Sharing this blog originally posted by Geoff Abbott of Geoff Abbott Photography, Prestatyn, Wales http://geoffabbott.co.uk/
WHEN children around the age of ten walk into the sweet shop on the corner of Amherst and America Street in east Charleston, SC for the first time they will be asked to take a test.
On your first visit you would be excused for walking past the shop, or in my case driving past as the navigation moaned “route recalculation ” for the umpteenth time. There are no signs, the brickwork is painted black and the windows are mostly taken up by air conditioning units which flank the security grille on the south-west-facing door.
As you enter you are confronted by a huge domestic fridge, some well-used chairs and to your left a worn-out bible on top of a rickety old counter. It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the cave-like atmosphere lit only by two sixty-watt bulbs, a drinks’ fridge and the setting sun. As I take a seat my eye is drawn to the open bible with yellow tags sticking out from favorite pages and the fraying, curled-up corners giving the good book a soul of its own. Two customers come and go after serving themselves from the large white fridge. No money changes hands but as they leave the owner Joseph Watson nods and adds the items to the customer’s tab.
Two days earlier I was introduced to Joseph by one of my closest friends, Chris Leigh-Jones, who married an American, emigrated to Charleston with his wife Sebrina and started a business renovating old houses – one of which is a few doors down from the shop. Joseph has run the shop for the last two years, taking over from his mother Mary Prioleau Watson who started the business in 1958 when Joseph was eight years old.
I reintroduced myself and asked Joseph if he would like to add his comments to an article I was planning about property development in his neighborhood. It quickly became apparent that the original article was heading for the scrap-heap and Joseph was about to lead me in a new and more apparent direction. He quickly put me right that accommodation and affordable housing was not an issue on the East Side. The main problem in Joseph’s opinion was a lack of relevant education.
Joseph is the treasurer of the Charleston Development Academy, a volunteer for the East Side Community Development Corporation and a class leader at the local Ebenezer AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church responsible for the well-being of 65 people. He believes East Side residents are missing out on employment with companies like Boeing, BMW and Bosch, because their qualifications do not get them past the interviews. And with more multi-million dollar developments such as the Horizon Project planned for the area Joseph fears the new companies will seek employees from further afield.
“There are sufficient schools here but they’re not educating on the level that will satisfy this growth, namely the growth in the businesses, ” said Joseph, who studied at Trident Technical College in the sixties before working for General Electric.
“We know that in the city the children are not focusing on their education in the first few years to adjust and improve a child’s nature. ”
“All children that come to this counter take a test. ”
“It’s a test that was given to me when I was a child and I realized it was a test to see if I had respect for them, respect for myself and to see if I had manners and did I know what integrity meant. ”
“I ask children if they know what integrity is and 99% of them say no. ”
“When I ask them what self-respect is it’s ‘no’ and from that I grab a dictionary and open it up and read the meaning to them. ”
“I often give them that test because it gives me the opportunity to talk to them about stopping others from leading them into crime or violence. ”
“The bible says ‘the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God’.
“That’s about anger and how being calm in a situation can help you rise up above all that is going on around you with the love that you have for other people. ”
“What we need now is a curriculum that is put into our schools and we educate a knowledge base from the age of four right through to graduation. And that (curriculum) hasn’t been written by the State of Carolina nor by the Charleston County School District. They are missing the point, they’re piece-mealing the education with a little bit here and a little bit there. ”
“They’re missing the overall effect and when we have community meetings the parents express their needs to have their children succeed in life. The county should have a plan to bring the children to that success but there’s a lot missing that doesn’t let that happen. ”
“When we look at BMW and Boeing we find that the new jobs were bringing in people from outside the area. The community tax dollars have been used to get these projects going but it hasn’t lifted the local incomes. ”
“The jobs have gone to people with the right education and we need to create that environment and opportunities. We need to look at what jobs are available and educate our children to those standards. ”
“Really we are planning far into the future and that’s what Americans should be doing to strengthen the educational and economical foundations of the country so more people can thrive. “
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