Educating South Africa's kids, one by one

When Jose Bright arrived in South Africa in 1994, he felt daunted by the task ahead. After all, as an education consultant from the Washington, D.C., public school system, his job was to help South Africa transform its schools, designed to benefit the white minority of 4 million, into a system to educate the 40 million black majority as well. Nobody would have blamed him if he'd simply declared victory, turned, and run. But after several consultancies, Mr. Bright stayed. He's now a professor in the business school at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg. He has dipped into his own pocket and donated his free time to ensure that a handful of poor but promising South African middle-school students make it through high school.