mistakes which have caused us to poorly serve students for some years now.

Basically, Bermuda, like a number of other places, has confused the role of schools. Schools are to teach academics and standards and character. Schools are not babysitting services nor are they social workers. The social worker function is necessary but should be carried out by Health and Social Services, perhaps with referrals from the schools. Teachers are there to teach and that must be their primary function.

Yet, when teachers teach they are often criticised by parents' groups with narrow interests. Some of the people in these groups produce difficult or disinterested children and then blame the teachers when they try to exercise control in order to carry out their primary job -- teaching.

Teachers then have difficulty teaching because of students who learn defiance from their parents. These same parents blame the teachers and the schools and the "system'' when their children do poorly. The truth is that most of these children would do poorly anyway because their parents condition them to defiance, sloth, indulgence and television, and not to the discipline which leads to learning. Today's students too often have been taught at home to defy authority and not to be accountable for their own actions. These students behave badly in school and then run home, complain about the teacher and the parents run off in every direction complaining about the teacher, the school and the "system'' instead of agreeing that their child needs to learn both school lessons and behaviour lessons.

Today's students too often do not look on learning as an advantage and something which will lead them to success. They look on school as a time they have to tolerate and they defy teachers to make them learn. Some of this attitude has come about because we led young people to believe that they will be given a piece of paper which says they are a success no matter what they do. The schools fail because they do not demand success but reward people who, in fact, are failures. They then pass people on to life as an adult with precious little preparation, citations for subjects they have not mastered, and an expectation they have not been equipped to meet. That leads only to frustration and anger and, ultimately, to revenge on the system.

Why does this all happen? Because groups of parents complain and insist that if the students fail the school then the teachers in the school have failed.

Instead of thinking that there is a standard their child could not or did not bother to meet, they blame the school. Very soon boards, and headmasters and teachers learn that the complaints can cost them dearly. So, they lower the standards, hand out the unearned credentials, cheat the students, especially the good ones, and begin babysitting.

We think that is exactly what is going to be perpetuated in the new mega- schools and it is wrong.