Dear Sir,

The recent Royal Gazette editorial titled “There are no more islands” was a classic piece of writing which underscores our economic reality in the world and an inconvenient truth about our current socio/politico status — particularly when we consider we have to move forward from where we are or sink as a social dynamic, drowned by the economic forces while being stillborn in a world of globalism.

Unfortunately, as a country we emerged from a history of elitism directed by the preservation of an aristocracy by design, which shows in our country’s educational model — a country is as good as the education that it affords, its people and nothing more typifies our national attitude towards education than the history of what we knew for many years as the St Brendan’s Hospital.

During the mid-19th century there was a major effort spawned by the likes of William Wilberforce, to educate what had become the subjugated masses of persons in India, the Caribbean and North Americas, Bermuda included.

The idea of assimilation of Africans and native Americans through education during that period was promoted but firmly rejected in Bermuda.

The intended international college was stymied and the structure built to be the college became an asylum instead.

Education was to remain a privilege for those who could truly afford it and it became a means of social control and economic stratification of our Island.

Years of national budgets and even the brags about balanced and surplus budgets only serve to prove how little as a country we invested in education.

We grew an economy that had a university degree as a baseline requirement, with a student population that had no guarantees or commitment to sustain them to gain those needed degrees.

Families, the middle class in particular, sacrificed and struggled to push their children through private schools and supported them at great expense to assure their offspring would be competitive in an increasingly globalised environment.

But that was not the national ethos, for those who could not afford it or did not have the family economic structures it was a destiny doomed to the bottom of society with fault laid upon their backs.

As a country our genius grew from our experience in the market and our social stratification resembles the positions held in the market place.

We have had movements intended to bring a balance but truthfully nothing succeeded in any grand fashion and the progress while undeniable was weak leaving a two tarred structure with an intellectual divide.

Truth is we have always depended and survived off our position and ability to service needs in the broader international community, it’s not a new imperative for this 20 square mile Island. What is current is to decipher in a changing world what needs we can satisfy and bring enough revenue to sustain us and provide a vehicle for upward mobility.

As a leadership the issue truly isn’t a protest item, rather its an item requiring innovative thinking.

One of the residual problem of our two tarred social economic construct is that the tools of the beleaguered has been protest movements, unionism and the likes.

In battle you need a sword and a shield and the weapons of the beleaguered has always been just a shield not a sword.

Dr Eva Hodgson in her letters typifies this point when she consistently calls for the rich and powerful to relinquish economic might to assist the poor and disadvantaged.

No matter how noble the request the reality is and will always be that it will take a market formula created and delivered from out of the beleaguered to interrupt the economic balance.

It will require market type leadership by benevolent entrepreneurs who have a social conscience and have the ability to reach back and pull people along. That market approach type leadership would be more like a sword for the beleaguered and I should add that it is not exclusive, proverbially it doesn’t have to be Dr Ewart Brown it could be a Dr Grant Gibbons that could have provided this leadership, if he were inclined.

In today’s context it will take a global initiative that we as Bermudian leaders can comprehend for the world, packaged and delivered as a product of our ingenuity that would bring pride to us politically and reward us economically. This notion of fighting for a government to rule as an end game is archaic and irrelevant for our times.

We need a global imperative for which we can become known and supported as an international mission if we want to earn the stripes on our collar and have any dignity for being called leaders for a government of the 21st century.

KHALID WASI