Alfred Carey: Lessons For Life

Recently retired from the teaching profession after more than 46 years in the field, former Technical Institute instructor Alfred Carey beleives academics and technology should be treated equally in education.
"Technical Institute was important because the students got an opportunity. right at the very beginning, not to see any difference between academics and the trades,"he maintains. "In fact, there should be no division between academics and technology. Both should form the basis for a well rounded education."
Carey used woodwork "as a medium for teaching young men how to think logically. The boys may have thought that we were instructing them in carpentry, but we were, in fact, teaching them how to think and they, in turn, developed an appreciation for how English, mathematics and the sciences were interrelated with the trades."
Carey received his secondary school education at the Berkeley Institute. Upon graduation, he left the island armed with a Bermuda Government Scholarship to study at the Kingston Technical School in Jamaica, where he obtained a City and Guilds Teaching qualification in Building, mathematics and other subjects. Ironically, as a youngster, he was interested in becoming a shipwright until his father talked him out of the idea.
"My father was a carpenter who worked at Dockyard. He knew that I wanted to be a shipwright, but he told me I'd never be able to throw all of those planks around because of my slight build. So I decided to concentrate on something else." he says smiling.
As a budding carpenter, Carey learned his trade, during the summers, working at W.E.R.Joell's cabinet-making shop, where he did refurbishing, among other things.
After returning home from Jamaica, Carey taught woodwork at the manual training centre in St. George's three days a week, while the remaining two days he taught in Somerset.
Later, when a teaching position became available at the Technical Institute, Carey joined the faculty there in 1961, approximately five years after it had opened. "The school was started to provide technical training to young men after the Dockyard closed, mainly in the trades, however, the students received training for life which prepared them to work in any fields they so chose." he says. "The boys could have their GCE's in English, mathematics and technical drawing, and in other areas as well. They had both the academic and technical approach to education and the people who came to Technical Institute in ensuing years were of the same standard as those who went to Berkeley, Saltus or Warwick Academy." Carey maintains.
Why, in his opinion did the school eventually close?
"It closed because they wanted to start the college. I guess the school was turning out too much of an elitist student," Carey suggests, adding that none of the teachers at the school, during that time, wanted to see the school closed.
Since Technical Institute's closing, Carey claims that he has seen the effect upon the trade industry on the Island.
"If Technical Institute had continued, it would have served a very vital purpose because today the trades like carpentry, masonry and plumbing are suffering. The older fellas are dying out and there are no younger fellas to replace them."
Carey is currently putting together a history of the Technical Institute. He has in his possesion the first school bell and a number of other memorabilia associated with the school.
"To be a teacher, you have to really enjoy the proffesion and must have the ability to emphathise with all types of people," he explains. "As a teacher, I was always interested in getting the fellas who people said couldnt learn. They were always challenges for me, there is no such thing as a student who can't learn. The secret lies in finding the key to unlock the door to his mind so that he will respond."
A further indication of Carey's teaching philosophy can be found in the words of a number of flyers he had hanging on the walls of his office.
"A man who works with his hands is a labourer ... a man who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman ... but a man who works with his hands, his head and his heart is an artist."

Marshall Minors: Motivated To Succeed.

Marshall Minors, Principal Highways Engineer in the Ministry or Works and Engineering, welcomes the fact that serious consideration is being given to reintroducing technical training in Bermuda's proposed new senior secondary school.
"I'm pleased that there has been talk of reimplementing some of the aspects that Tech had into the new senior secondary school. I think that would be good becuase it is very difficult to find people with the technical background who are really trainable," he explains.
"Usually the reliance is on people who are already in the engineering profession, or already studying engineering. But I think, even in trades such as masonry, carpentry, construction and electrical, people are few and far between because kids don't get the opportunity to get that grounding and I don't mean just one semester of doing workshop. At Tech, we did that twice a week for five years. When you do that, you come out being very friendly with technical equipment, whether it's saws, machinery, or electrical equipment. You just have a good grounding in that particular discipline.
"I believe that if Technical Institute existed today, we wouldnt have the problem of trying to find well trained tradespeople and technical proffesionals. The school would have served Bermuda well. Just look at the people who came out of Tech at Belco, Telco, Cable and Wireless - people who are almost at senior level of various companies."
Minors, who decided to forgo an opportunity to attend Berkely in order to go to Technical Institute, claims thathis decision to do so was directly related to the impressions that older guys at Tech made upon him as a youngster.
"They seemed so well organised and under control. They were also well-behaved guys who had an air of sophistication as well. Also, the things that they were studying I found interesting. They were doing physics and chemistry, but also material sciences like metalwork, a little bit of electrical at an early age. Thats what really impressed me. These guys were 14 years old, talking about circuits and, at that point in Bermuda, electronics was the new technology in the world."
After graduating from Tech, Minors pursued further studies abroad in civil engineering and returned home to work in the Ministry of Works and Engineering, where he has been employed for more than 20 years.
As an engineer, he lists the Co-ed Facility, the East Broadway Road Scheme and St. Brendans Hospital as some of his major accomplishments.
"Tech's greatest contribution, in my opinion, was that it produced balanced people and this was reflected in the education we received. It was an academic school, but it had an emphasis on the technical trades. A lot of people are academically inclined, but don't want to end up as lawyers or accountants. They wanted to do something technicaly professional like architecture, environmental engineering or marine biology. I'm sure there are teachers who thought I would not have aspired to where I am today. But being at Technical motivated me and challenged me to go as far as I could go."

