The Teaching Brother
Shuster, George N.
HOW difficult a job pedagogy is, only those who have tried it can know. Literature records rather fully the acute and chronic dissatisfactions of the school-bench; and there is not a...
...But what of the pedagogue...
...Not the gentleman of leisure who sacrifices a few hours to college teaching in order to saturate himself with the bliss of academia, not the well-paid, efficient modern administrator, with his card-index neatly arranged at his elbow, but the mortal who wrestles in the classroom with youth at its gawkiest, most volatile, least appreciative stage...
...But the Brethren were properly servants of their era and perished with it...
...who has considered the scrupulousness with which new standards have been accepted—this anyone will know perfectly well that so much patience and industry has been amassed by no other educational organization in the world...
...Boys pass in an everlasting stream through his hands, and they are only average American boys— lads who need jerking into line, or tender personal interest, or very wise counsel...
...I am thinking rather of the day-by-day of the Brother...
...Already in the fourteenth century a community of religious teachers, the Brethren of the Common Life, exerted great influence upon the spirit of Europe...
...and there is not a famous author who has courted immortal originality by venturing to say, "I was a model pupil and I enjoyed myself...
...Popes and princes profited by their learning and example...
...The point is that, in spite of furious opposition, he was an innovator, thus illustrating for his followers the precious maxim that mere convention, mere doing of things because everybody else has done them, is scholastic disaster...
...Even Thomas Eakins's rather frayed officy Thinker has something too much of sprightliness for the part...
...The Brothers themselves have tried to guard against stagnation by taking the various stages of mental growth into their scope...
...Working in cooperation with the New York Botanical Garden and the Smithsonian Institute, this most illustrious of tropical botanists discovered over one hundred new specimens and contributed monographs of lasting value to his field of research...
...and the greatest of their disciples, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, completed a system of philosophy so lofty of intuition and so cosmic in breadth that we of today tire following it, being wholly unable to keep pace with the magnificent winged strides of its author...
...The first is to allow the Brothers time to develop one institution before expecting them to take over others...
...This is so difficult in the present circumstances that one is inclined to believe it depends upon an increase of vocations out of all proportion to the present, or upon recognition of the usefulness of the lay teacher...
...luminous is the light of the Church that for centuries it has endowed the pedagogue with a singular, sacred graciousness, tempering pedantry with humility, vitalizing toil with energy created by a vision...
...Calvin and Luther had launched their campaigns, ancient literature had been exhumed, and orthodoxy dared not remain antiquated...
...Since the death of Saint John Baptist de La Salle in 1719, other teaching communities have appeared and found their places...
...Have we not rather got into the habit of shouldering the Brother with more than he can carry—demanding, as we do constantly, new effort and better equipment...
...Hundreds of their schools dotted Germany and the Netherlands, giving instruction "for the love of God alone" and recommending moral discipline to a sadly decadent generation...
...The Rosminians, dedicated to the subtle, beautiful but possibly somewhat esoteric principles of their founder, have developed into a teaching body singularly well prepared for their tasks and highly successful in the field...
...Were these two principles universally recognized, the teaching Brother would occupy the position of honor and influence to which his gifts, his sacrifices and his aspirations so amply entitle him...
...Their men may actually proceed, if their talent and taste lie that way, from the elementary to the secondary to the collegiate school...
...It it readiness on the part of the public served to perceive that even the quiet, hardworking Brother who gives his life so that others may grow in understanding is entitled to assistance...
...Quantitatively we can, of course, see that in the province of New York alone the Christian Brothers are now teaching nearly twenty thousand pupils annually, in institutions which range from elementary schools to colleges fully standardized and offering several courses of study...
...This is not the place to analyze his pedagogical innovations...
...To our shame it must be admitted that we knew indefinitely more of Cuban jazz-bands and cigarettes than of this patient scientist whose long hours of teaching according to the rule of the Christian Brothers did not prevent him from forming the greatest herbarium of Cuban plants known to science...
...And so, though he added to the lustre of the teaching brotherhoods, that lustre itself is old and well burnished here...
...present time can hardly grasp the unpreparedness of seventeenthcentury schoolmen...
...The pedagogical seat is never an easy-chair...
...Religious wars, civil strife and the French Revolution came...
...Finally, Saint John Baptist de La Salle, dying after forty years of strenuous labor, was able to bequeath to Christendom an institute and a brotherhood which promised not only success in the difficult matter of religious instruction, but also progress in the solution of practical educational problems...
...Indeed, the work of the brotherhoods has profited much both by the generous character of the United States law and by the willingness of American Catholics to support their own institutions for religious education...
...It is difficult for us to estimate the aggregate of all this educational endeavor...
...and of their need of encouragement, both financial and social...
...Anyone who has seen the zeal with which teaching Brothers work through summers like this one to prepare themselves more fully for the work of the next year...
...Not only would the masses demand formal training in the arts, but instruction in religion would require a thorough reorganization...
...We of the...
...Another significant beginning in this form of education came with the French renaissance...
...To what models could they refer ? What principles were they to invent in their attempt to cope with their world...
...Who is Brother Leon...
...Something else Is needed, however...
...He arrived to meet aging religious teachers who had supervised the scholastic progress of American cardinals and bishops, jurists and doctors, artists and good citizens...
...That assistance, as I see it now and as others have been known to view it, may be said to lie in two directions of activity...
...It is no exaggeration to say that this great man, the founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, brought more basic common sense into the elementary classroom than any other half-dozen educators in history...
...But if one proceeds on the basis of that maxim alone, without taking into consideration human limitations as well as certain boundaries necessarily imposed by the business of education itself, the result can only be exhaustion and impotence...
...His days are burdensome ; and no educator ever glimpses anything but a remote reward...
...The schools closed, except in so far as they served the inspiration of new and equally important endeavor...
...I do not mean intellectual quality...
...And yet, so...
...The second is simply appreciation of what the brothers accomplish—of their right, as experienced educators, to control their foundations and to expect that improvements required will be furnished...
...This has proved most successful in the United States, where the brotherhoods of sev cral religious orders—the Franciscans and the Congregation of the Holy Cross, for example—have also taken over many schools...
...You might find it difficult, as an artist or a graceful orator, to cast any glamour over such a figure...
...Americans caught something of this glory recently when Columbia University, with' that catholic appreciation of values which has characterized it under Dr...
...But though it probably took Columbia University to discover that Brother Leon is worthy of scientific acclaim, he came to a country and a city where his fraternity is beloved for other services...
...But perhaps it is best to think of all this work in terms of quality...
...This arrangement is at once a recipe for as well as a proof of vitality...
...To them all the Brother is a servant, even as he goes on bravely and silently in the service of Divinity...
...The purity of Thomas a Kempis, master of an unequaled method for teaching the rules of the mystical life, was perhaps the noblest characteristic of their achievement...
...These questions were sources of dispute, of failure, of mean bickering...
...Printing had revolutionized the world...
...We know that, throughout the country, new schools and new staffs are answering the call of need with an alacrity and a success which saves millions of dollars in public taxation and which, in many respects, constitutes the greatest achievement of Cathohcism on this side of the ocean...
...Is all this appreciated...
...who has had occasion to observe the interest taken in modern educational development and constantly changing theory...
...of their title to the love and respect of all...
...Butler's administration, conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Science upon Brother Leon, of Havana, Cuba...
...Another foundation of great interest is that established in Belgium by Theodore James Ryken and now known as the Xaverian Brothers...
Vol. 6 • June 1927 • No. 8
