The controversy over the renaming of St. David's Primary School may appear to be a storm in a teacup, but it goes to the heart of issues about identity and community pride.

This newspaper has always been sceptical about the validity of renaming schools and other public buildings, not because it is wrong to honour individuals, but because too often it has been part of a "rebranding" exercise which fails to get to the heart of the problem which a particular institution may be suffering from.

That's why the name change of St. Brendan's to the Mid Atlantic Wellness Institute made no sense; the idea was to remove the stigma of a mental hospital, but without meaningful change within the institution, MAWI would end up with the same stigma as St. Brendan's. Meaningful change would have removed the stigma without a change of name and paint colour.

The change of name at St. David's to Hilton Richardson is different, because St. David's, commonly considered to be one of the better Government primary schools, does not bear a particular stigma.

Instead, the change is aimed at honouring the school's first principal, who by all accounts is deserving of recognition.

But the change is controversial for two reasons: the pride that St. David's Islanders have in "their" school and the manner in which the change has been made.

To take the latter point first, the school community feels that this decision has been imposed on them from above with little or no consultation.

This is worrying, because this attitude from the Ministry of Education is exactly the problem that the Hopkins Report identified as afflicting the education system on a broader scale. In other words, the Ministry consistently decided what was best for schools and students and imposed its decisions on them through a series of fiats, utterly failing to involve the schools themselves in the decision-making process.

This newspaper has already raised concerns about the lack of consultation in the current reform process. The St. David's decision is a small example that suggests the leopard has not changed its spots. And if that's the case, then the reforms are doomed, no matter how well-meaning the changes that are proposed.

As to the name change itself, it seems pretty clear that the St. David's community is perfectly happy with the school's name.

St. David's is a close knit community, and no doubt the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents of children at the school also attended it. In that sense it gives permanence to the community, when, especially in these times, very little is certain. Even more than most places, St. David's Islanders see the school as belonging to them and they have real pride in St. David's as a singular entity.

This is a very different situation from the renaming of Spice Valley (itself an attempt to change the alleged stigma of Warwick Sec) to TN Tatem. In that case, a meaningless generic name was changed to one that had real meaning.

Mr. Richardson deserves recognition and as the parents have suggested, this could be done by naming the school library or hall after him. But there is no need to fix something that ain't broke.