No matter what you think about today's education system, the fact is that few students dared disobey some of yesterday's high school principals.

Educational icons like Mr. F.S. Furbert and Mr. Joseph Marshall, at the Berkeley Institute and Warwick Academy, respectively, ruled "their'' institutions like strong men at a time when there were only two academic public schools.

Students whose parents pushed for any level of real academic success looked to those two schools, and those two men, for results.

In almost stark contrast to today's experience, their iron grip on discipline was only matched by an intense desire to see that every one of their students could be the best they could be.

Banker, Ms Sheila Dickinson, you could hear from almost anyone, is a hardworking, fun-loving, friendly woman with real talent in the business world who is now managing a department of nine that oversees billions of dollars of funds.

We could repeat what others in the business world say, that she is very fair and very capable.

But, what they don't know about, we can reveal. As a fifth year Berkeley student, she was a solo student-rights activist. She felt she was a rebel with a cause.

She made it her year-long quest to challenge Mr. Furbert's edict that students were not allowed to leave the school premises during their lunch period.

Her challenge, she said, was based on the fact that he would take his children, also students at the school, off the premises to lunch at the Green Lantern Restaurant on Serpentine Road.

The indignant student just didn't think that was setting the right example for a policy that didn't seem fair to the students. Her campaign of civil disobedience was peaceful, if somewhat confrontational.

She would present herself at the landmark restaurant, in full view of Mr.

Furbert, to order her own lunch. Needless to say, this was not a course of action that went down well.

Yet after school detention, on a virtual regular basis, she was never deterred from returning to the restaurant to make her point. Mr. Furbert, she believes, never fully appreciated her position. And on that score, she's probably right.

Today, a lot of people do appreciate her point of view, at least on banking matters. Ms Dickinson, whose formal education stopped after her Berkeley graduation, is today the Bermuda Commercial Bank's (BCB) general manager, global custody.

That's not bad after taking her first job in banking as a teller at the Bermuda National Bank, several years after leaving Berkeley.

She has been on the job at BCB for almost two years, after managing portfolio administration and managing the trading desk at Fidelity International, during a near 14-year tenure, having started as an administrator.

She also worked at Office Equipment Ltd. as a bookkeeper. It took her a year to move from teller to teller supervisor during the National Bank days. She admitted with a laugh: "Yes, I guess I have had some quick promotions during my career. That's probably because I had a tendency to run my mouth.'' Life could have been different. She was pregnant with her first child right after high school. The 17-year-old mother was married by 18 and had two other children. She was 23 when she entered the work force.

And when she did, she was the same student who wanted the principal to understand that there was another point of view.

"A lot of people never do it, but I was the type that would approach my managers and tell them when there was a problem, when a policy may not have been totally thought out, and what the ramifications were.

"It was for the good of the company and the good of the staff. That was my only concern.

"I never thought about upward mobility, but I always looked at ways to make things work more efficiently.'' She sees the Island's banks taking bolder and bolder steps in their global participation and believes that more and more Bermudians are able to participate in that success.

"You will certainly see opportunities at BCB,'' she reflected. "I am a prime example.

"Bermudians have become better trained, even over the last decade in this industry. I remember when I was at Fidelity, there were few companies that would help you get trained. Outside the banks, there were only companies like Fidelity and Bacardi where you could get training in investment administration.

"But there are a lot of companies that I've seen in the last year, who have come here and have set up and found trained Bermudians.'' Ms Dickinson has had the benefit of job-related training through companies she has worked with, companies like the BCB and Fidelity.

She's an optimist. Her business view of the Independence issue is that no matter what happens, Bermuda will survive.

"Because we have been self-governing for such a long time, people in the investment community and the insurance industry are not likely to run. They trust this jurisdiction and know of its substance. I'm sure many would stick with us.

"Let's face it, there are potential Bermuda clients who have been identified as those who are waiting in the wings, waiting until after the referendum. But I don't think that you will see masses fleeing.'' Most of her business day involves establishing proposals for potential new business or reviewing new business, vetting prospectuses and agreements.

Her business involves travelling to meet with clients and talking to those in the local market place.

The woman who, as a teenaged girl, took on Mr. Furbert, the first Bermudian principal of the Berkeley, remembers the battle well -- and seems to have learned from it, although not the lesson one might expect.

Mrs. Dickinson was asked if Mr. Furbert's position might have been that he felt responsible for the students, in the absence of their parents? Perhaps he would have had no objections to other parents treating their children to lunch at a restaurant, by taking them off the school premises, as he had done. Maybe safety of the students and accountability to the parents were at the root of his rule? She hesitated, then conceded: "I never looked at it that way.'' And upon this revelation, she offered another.

"Okay, I was a bit of a rebel. Looking back, now, I guess, I may have been misguided. But Mr. Furbert couldn't convince me of that back then. He never really listened to my point. But I spent a lot of time in detention.

"He was a man whom I respected a great deal, but he didn't offer me any real explanation, just a lot of punishment, because I never gave up. Every day I would get in trouble, because I would be at the restaurant ready to make my point. It was an ongoing thing throughout my last year in school. I honestly thought I was doing the right thing.

"In business, it is not always wrong to be a rebel, but you have to pick your spots better than I did in school.'' FROM TELLER TO MANAGER -- Mrs Sheila Dickinson