getting more and more strange.

Let's start at the beginning.

The decision to change Bermuda's education system in a wholesale way came about because it was clearly desirable to do something to help young men, especially young black men, who were "falling through the cracks''. Basically these were young men with social problems or with learning problems who were being defeated by the present school system and left behind in modern Bermuda.

The decision to offer the help was admirable. However, compared to other countries, the overall results produced by the old system were not bad.

Instead of deciding to provide the needed help for those who were "falling through the cracks'' it was decided to tear apart the entire system of education at a cost of millions and millions of dollars. In a wrongheaded way, someone decided, against advice, to adopt an outdated comprehensive system and a mega school concept which the public did not want for Bermuda, thus creating anger, discontent and general confusion in the entire Country.

The Ministry also decided to abolish respected special schools, which parents were demanding a generation ago, and to include the students in the socially beneficial mainstream. Some parents of children in special schools are happy with a concept which includes their children but some are not. The children will adapt as children do, but there are real fears that the Ministry will not provide adequately for special needs in the mainstream schools and that the students will simply be ignored by busy teachers and left behind.

There are also some who fear that teachers will adapt the entire class to those with special needs. Some believe that schools are places of learning and should not be used for social engineering.

The education changes led Warwick Academy to quit the system. They caused the political defeat of the then Minister of Education, the Hon. Gerald Simons.

They alarmed parents and caused a flight of students to private education.

If the education changes were made the subject of a referendum they would be soundly defeated. There is hardly a private person in Bermuda who supports the idea, even after modifications to include Berkeley Institute as a second senior school, along with the mega school. People keep hoping the Ministry will come to its senses.

The Minister keeps making the point that the physical facilities at the mega school will be good. No-one has ever had much doubt about that. But that is not the point. The concern is not for the students' comfort but for what the Ministry is going to do to their minds and their social welfare. Now the Ministry of Education seems to have lost total touch with the reality of just why they decided on a wholesale reform of education. They have forgotten that they moved to help those "falling through the cracks'' and they have also forgotten that there was great concern over stigmatising students.

Thus they are going to place the very students they set out to help, those who are in danger of falling through the cracks, in a separate school, Woodlands, thereby announcing its failures and putting a stamp of failure on the students. That is exactly what has happened in the past to students who attended the schools which were seen as being at the bottom of the pile.

The Ministry seems to have done a turnabout and decided to both abandon and exclude the same young men it set out to help. It may be that widespread public concern over dangers at the mega school has led to this decision. The Ministry may now be saying that its mega school will be safe because it is going to segregate the troublesome students at Woodlands.

If the Ministry is now gearing up to teach the easily teachable, then let's say so. But don't mislead the public by talking about saving young men and then throwing all the problem students together in a stigmatised school where more problems are likely to be created.

One other thing. For sanity's sake let's not agree, as has been suggested, to send drug-prone students to Phoenix House in New York City so that our young Island men can be well schooled in the big city trades of gangs, guns and drugs.

Who will rid us of this Ministry?