Several weeks later our six year old was walking past the book case in our bedroom and caught a glimpse of Mandela's autobiography 'Long walk to Freedom' - in particular she recognised his photo and asked if that was Nelson Mandela's picture. She told us what she had learnt and was interested to hear about our visit to Robben Island and the actual prison cell where he had been kept for so many years.
Today on the way to school I told her that Nelson Mandela had died last night. "Was he the man who gave the speech?" "No, you're thinking of Martin Luther King - although Nelson Mandela did make lots of speeches". The conversation that followed included, "what about that lady who sat on a bus, whose name began with R" [Rosa Parks] and "Muhammad Ali was a boxer who beat the other man because he was too fat but Muhammad Ali could float like a butterfly".
One of the things that I love about the girls' school is how diverse and multi-cultural it is. Our daughters struggle to imagine what racial segregation must be like. "You mean - I couldn't go to school with 'J' or 'K'? But that's not fair. Some people are so mean."
We talked about what's fair, what's right - and how sometimes you have to fight for what's right - even if the government and the police are against you - "but aren't the police supposed to help the people?" - even if that means going to prison for a long time.
"How did he die?" So we talked about how Nelson Mandela was 95 and had been ill for a while. "He did well to get into the 90s - some people don't even make it to 80."
I don't know what other Learning Objectives 'S' will have for today but I doubt any of them will be as important as some of the stuff we talked about on the walk to school this morning.
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