It’s September and Bermuda’s children crept unwillingly back to school this month. Doubtless many of them are already counting the days until the Christmas holidays begin — as are their parents, although for altogether different reasons.

The start of a new school year means more than just new classes, new haircuts and backpacks bursting with newly purchased supplies. It also means the resurgence of some familiar old criticisms about how Bermuda’s education system is letting down both students and the wider community.

At this time of year there’s a tendency to reflexively critique Bermuda’s schools, both public and private, as being unrelenting enemies of achievement and excellence; to collectively label them as bastions of mediocrity and lowest-common denominator standards.

Certainly it’s hard to argue with the oft-heard contention that those who left Bermuda’s schools 20, 30 or 40 years ago were better educated, better read and far better placed to take their places in the local economy than those graduating now.

But to lay the blame for the systematic decline in the quality of education solely at the feet of our schools and the teachers who work in them is to be wilfully blind to our own roles in this downward trend.

Are there some inadequate teachers and administrators in both the public and private education systems? Even some wholly incompetent ones? Of course. But the problem goes well beyond a relative handful of obviously deficient individuals: it’s actually predicated on an entire philosophy of education which is increasingly out of step with both the needs of our children and the broader Bermudian society.

However, when it comes to even Bermuda education’s most self-evident failings, not only is there a general lack of accountability in our schools there’s a lack of actual demand for accountability beyond routine calls for this or that individual educator’s head.

As parents, voters and employers, as Bermuda residents with vested interests in both the long-term wellbeing of our children and the future development of this community, we are all culpable of tacit acquiescence in the stagnation of our education system.

The watering-down of standards and expectations for Bermuda students has been under way for decades now.

Yet despite abundant evidence of an ongoing decline in educational attainment, there have been no wholesale calls to reverse this dire trend. Despite the fact there is a direct correlation between poor school results and income inequality and associated social challenges in later life, there have been no widespread and consistent demands for root-and-branch reform and restructuring.

For instance, there can be little doubt that a growing dependence on multiple-choice tests at the expense of written exams and essays — a situation by no means unique to Bermuda – has taken a toll on the ability of our children to think in critical and creative ways.

As a consequence the ability to analyse, evaluate and interpret information is becoming a lost art to a growing number of Bermudian students.

This is happening although solid groundings in logical thought and deductive reasoning — along with the ability to express oneself in clear, concise English — are becoming increasingly indispensable in every Bermuda workplace plugged into the global economy.

For the reality is many young Bermudians are now not just competing against one another when they enter the workforce, they are competing against the world. And they have to adhere to world-class standards in order to survive.

Of course, they must learn to think critically and analytically, to challenge commonplace and deeply held assumptions, not just to ensure their own success but also Bermuda’s. Progress, after all, is based on a constant reappraisal of the ways in which a community lives, on reapplying moral and ethical constants to evolving socio-economic conditions.

In this instantaneous digital age living in the now is often seen as more important than reflecting on the past or contemplating the future. Given such an ephemeral broader culture, one largely built on the instantly downloadable and the instantly disposable, it is clearly more important than ever for Bermuda’s students to be introduced to lasting and transcendent values which they can apply throughout their lives to ever-changing circumstances.

Clear, that is, to the relative handful of well-informed and well-intentioned educational reformers among us: because most of the criticisms levelled against the public and private school systems at this time of year, loud, strident and habitually unfocused, amount to so much seasonal background noise.

It’s becoming as common to hear every September as the trudging sound new pairs of shoes make on Bermuda’s sidewalks as the kids reluctantly drag themselves back to school. And it just as commonly goes unnoticed and unremarked on.