Philip Pedro: High Aspirations

Philip Pedro claims that the value of a school like Technical Institute can be seen in the conspicuous absence of of qualified Bermudian tradesmen in local industries today.
"I think a school like Tech is sorely missed because there is no school around today that is producing people to go into the trade industries, although the guys who went into the garages from Tech didn't stay as mechanics for the rest of their lives.
Everyone of those guys who came out of Tech may have gone in as apprentices, but they were soon the managers of the departments and the bosses running the offices. You'll find that throughout the various garages in Bermuda. This was because of their academic grounding, as well as the vocational training they received. So, I think that type of school is definately needed and I highly recommend that we have a technical school again on the Island."
Pedro, who is senior Vice President of Olympia Capitol International, Inc., an investment management company, and also holds the titles of president and general manager of other similar corporate concerns, believes that the school may have been ahead of it's time.
"Basically, when the school started, they may have been looking for people who were mechanically inclined. I don't know whether it was an experiment or whether the wanted blue collar workers to come out of the school, but most of the guys I went to school with are extremely bright and had higher aspirations than that," he explains.
"We had great teachers and I think it surprised a lot of people the type of academic expertise that came out of the school. It was amazing the amount of kids who were doing GCE's and going the academic route while picking up trades on the side."
In fact, according to Pedro, that was one of the unique aspects of technical that originally attracted him to the school.
"I liked the idea of learning a trade, while you were learning academics. Also as far as the trades were concerned, we were learning the hteory and having an opportunity to apply the practical. We learned electrical work, how to lay block, how to plaster walls and most of the things at the school were built by the students. We built a couple of the labs in the bcak of the school, mixed the concrete, poured the floor and laid the block. Although we didn't put the roofs on, we took the block up to wall plate. We not only learned something, but we had the opportunity to put it into practice."
Pedro claims that those skills he learned at Tech have served him well.
"It's been useful to me right up until today, because owning a house, I've been building on and laying my own block, do my own electrical and my own plastering. I do everything myself, and it's all stuff I learned at Technical.
I'm a professional who's not afraid to get his hands dirty."

Dennis Hart: Caring Was The Key

"I think that one of the worst things that happened in the education system in Bermuda was when they closed Tech down becuase the school was just not another technical school, says former student Dennis Hart.
"At one stage, our academic passes, in terms of GCE's were on par with Berkeley and Warwick Academy. We had some brilliant students and there was always that other outlet where the guy who was not so academically inclined could be taught a trade and still have the respect and dignity of a guy who went on to achieve great academic heights. I think the educational system did our kids an injustice by closing that school because, let's face it, everybody in Bermuda is not going to end up being a doctor or a lawyer. There has to be an outlet for kids who can work with their hands the technical sides of their minds.
"Until something is done to bring back a school such as Technical, or, at the very least, integrate that into the present system, I beleive our kids are really gonna be lost, I really do." So says Hart, now manager of the Automtive Services Department at Pearman Watlington.
Starting at PW's as a day release student, while still in his fourth year at Tech, joined the company on a permanent basis in 1964 as an apprentice after he graduated in the mechanical shop. Since then he has worked his way through the ranks of the company to his present position, which involves the general overseeing of mechanical repairs, body work and spray painting.
And, it's quite obvious when talking with hart that he holds Technical Institute in very high regard. "Well, I think that, most of the guys who went to Tech, particularly in those early years, will tell you that we really had a great sense of pride. Tech was supposed to be the other technical school on the island, Cunningham's being the other," he explains. "However, the thing that really set us apart was that academically, Tech had some very high standards and we had teachers at that school who accepted no less than excellent from us, people like Mr. Clegg in chemistry, Vivian Sweeting in English and Dr. Clifford Maxwell with maths."
Hart also speaks with particular admiration about another teacher, George Henderson. "Mr. Henderson was our mechanical engineering teacher, but he wasn't just a teacher, he was almost like a part time father to us. I guess we all went through a stage when we might have thought we hated the man because he was such a perfectionist, but he wanted so much for us.
"He got us involved in, not only becoming qualified mechanics, but going as far as the technicans level. One of the things he said to us and repeated throughout our studies was that he was there to teach and he was going to make sure we learned." Hart recalls. "But he didn't want to teach us the trade if all we wanted to be was, in his words, spanner operators. He wanted to know that 10, 15 years down the road he wouldn't be coming to our places of business and seeing us still on the workshop floor, fixing cars. he wanted us to strive higher and this is something that all the guys who went to Tech, in my era, and a few classes down, had instilled in us.
Hart also claims that having older students to emulate as role models and yardsticks of achievement made a positive and lasting impression on him.
"One of the things that was good was that the older students tried to exert their authority in a way that was always a motivating type of thing. They were always motivating us to try and achieve a little bit more.
"If you were slouching around in school, you might be given a little smack upside the head and told that Tech boys don't walk around like that.
"Also, you had guys like Ross Smith and Reg Minors, who some of the younger fellas looked up to because they were tall, first of all, but also because they were achieving certain things in their classes.
"I think going to that school and being associated with the teachers there proved to be very beneficial to me," he points out.
"There was a strong male presence and, I believe, most of us looked up to those male figures because a lot of us guys who went to Tech actually came from single parent homes, so having that male figure was extremely important to us.
"I also thought there was such a sense of caring, first, and then educating. We were treated with respect and then they imparted the education and the knowledge to us.
"In the end, I really think that made for a good combination."

Lorin Smith is a regular contributor to RG Magazine. (Reprinted with permission of RG Magazine)

Created 24th January, 1998 ----- Last modified 20th February, 1998

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