Dr. Grant Gibbons (UBP) last week released an analysis of census data on Bermuda's education divide, which formed the basis of last Friday's Mid Ocean News article. It's much more succinct and hard hitting than those wishy washy feel good sermons written by bureaucrats and read verbatim in Parliament by the latest Minister.
Dr. Gibbons, and the UBP get it.
Economic opportunity is key to achieving racial parity in Bermuda, and education is key to economic opportunity. That’s why we’re increasingly concerned about the deterioration of public education on our island and the development of a clear educational divide amongst Bermudians.Education should be a source of opportunity, not a mark of privilege. People who can’t afford to send their children to private schools deserve the same opportunities as those who can. But today, that birthright for Bermudian children in the public school system is in jeopardy.
Our schools may have been desegregated in the 1960s, but in 2007 they remain essentially segregated. Today’s de facto segregation isn’t based strictly on race, but on class. Two school systems were wrong in 1965, and they are wrong today.
There is an educational divide in Bermuda that’s very real and it’s confirmed by data from the 2000 Census.
