Classrooms of a Saint

...Don Bosco himself made no such claim...

...And here we must make a point clear...

...All the great tradition of Christian pedagogy has followed this system of placing the child practically in the impossibility of sinning, by carefully shielding him from the occasion of sin and by helping him with a variety of means to practise the virtues of the Gospel...

...Don Bosco was not the inventor of a theory of more or less speculative value...

...the Salesian, from the nineteenth century on...

...Some explanation of the anomaly may be found in the facility with which order and discipline are thereby procured, and also in the failure of certain educators to see in each of their pupils a moral and Christian personality...

...This, then, is Don Bosco's great invention, worked out by following the Gospel and Saint Francis of Sales, by following the heavenly visions he had since his boyhood, and by obeying the direct teachings of Jesus and of Mary, Help of Christians, who deigned to choose him to effect the regeneration and reconciliation with God of this no longer Christian modern society...

...But in their view, amusements are considered as a relaxation and not as a means of fostering morality and virtue...

...Therefore it excludes any and all violent punishments and it aims at doing away with even the lighter punishments...

...Don Bosco called it Salesian after Saint Francis of Sales, in whose life and doctrine are found the essential lines of the method employed by Don Bosco in his educational work...

...The fourth among these historical educational movements, the Salesian system, has more points of similarity with the Benedictine than with the two other intermediate systems...

...All the great Christian institutions that make a specialty of forming and educating youngsters, or more properly all the saintly founders of such institutions, have adopted its letter and spirit...

...The precursor of this Salesian preventive system was Saint Francis de Sales, and its inventor and practical demonstrator was Blessed John Bosco...

...Your words must be few...

...He was the founder of a practical system of Christian living...

...and if it is everybody's duty, it is particularly the duty of educators...

...Naturally those modern educators who do not accept the Gospel as their guide have no interest in the development of the moral conscience of the pupil, and their advocacy of the repressive system is easily explainable...

...But he was the inventor of one particular preventive system which, in its essence and taken as a whole, was never practised by any saint before him, and could not have been, owing to the peculiarities of the times...

...The repressive system consists in making the subjects acquainted with the law, then watching to find out its transgressors in order to inflict on them an adequate punishment...

...This system embodies in its rich and complex substance a theory which it is the province of the philosopher to find out and analyze...

...the Franciscan, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century: the Ignatian, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century...

...hence, I repeat, it is not exact to make it the exclusive product of Salesian tradition...

...We call this tradition great, as it includes the saints, founders, institutors and educators who have won distinction in the ranks of Christianity...

...Boys are to be tamed with the whip...

...The Franciscan movement directed and bridled the exuberance of the new nations that were beginning the march of a wonderful new civilization...

...Let us add that such an anomaly derives also from a pitiable ignorance as to what true moral virtue and Christian life are and, above all, from lack of genuine zeal, lack of faith in the Gospel and lack of love for God...

...Arrayed against modern non-Christian life and culture, and also against that body of Christian educators who advocate the repressive system, stand the immense, flourishing, serried ranks of religious institutes, from Saint Basil's to Saint Ignatius's, from Saint Benedict's to Blessed John Bosco's, all of them preferring and practising the preventive system...

...Thus we may link with the Franciscan institute such other orders as the Dominicans, the Carmelites, the Servites, the Augustinians, the Minims and the Brothers of Common Life...

...A strong hand will do the trick...

...Every one of the great Christian institutes that make it their special work to impart a Christian education follows the preventive system in substance, but every one of them employs special and characteristic means...

...The director, in order to keep his authority up, must very rarely see his subjects, and generally appear among them only when he must inflict or threaten a punishment...

...It is based on familiarity and buttressed by Eucharistic piety...

...Its characteristic note is its utter indifference for the moral and Christian development of the pupil...

...This system is easy, not very irksome for the superior, and useful, especially in the army and generally speaking among grown-ups who are obliged to know and to remember what conforms to the law and its prescriptions...

...This definition, although negative, is both clear and characteristic...

...Such a statement is historically false...

...All have bent their efforts to keep their charges away from the occasions of sin by having them use those means which revelation and reason, nature and supernatural grace, place at their disposal...

...However, there is many an oasis in this desert...

...if he does not, he must be made to...

...Leaving aside the movement that covers the first four or five centuries, from the Apostolic age to the unsurpassed triumphs of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the subsequent great movements can be reduced to four: the Benedictine, from the sixth to the twelfth century...

...The boy must walk straight...

...the Benedictines resort to manual labor and to study to foster a liturgical piety...

