbert Institute desegregated in 1964. That same year the separate black and white teachers unions merged to form the Amalgamated Union of Teachers with Dr. Eva Hodgson as its President.

Official social thinking was evolving as well. The 1963 Plowman Report, prepared by Bermudians, recommended desegregation in the schools, and strongly promoted education and training as the solution to problems of disaffected youth and unemployment. Sir Henry Tucker stated in 1964: "People of both races must be given equal opportunity to succeed, to become educated and have a chance of employment.'' The landmark 1965 Amendment to the Education Act, 1954 officially outlawed segregation in all Bermuda's schools.

The 1965 Act reshaped the schools into zones for attendance at primary schools and ordered all age schools to separate their primary and secondary departments. School leaving age was raised to 15 years and secondary education was made free. Parents could apply for places for their children at any secondary school, places to be determined through a transfer examination. The building programme started in the '50s was accelerated and focused on neglected black schools. Two new schools were in the pipeline: Warwick Secondary and the Sixth Form Centre.

By the end of the decade, Senior Education Officer Dr. Kenneth Robinson could state that Bermuda had "the finest facilities and physical plant''.

Government Leader Sir Henry Tucker said: "Never before in our history have our educational facilities been more admirable. The school leaving age is now 16 and standards are steadily rising.'' Amalgamation Upheaval However, integration had not moved ahead as hoped. Black parents had entered their children into all white schools, but white parents shied away from black schools. Statics showed predominately white schools were accepting black students in their secondary departments but integration at the primary level was not working.

Education Permanent Secretary Stanley Gascoigne, Director of Education D.J.

Williams, Senior Education Officer Dr. Kenneth Robinson and Inspector of Schools Dr. Marjorie Bean were committed to integration. In 1971 Government backed the Board of Education's recommendation to amalgamate the primary schools.

Historian and teacher Barbara Hunter notes, "There was quite a lot of opposition to the schemes . ..charges that Government was playing politics with the children. Nevertheless, there was widespread agreement that the situation could not be allowed to drift on...that it was most important that children of the two races should be getting to know each other at an early age before prejudices had taken too much hold.'' Warwick reluctantly agreed and moved its entire primary department over to the Ord Road School, which became Paget Primary. Whitney amalgamated its primary department with Harrington Sound School. Saltus agreed to all Government's requirements, including merging its primary department with Northlands, whose students were mostly from black, working class families.

However, its trustees balked at handing over control of the primary department and their buildings, for which Government would pay only a peppercorn rent.

They announced they would become a private, fee paying school in September 1971. An uproar ensued and some staff and trustees resigned in protest.

Northlands amalgamated instead with Dellwood, which was all white at the time.

Sandys Grammar School absorbed Boaz Island School and was renamed Somerset Primary.

The Bermuda College The Bermuda College was created by Act of Parliament in 1974, amalgamating the Bermuda Technical Institute, the Academic Sixth Form Centre and the Bermuda Hotel and Catering College.

The college provides a tertiary educational stepladder of certificate programmes and Associate Degrees which can lead directly to employment or further education. Bermudians can train to recognised international standards, making them highly competitive for jobs in the local and international business sector, the local and global tourist industry, and technical businesses and trades here and abroad. It also provides a stepping stone to the professions, as Associate Degrees can be used as transfer credit to universities abroad.

The college developed strong, inter-active partnerships within the community.

As one instance, the college offered a permanent home to the Bermuda National Dance Theatre, which in turn teaches classes at the college. Corange Ltd.

recently donated $1 million that the college used to build a state-of-the-art science centre.

Bermuda College now occupies a 19-acre campus in Paget, which includes a Triple A, 3 diamond, teaching hotel resort. The college has a faculty of 75 teachers, 750 full-time students both from here and aboard, and some 3,000 part-time students. In the evenings, residents from all walks of life pursue their interests in a cornucopia of community courses.

School Reforms 1990-92 The last major change in Bermuda educational evolutions took place in 1990 - 1992. It was an extraordinary process that involved the whole community was involved in passionate debate. The single voices of the early century were amplified a thousand fold.

"There was general dissatisfaction among parents and educators and in the business community, '' recalled then Education Minister Gerald Simons, "Concerns had been expressed about performance in the schools, the transfer exam and a host of other things.

"The fundamental difference in the reforms of 1990 was the method used to bring them about,'' Mr. Simons said. "The whole community participated in determining the solutions and that was something that had not happened before.

The Educational Planning Teams (EPT's) were formed which were truly broadly representative of the community and that enabled government to bring about change.'' When the EPT's announced recommendations which would change Bermuda's system to a non-selective, more American style of education, public debate on the proposed reforms erupted. The transfer examination was to be abolished. There was general agreement that the eleven plus exam was held too early to determine a person's long term potential, and discriminated against young males who are considered to mature intellectually at a slower rate than girls.

Many believe doing poorly on the exam produced low self-esteem and a lack of enthusiasm for further schooling. Others believed abandoning the transfer exam would produce lower standards.

Controversial Changes Primary schools were to be grouped in five zones, each feeding into a four-year middle school at the end of Primary Six. The plan to turn Warwick Academy, a highly successful, well integrated academic high school, and Berkeley Institute, the pride of the black community, into middle school caused an uproar.

Middle schools would be "child centred'' and concentrate on personal and social development. Doubt was expressed that such a system was not rigorous enough serve the students well in the competitive, real world.

On leaving middle school, students would enter a one or two central, state-of-the-art, senior schools; as strongly recommended by consultant Stewart Toll.

There was heated public debate on the merits of small versus large secondary schools, the elimination of choice, the cost of building. Many parents feared lowered quality of education and possible gang violence in a large impersonal school. Statistics were produced showing the failure of large highs schools aboard. A telephone poll taken by the RG showed 75.5% of those polled were opposed to the single central school.

Devonshire Academy, whose location was needed for CedarBridge, resisted its demise but lost in the courts. Warwick Academy withdrew from the Government system altogether. Berkeley Institute r fused to become a comprehensive middle school. Eventually, Berkeley was made a central high school along with Cedar ridge, places in the two schools to be decided by random lot.

The final group of children in this century to be given equal opportunity was the physically challenged Under the reforms, they were to mainstreamed with the rest of Bermuda's young people.

The road from the little segregated, one-room schoolhouse to CedarBridge and the Bermuda College has been a long but remarkable one. On the occasion of the college's 25th anniversary, President Dr. George Cook declared: "We have earned our silver medal. We are going for the gold in the 21st century.'' On its way: CedarBridge Academy under construction in the mid-1990's Berkeley's beginnings: The original Berkeley Institute school-house.