he first phrase that springs to mind after a two-hour chat with Mike Charles on the failings and successes of Bermuda?s much-maligned public education system is ?old school?.

Everything about him ? from his solid handshake, neat spectacles and perfectly-pressed shirt to his outspoken views on the best way to discipline students ? evokes an era when adults were most definitely the ones in charge and children knew all too well the consequences of bad behaviour.

The general secretary of the Bermuda Union of Teachers, who took up his post in 1999, exudes authority and doesn?t mince his words. He?s not afraid to admit, for example, that he?d like to see force used on children who misbehave.

He openly advocates a return to what he terms ?the olden days? when ?you knew that if you did something wrong you were going to get, as we said in those days, licks and that was it?.

Nowadays, things are not quite so clear-cut for youngsters, parents and teachers in Bermuda.

A recent incident at CedarBridge Academy proves a case in point. A 14-year-old boy who made an obscene remark in class was suspended but allowed by the Ministry of Education to return almost immediately to lessons when his parents appealed against his punishment.

His sudden reappearance prompted teachers to call a crisis meeting and every single child at the school had to be sent home for the day as lessons were suspended.

It?s something which hopefully won?t happen again ? the suspension procedure is likely to be amended in the near future ? but it raises an important question about just who is calling the shots.

The boy eventually had his suspension overturned on what Mr. Charles believes was ?a technicality?. As a union man, he is a stickler for due process and accepts that was the only fair outcome for the case.

But he does see the incident as revealing a disturbing lack of respect for teachers from the Ministry. He claims that the school was not told the boy would be returning to class and that the female teacher involved ended up going home herself to defuse the situation.

?It shows a disregard for the school, for the administration of the school and for the teachers,? he says. He is even more angry that the chief education officer, Dr. Joseph Christopher, would not talk with staff that day.

?If as an employer you had 100 or something employees I would think that you would want to find out what was wrong,? he says. ?The least you can do is go and find out.?

Was it indicative of the Ministry?s attitude to teachers, I ask? He says that would be a sweeping generalisation but adds: ?We don?t get the kind of support from the Ministry that we should. It comes from the top.?

I ask if by that he means that Education Minister Terry Lister doesn?t back his members. ?I guess nobody expects much from the Minister because he doesn?t have anything to do with the day to day teaching in the schools,? he replies. ?There isn?t much of a connection with the teachers and the schools. From time to time we hear the Minister give these plaudits about how great teachers are. We get it by words but the actions are totally different. ?

He says Dr. Christopher and his officers are involved more closely with schools yet seem to lack empathy for teachers.

?I think in a lot of cases they are not mindful of those of us in teaching, ? he says. ?The generals make the decisions up top and the soldiers in the field are the last to know. What might seem to work from an office is not always workable on the field itself.?

He feels Government doesn?t do enough to publicise the public education system?s strengths or pupils? successes and too often shies away from talking about issues which might get a bad press.

?The Government has an information service,? he says. ?They should be responsible for putting it out. What happens is every time something gets in the paper it?s something negative and therefore they go and hide.?

Lately, the negative headlines have been coming thick and fast. PLP backbencher Renee Webb?s outspoken views on teachers were one such example.

Mr. Charles ? who taught at Paget Primary School for 24 years and at two New York high schools in the early 1970s ? says his members were ?definitely floored? by her criticisms. ?I thought it was totally unfair,? he says. ?I don?t know how many schools she has visited or how many teachers she has seen to come out and make a statement like that.?

He is not shocked by recent incidents which made the front pages such as the home-made bombs or pellet gun found at CedarBridge but does believe they all stem from the same source.

According to him, the single biggest issue facing Bermuda?s schools is discipline ? or lack of it. He wants the power placing ? literally ? back in the hands of teachers to enable all students to focus on learning.

?Caning doesn?t work with everybody but in the majority of cases, in my opinion, it works,? he says. ?Discipline is one of the biggest things that causes the problems with our children at school and, I think in the main, the society in which we live.

?If you can?t sit and listen, if you can?t focus on what?s being done, you are not going to learn.?

He wants children to know what will happen if they misbehave but insists this isn?t control by fear.

?It?s not so much a threat as a consequence for their actions. I don?t think students are aware or feel that there is something that is enough to keep them from doing some of the things that they do.?

But despite his hard-line stance he is aware that many of the youngsters causing the problems are in need of help themselves.

