Bermuda examines the subject, it might be wise to examine where it starts. We do not know any better than anyone else but we have been suggesting some areas which we think should be looked at.

It seems to us that institutionalised racism may well start with Bermuda's "crazy quilt'' schooling. Bermuda is in many ways another world and the school system seems to prove that. With one or two notable exceptions, we still have schools which are basically white or basically black. If you cannot integrate Bermuda at the school level, then what hope do you have of integrating adults? It would seem to us that people who go to school together and grow up together become comfortable with one another, learn one another's strengths or weaknesses and go on together. To be fair, there does seem to be a great deal more comfort and understanding and togetherness between today's generation that there was between the generations who grew up separated by segregation.

We think that too often what we do for schooling leads to separation or simply continues what existed during segregation and we think the new mega school at Prospect will only further divide Bermuda. There is a real danger that the mega school will be separated by intelligence, by social standing and by money. The poor who are bright or athletically gifted will be snapped up by other schools, here or abroad, on scholarship. Whites and blacks who can scrape and save and find the money, will get their children out of what they will perceive as an unruly "dumping ground'' school and will send them to local or overseas private schools. We have to face the reality that Prospect is likely to have another all black school and the white and the bright will be somewhere else. The new school is very likely to carry a divisive stigma.

That is wrong for Bermuda.

But it is also wrong to think that the present system is acceptable. We should take this opportunity to change education in such a way that it leads to togetherness and not to separation.

Private schools clearly create social divisions in Bermuda although we doubt that they create intellectual problems because they seem to be no better academically than Government schools.

It may well be that the heavy reliance on religious schools separates Bermudians racially. There is certainly a history of social separation since, if we face the truth, the religious schools are looked on as second rate private schools ... a middle tier of Bermuda's divisive schooling.

The judgement on schooling seems to be: 1. Those abroad even if the standard is inferior to Bermuda's schools or to Bermuda College. 2. Bermuda's best are the "private'' schools, BHS and Saltus. 3. The religious schools, probably topped by Mount St. Agnes. 4. The schools run by boards which are seen as infinitely preferable to the Department of Education, notably Berkeley Institute and Warwick Academy. 5. Then there is a strange array of Government schools at both the primary and secondary level which seem to be praised in direct proportion to how well the head teacher is thought of.

All of that judgement of education and all of that division in education takes place in a tiny Country. Surely that divides the young before they even form their own opinions. It makes little sense.