Creating historical awareness
Where were you when Nelson Mandela died? Richard Human was in Den Haag, not teaching Key Stage 2 History – for a very good reason.
Sinterklaas, Nelson Mandela and the Tudors
It was December, 2013. Sinterklaas, – Saint Nicholas the patron saint of children-had arrived and was making his way around the polders, canals and towns of the Netherlands, generating high levels of excitement amongst his young followers.
Every year Sinterklaas, also known as Sint or De Goede Sint, makes this journey prior to the celebrations that traditionally take place on December 5th and 6th.
That very year, nearly 10,000km away, Nelson Mandela, now 95 years old, had been in and out of hospital with a serious lung infection. Though he had been battling illness since 2011, this time it sounded and felt different. As for many people of my age, Mandela had been a constant presence in our lives – as a prisoner of the racist regime that ruled South Africa, to his freedom, subsequent election to the Presidency of the country and then his retirement after a single term.
A short documentary about Nelson Mandela and his legacy.
Credit: Nelson Mandela Foundation
In 2013 I was working in the Netherlands, teaching Year 4 pupils at an international school. That term we had been learning how the Tudors shaped Britain in the 16th and 17th Centuries. As we dutifully ploughed our way through the timelines of Pope Clement VII and Thomas Wolsey, carefully examining the expansion of royal power and wealth it dawned on me that a truly historic moment was brewing in front of our very eyes in South Africa and, as an educator, I was doing nothing about it. I was wedded to my curriculum map, long-term and short-term plans, the assessment calendar, duties and so on.
Change of schedule
I needed to stop. I needed to take a moment and teach my pupils about Nelson Mandela.
Having explained to my team what I wanted to do and how I wanted to include their classes in the plan, and as Sinterklaas made his way through the country I spent some of the following weekend designing two lessons about the life of Mandela. At the beginning of the week, I delivered the lessons to everyone in lower Key Stage 2. We learnt about the apartheid system; we learnt about Mandela’s childhood, his political awakening and his activism. We learnt about his imprisonment and his refusal to be freed on anything other than his and his people’s terms. I was acutely aware that there would be a gaping hole in the children’s knowledge when it came to Bigod’s rebellion, and I hoped that in the future – when reciting Tudor history – that the Catholic rebellion against the King in Cumberland would not be attributed to Nelson Mandela!
Once the two lessons had been taught, I left the life of Mandela and returned to Henry’s ongoing travails with Rome. At that point, though, I remember the sense of relief I felt: when Mandela dies, I thought, and the story is splashed across the world’s media outlets our students will know who the world is mourning and why.
Memories of the man
Mandela did in fact die a few days later, on the evening of December 5th, surrounded by his family. I journeyed into school the following morning with a deep sense of personal loss and sadness – recalling the only time I had glimpsed him in the flesh: Wembley Stadium in London, April 1990.
He had come to London to attend the second Mandela tribute concert and thank the wider world for their campaigns to secure his release. I stood in the centre of the stadium looking up to the rafters where he stood, waving back at us all, before turning my attention to the stage and its musicians – Sting, Tracey Chapmen, Hugh Masekela, Peter Gabriel, Whitney Houston, Miriam Makeba, Stevie Wonder, Simple Minds and Dire Straits. Today, it is Mandela I remember most vividly.
Memories of a lesson
On December 6th, 2013, I stood outside my classroom, lost in thought, when the doors opened at 8.30am. That morning around 150 children entered the building as one – desperate to share the news: ‘that man you told us about has died!” Although they did not feel the same sense of loss as I did, they could sense my sadness. One pupil even felt the need to share his condolences with me.
Then a girl approached me, tucked under her arm a book that Sinterklaas had given her the previous night. It was a children’s book about Mandela’s life, bought for her because of the lesson the week before. She had written inside the front cover “Given to me on the day that Mandela died”. Inside she had stuck two photos that she had taken of the television news of his death.
Five years later, in 2019, I received an email from one of the students who was, by then, in secondary school: “I remember having a lesson . . . the topic was Nelson Mandela. However, I didn’t think much about him at first, probably as I assumed that like most history, that most of it is, well, . . . in the past. Less than 2 weeks later, and I remember this very well, an event occurred that changed this opinion of mine. The day was the day that Nelson Mandela died.
Suddenly the achievements of Mandela seemed more impressive, and the experience of spending 26 years in prison seemed a lot more imaginable. I mention all this because when we went to South Africa for 2 weeks in 2014 me and my dad visited Robben Island and stood inside Mandela’s cell.”
That day in 2013 Mandela taught me another very important lesson. As a teacher it is my job to open children’s eyes to the world around them and help them see, find sense and reason.
If that means Sir Francis Bigod misses out, so be it.
Initially trained as a primary teacher, Richard Human has also worked extensively with secondary pupils and adult learners. He is a trained Forest School Leader and an Associate Member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, the EMCC.
E: richardhuman@mac.com
FEATURE IMAGE: by Shyam on Unsplash
Support Images : https://www.istockphoto.com/ Credit: Antonie Glaser and https://www.istockphoto.com/ Credit: Lya_Cattel