?It?s not the students? fault,? he says. ?They haven?t got the proper treatment for what it is that is ailing them. Some of them have witnessed terrible things, some have probably been the victim of terrible things.?

Surely then, I suggest, the last thing we should be doing with them is using physical force.

He looks genuinely perplexed for a second. ?There are kids with serious psychological problems and I don?t know what we can do. Teachers are not trained to deal with those kind of problems.

?But the methods of disciplining students have been removed from the teacher and they have not been replaced by anything else.

?When a young student can tell you ?you can?t teach me? and then he goes about doing what he feels like then something is wrong.

?The teacher is expected to perform his duty and to be able to teach in that kind of climate. It makes it very, very difficult.

?I don?t see anything else that has the effect on a student.? He says that when he was growing up in Trinidad (he was born in Grenada) there were no ?psychologists or psychiatrists? and ?we didn?t have the problems we have now either?.

Does he think there has been a recent escalation in bad behaviour among students?

?Every time we hear a story it?s a little worse than the one before. It seems like these things are escalating.?

The bottle bombs ? containing a potent mix of chemicals ? particularly disturb him. ?I don?t know if they were trying to send a message,? he says of the students who planted them.

?In the past you would find maybe a guy might have a penknife or something like that that you have to take away or a screwdriver, which is, at the time, serious.

?Then when you find people placing incendiary devices you are talking about a building can be affected and people can be affected.

?If it?s a case of students trying to outdo each other what?s the next device that you bring??

He cites a recent incident at CedarBridge in which a pupil attacked one of the deputies as ?the kind of stuff that teachers put up with every day?.

And he tells of a ?tiny little lady? teacher at CedarBridge who was pushed to the ground by a male pupil last year.

But he acknowledges that these incidents are unusual. In fact, he is at pains to point out that those children who cause disruption in the Island?s public schools are in a tiny minority.

?It?s a small group of hardcore performers and they get all the limelight,? he says. ?That?s what you see in the newspapers. You seldom see the children who do well.?

He attributes the decline in behaviour to a number of things but points particularly to parenting ? ?we have very young ladies having children; because they are children themselves they don?t have the wherewithal to be good parents? ? and frustrated children desperately seeking attention.

Mr. Charles? answers don?t just include ?the strap? or cane. He thinks an alternative school for disruptive children could be the key. He doesn?t believe the Education Centre, where they are currently sent, goes far enough.

?The Education Centre, as I know it, is not a school it?s a programme,? he says, adding he would prefer a dedicated school from which ?a kid goes in and graduates from?.

?There are students in our system who can?t function in the traditional school as we know it and for that reason they cause problems. They need a special place where they can go and get the kind of attention they need and reach the potential they can probably reach.?

But doesn?t he think there could be a stigma attached to children who attend such a school? ?It all depends on how you treat this school.? He looks pointedly at my notepad. ?It all depends on what kind of press the school gets. It should be seem simply as an alternative school where students go who function differently. We all learn differently.?

He says the graduation rate on the Island ? 53 per cent last year ? is ?totally unacceptable? and would tackle it by holding pupils back a year if they can?t make the grade academically from a young age.

He says at the moment that can only happen at year three or six but he wants children?s performances evaluated on an annual basis.

?It?s got to start at primary school,? he says. ?We have to stop sending kids forward if they have not mastered certain things. They get frustrated because they are not ready for it and if they find they get attention from other things than school work then they are going to do it.?

He would also raise the standard of the Bermuda School Certificate (BSC) which he doesn?t see as being high enough at the moment.

He cites the Caribbean Examinations Council certificate as the kind of internationally-recognised qualification that Bermuda should be offering its public school students.

?What we have to do is bring our students up. We have people here that we can use ? teachers from the Caribbean, from London, from Canada ? to raise the standard.?

He sent his own son to a private senior school ? Saltus Grammar ? because it was at the time that middle schools were being introduced and ?I couldn?t take a chance for him to be a guinea pig?, he admits.

But he says he is a big believer in the public education system and its potential for positive change. Aged 65, the possibility of retirement has not crossed his mind and he describes himself as ?optimistic? about the future of Bermuda?s schools.

?I believe that the public school system is the only true democracy because then you are catering to everybody,? he says. ?But we have to make the system workable. Parents have to get very much involved in their kids? schooling because until that happens we could have some of the best teachers in the world but we won?t get much better.?