1 Love to learn
Mandela lived to be old and learned to be old.
In 1928 he went to the Craquibury Boarding School, where he completed three years of study in two years. Later, he studied at Weisleyang College and Ford Hale University. He dropped out of school due to his participation in a student strike.
He came to Johannesburg in 1940 and worked as a gold mine security guard and then as an apprentice in a law firm. Despite the hardships of making ends meet, Mandela continued to study, successfully passed the South African University exams, and obtained a diploma from Ford Hale University. Subsequently, he was admitted to the University of the Witwatersrand, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in law.
For participating in and leading a series of struggles against racial discrimination and racial oppression, Mandela was banned and arrested several times. Prohibition is a public security punishment that restricts the freedom of person and speech. In the end, it led to 27 years in prison.
In August 1962, Mandela was arrested and imprisoned by the apartheid regime in South Africa, where he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in Pretoria District Jail for "incitement" and "illegal border crossing". In June 1964, South Africa** sentenced Mandela, who was serving a prison sentence, to life imprisonment for "attempting to overthrow by violence." Immediately, he was transferred to Robben Island.
Robben Island was the largest secret prison in South Africa between the mid-1960s and 1991. In 1982, Mandela left Robben Island and he was transferred to Polsmore Prison. On February 10, 1990, South Africa** de Klerk announced the unconditional release of Mandela, and on February 11, 1990, Mandela finally regained his freedom. He was 72 years old.
From 1962 to 1990, Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. Illustration: U.S. former Barack Obama visits Mandela Rhodes Island cell.
2. Fight the devastation with learning
Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, social thinker and "historian of the system of ideas". According to Foucault, imprisonment is a spiritual punishment whose function is to destroy the human will. In the face of physical and mental destruction, Mandela was not only not tamed, but broke out of the cocoon for 27 years.
For Mandela, learning was an important means of countering devastation.
The learning conditions are demandingFor political prisoners, Mandela recalled, newspapers were more valuable than ** or diamonds, more urgent than the desire for food and cigarettes, and arguably the most precious contraband on Robben Island. In order to get the newspaper, Mandela and his comrades thought of many ways. In limestone yards, prison guards often use newspaper to make sandwich packaging and throw the newspaper away as garbage after eating. Mandela and his comrades snuck it back from the trash and hid the newspaper under their shirts. Come back and make newspaper clippings, make summaries based on the clippings, and pass the summaries to everyone. The newspaper is then destroyed.
Through the struggle, Mandela was given the right to borrow books from outside prison. Books became a source of strength for him.
Chinese books became one of the sources of Mandela's wisdom. Mandela recalled that after reading "Red Star Over China" written by Edgar **, he had a deep understanding of the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Revolution, the Long March, etc. In 1964, Mandela was detained on Robben Island, where he insisted on reading the English edition of "** Anthology" in his cell. From time to time, he compared the national liberation of South Africa and the African continent with the Chinese revolution. (Material** He insisted on reading "Mao Xuan" in his prison cell, and his life in prison was "the spiritual pillar of China";The Prisoner's Revolt: Mandela's Memories of His Life Behind Bars).
3 Mandela School
Today, Robben Island Prison, where Mandela was held for 18 years, is known as the "Mandela School" and is listed as a "World Heritage Site".
Reading not only relieved the loneliness of captivity, but also sublimated Mandela's thoughts. Mandela believed that apartheid could not be resolved through violent extremism. Mandela put forward the idea of "not against the white population, only against racism". Thus, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa was pushed to a climax.
4 The value of wisdom
Positive psychologist Martin Seligman believes that people who have the following traits are happy. These traits include:
Wisdom and knowledge.
Courage – Charity.
Righteousness – temperance
Spiritual excellence .
The English correspondence of these six words is wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Therefore, it can also become the six virtues of happiness.
Think about it, which of these six virtues is not acquired through learning!(Yang Xuexian).