...No one should fall into the error of believing that the characteristic note of the repressive system is physical punishment...

...The preventive system is the only method that is essentially evangelical and Christian...

...Hence the justice of the statement that modern teachers and educators, taken by and large, cannot in any real sense of the term be called Christian...

...The Benedictine movement molded and transformed the mediaeval barbarian tribes...

...Side by side with the great tradition which originated in the Gospel and had such an immense development, we find the tradition of the repressive system which is represented by the civil, political, economic, military educators and governors, and also by a few religious educators...

...It can with dignity take its place side by side with the three earlier inventions to which our Christian and modern world is so largely indebted...

...Last came the Salesian movement, whose mission, in Leo XIII's opinion, is to regenerate our modern proletariat, deceived and led astray by the most extravagant army of philosophers, politicians, thinkers and demagogues the world has ever witnessed...

...From it anyone can see at a glance how inexact is the oft-repeated statement that makes Don Bosco the inventor of the preventive system, sic et simpliciter...

...In the liberal and socialistic modern society the repressive system (although to a certain extent fought against and forbidden by law) is still the dominant system...

...However it is a harder task to give a plausible excuse for the presence of this method in Christian and Catholic institutions...

...This system is based on reason, religion and love...

...Do you want to educate...

...The Franciscan, Jesuit and Salesian movements have not had that unity that characterizes the Benedictine movement...

...This does not mean that they deny the boy amusement, relaxation and liberty...

...Failure to comply with these requirements will be visited with a punishment proportionately severe and violent as the transgression was publicly noticed...

...It is everybody's business to endeavor to bring about his neighbor's spiritual salvation, that is his neighbor's moral and spiritual development...

...They do not care whether the pupil is really moral and good, whether he does or does not commit sin, whether he practises the Gospel and God's law...

...The repressive method has taken on enormous proportions in our modern society, a society which, since the French Revolution, has ceased to be Christian in its political and educational tenets...

...It was a historical and epoch-making invention far superior to any of those which at the cost of very hard labor one may hope occasionally to extract from the volumes of modern pedagogy...

...All they require is that he be exteriorly disciplined and correct, that he perform his duty, obey the laws and rules, if not at all times and with a sincere heart, at least when he is seen by the superior and when for the sake of general order he is expected to do so...

...To this end the Jesuits use doctrinal discipline along with a reflective and meditative piety...

...hence each of them is representative of a group of orders...

...Don Bosco was not the inventor of this system...

...Under this system the superior's words and aspect must be severe and rather threatening and he must avoid all familiarity with his dependants...

...It essentially consists in making the rules of any given institute to its inmates and then watching in such a fashion that the vigilant eye of the director and his assistants be continually over them so as to guide them by means of kindly advice and paternal corredtions, all of which is tantamount to saying: "Placing the pupils in the impossibility of transgressing...

...Thus reason the followers of the repressive system...

...the Franciscans and Dominicans specialize in the austerity of penance and poverty, and cultivate a contemplative and mystic piety...

...These are human necessities, and our modern non-Christian educators admit them and even exaggerate them...

...There is a peremptory order given to all Christians: "Unicuique mandavit deus de proximo suo...

...The Jesuit movement stemmed the intellectual and religious disintegration of Christian society in the sixteenth century, and educated the populace in all its manifestations of life and culture...

...Then you must be very strict...

...Totally different and (I may more properly say) opposed to the repressive system is the preventive system...

...This definition, as we shall see, does not by any means indicate its essential and specific difference from other Christian systems, but it offers a valuable starting-point for analysis...

...Don Bosco wrote: The systems ever used in the education of youths are two, the preventive and the repressive...

...The first three of the historical movements named above are still flourishing as three famous methods of Christian education, three great preventive systems devoting themselves to the formation of the youth and of the common people, and endeavoring to assist them in avoiding sin and practising evangelical virtues...

...Again, we may group with the Ignatian movement such institutes as the Ursulines, the Vincentians, the Calasanctians, the Barnabites, the Christian Brothers and the Somaschis, all of which, however diversified by their peculiarities, do substantially coincide in a method where discipline and obedience, doctrine and a reasoned doctrinal piety, are evidently characteristic...

...This is the method, the best method, the only method to obtain quick and lasting results...

...All of them are institutes of religious formation and education with austerity, mortification, intense interior and mystic piety as a fundamental base...

...Don Bosco really summarizes his thoughts and defines the preventive system in a short phrase of eight words: "Placing the pupils in the impossibility of transgressing...

...The huge army of modern teachers and educators explicitly or implicitly follow such a method...