Greetings Fellow Bermudians and Especially Parents,

“…there is something dreadfully wrong with an education/socialization process that leaves us ignorant of our past, strangers to our people, apes of our oppressors, and creatures ofhabitual shallow thought and trivial values.” Dr. Wade Nobles in the Foreword of the book, “SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind.” Authored by Dr Asa G Hilliard, III

Over 36 years ago, I felt a divine compelling forced  me to take my two sons out of the public school system. My six year old son said, “Mommy, I hate to tell you this, but school is boring. I have a better idea. Why don’t you let me stay at home and you teach me.”

It took me four years to grasp the significance of what he was saying. When my two sons were 10 and 15 years old, I removed them from the public school system and taught them at home.

I lived to hear them say: “Mommy, what you did for us was the best thing that happened to us. It was the only thing that worked for us, and that’s what I want for my children.”

I realized that the public school system was failing our children. The majority of children in the public school system are Black.

Between 1975 and 1978 when I pursued doctoral studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. My dissertation was entitled, ‘Identification and Prioritization of Goals for the Bermudian Education System’.

In 1952, in an unpublished dissertation entitled History of Education in Bermuda, the late Dr Kenneth Robinson, a Harvard graduate, stated: “From the outset the system has been diversified both with respect to purpose had structure.” In addition, Dr Robinson found it necessary to list major special education objectives with which Black Bermudians should be concerned.

Dr Yvonne Blackett, in an unpublished report dated May 1976 indicated that official documents in 1948 revealed implicit and explicit indications of the following:

  • Philosophy of Education 1948: schools should be for the maintenance of the social, economic and political status quo (Was that the PLP? No! No! No!)
  • Educational Principles 1948: that of social, economic and political dominance of White people
  • Educational Objectives 1948: to cultivate White children for hereditary leadership
  • Educational Objectives 1948: that of Government aid  for a System of “theoretically Private Schools.

What has changed over the past 67 years? Is the foundation of our public school system racist and designed against Black children?

Are we continuing to  perpetuate a system designed against our children?

Parents you have an option. Remove your children from the system. Home school your children!

Born to Teach,

Muriel M. Wade-Smith, PhD