relations. In the midst of extensive changes to the school system, it needs to be open and honest with the public about exactly what it is doing. Given the highly controversial changes in education, anything unusual will become public if only because some people are looking for things to complain about.

Much of the shock over an isolation room at Dellwood middle school could have been avoided if the Ministry had simply explained in advance what it was planning. It is clear that the idea was not going to be generally acceptable but openness and an explanation would have helped. Now the Ministry of Education has given the impression that it was trying to hide the fact that it was going to put Bermudian students with behavioural problems, rarely it seems, in a monitored soft cell.

"Isolation room'' when it appeared without explanation on plans for the revamped school sounded first like a padded cell in a mental facility and then like some sort of school prison for relatively young students in a middle school. In fact, it appears to be a cooling off area where troubled students can be alone to cool down and get their tempers under control.

Senior Education Officer of Student Services Joeann Smith has been quoted as saying, "They need a place where they are on their own, where they can be monitored and there is nothing in there that they can hurt themselves with.'' We can only think that if they are that far out of control, they will also need a place where they cannot hurt anyone else, student or teacher.

There was a time when a good talking to by a teacher or a visit to the head teacher's office or a note from the teacher to a parent took care of such problems but times change. Still, the student is going to be pretty far out of control to require the use of a padded cell with no windows, soft furniture and soft balls. Presumably the balls are to be thrown at the walls.

While we accept that the rooms will be used only on rare occasions, there will surely be a stigma attached to isolation. We can hear it now, "Well he's in that room, he must be crazy.'' The concept smacks a good deal of the old corner seat and a dunce's hat. If the system brands young people in middle school then they may well stay branded in tiny Bermuda as "trouble'' until they leave school.

It is clear that the room will be connected to a counsellor's office and that the student in isolation will be monitored, but we have to wonder just how a decision will be made to isolate a young person. Somehow a "soft cell'' seems extreme.