Loretta Davis, GSE Team In the News

Saturday morning, while some of us were ringing the bell for Salvation Army in front of Wal-Mart, readers of the Times and Democrat were learning about Detective Loretta Davis and the GSE team to South Africa. Let me quote from Richard Walker's article on the Dec 1 front page:

DPS officer experiences more than law enforcement in South Africa

December 01, 2007 One Orangeburg resident and public servant found the people of this foreign land to be little different from those people here."It was the most rewarding experience of my life," said Orangeburg Department of Public Safety Lt. Loretta Davis. "So much happened, but the people of South Africa were so wonderful."The 41-year-old Davis was part of this year's Rotary Club Group Study Exchange, a program aimed at fostering learning between different communities throughout the world.The annual exchange is sponsored through donations collected by Rotary District 7770, which encompasses roughly half of the Palmetto State, said District 7770 Assistant Governor Mary Scarborough of the Rotary Club of Orangeburg Morning.

The visiting Orangeburg officer said she saw towns as wealthy as any here in the States, particularly around the gold and diamond mining towns.But there are also entire neighborhoods consisting entirely of fragile structures that hardly qualified as shacks. Some had only three walls, some didn't have that. For others, running water is simply a luxury of the rich."It was a life-changing experience for me," Davis said. "I always thought I was a person who was humble. Seeing how people live in South Africa, and to see how we live in the U.S.? And to see poverty at that level? It made me
realize how blessed I am."

But here's the line Wendell Davis and Bill Carter may be MOST interested in:

"It's changed my life," she said of the time spent there. "I may even become a Rotarian."

"May?"

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Also in the news, as usual for a sunday, is Howard Hill. No Rotarian in Orangeburg, and no student, friend, or colleague of Dr. Hill, will doubt his commitment to education, so his comments on the No Child Left Behind act are well worth our consideration. Let me quote from his conclusion.

A mandate is needed for involving parents in their children's education. The reworking of NCLB legislation must have variables to ensure that PreK-12 educational outcomes will eventually rival the industrialized nations. But the U.S. Congress nor the nation's president possesses the authority to insist that parents be intimately involved in the education of children. This is a major shortcoming that, short of a fiat, might pose a dilemma for NCLB.

The heavy lifting of U.S. education policy is carried out by children. This is an incongruent picture regarding a cultural revolution that is needed to revitalize U.S. public school education. Parents cheerlead for their children; however, their roles must be more concerted for advantageous choices and decisions on their behalf to emerge. This is certainly not requesting too much of them.