that teachers are looking for protection, electronic monitors and security guards. What begins in the schools continues into adult life, that's why we have schools and education. Clearly the education system creates the culture in which Bermudians will live tomorrow just as it instills into students the values they will carry through their lives. Schools have young people at their most impressionable time and what they learn in school is what they carry forward.

Our schools today are preparing people to enter the workforce at one level or another. The skills and the attitudes they learn in the schools are the skills and the attitudes they will carry to Bermuda's families and Bermuda's workplaces. What today's students learn in school determines what Bermuda and its values will be like tomorrow.

Ideally the Bermudian we are producing for tomorrow's world will be well schooled and well prepared for a demanding and complex society. But more than that, tomorrow's adult Bermudian should be tolerant of the needs and beliefs of other Bermudians, comprehending of the history of Bermuda and its high position in the modern world, and willing to work productively for the good of the Country.

We do not think many Bermudians believe that is what is being worked toward in today's public schools. We think that is why just about everyone who can manage it gets their children into private education here or abroad is doing so.

There was a time when schools taught subjects and asked for dignity and respect and discipline. Determination and enthusiasm and self-denial were considered virtues for students to adopt. Sloppiness, sloth and poor speech were discouraged and positive attitudes were rewarded.

But much of that changed when schools began to deal in self-expression and creativity. It was hard to teach discipline in finger painting. The trouble is that there is not a great deal of scope in the top professions or, indeed, in most jobs, for self-expression. Job descriptions more often than not tell you what you are expected to produce. But schools have stopped asking students to produce and send them for therapy if they over achieve.

Schools began to teach people how to feel good about themselves. And feeling good about yourself is fine but, because it was easier to feel good about yourself if you were finger painting rather than solving a maths problem, schools moved from learning tough subjects to enjoying "projects''. Teachers became indulgers of the senses rather than teachers. Because teachers were valued if they were popular and easy teachers were naturally approved of by students, then tough and more productive but less popular teachers were phased out.

As a result we began to drop people through the cracks because we promoted them out of school without learning or skills but with attitudes of self-indulgence. What we taught was, if it feels good do it, be it sex, drugs or rowdyism. Often graduates could not read or spell or do addition properly and were condemned to express themselves in four letter words while cooling out. Is it any wonder that they take revenge on the system with anti-social acts? It is fashionable to say that the faults lie in absent parents and one parent families but much of the fault also lies in the misconceived education system which rewards failure.