Don Bosco in the pedagogical context of his time

In this framework we need to highlight certain data and testimonies regarding the contacts which the founder of the Salesian Congregation had with the above-mentioned pedagogues and, in general, with the pedagogical context of his time, with a view to identifying the aspects which best illustrate and most easily grasp—in the writings and documents made available to the reader in the second part of this collection—the important core elements of Don Bosco's thinking on education and schooling. At the same time, reveal the most salient characteristics of his approach to educating “poor and abandoned youth”.

Many different experiences were part of Don Bosco's upbringing; he was influenced by different factors, people and institutions. The cornerstone of the Salesian founder's vocation to education was constructed and developed over the time he grew to maturity as a human being, Christian and pastor. Indeed, attentive as he was to the flow of events of his time and to the key areas in his own particular experience, Don Bosco has given us hints to important episodes and names of priests, teachers, individuals and institutions which contributed, in fact, to outlining the main stages of his pedagogical preparation.

In his infancy and his experience of being left without a father, his mother, Margaret Occhiena, emerges as the “first educator and teacher” of the young John Bosco. Almost seventy years later he writes of her: “Her greatest care was given to instructing her sons in their religion, making them value obedience, and keeping them busy with tasks suited to their age.”¹⁷ It was in the family setting especially that he picked up the habit of prayer, doing his duty, and sacrifice.

Along with the upbringing he had from his mother, a privileged place is occupied—for a brief but significant period of time—by a venerable old priest Fr John Calosso. After a fortuitous encounter (November 1829), a keen and genuine relationship of respect and trust was established between the poor but intelligent lad who wanted to go to school, and the kindly chaplain of Morialdo. Under his guidance John enthusiastically took up his primary studies once more. The kind of relationship established here between pupil and master is spoken of then proposed to Salesians as an example: “I put myself completely into Fr Calosso's hands … Every word, every thought, every act I revealed to him promptly. This pleased him because it made it possible for him to have an influence on both my spiritual and temporal welfare” (MO, 71). The sudden death of his benefactor was something John as a teenager perceived to be an “irreparable disaster”. But before writing this Don Bosco speaks enthusiastically of his meeting with the seminarian Joseph Cafasso, who later as his spiritual director and professor, would have particular influence on the young priest John Bosco's cultural formation and his educative and pastoral choices.

The account he gave of following events allowed Don Bosco to highlight certain personal characteristics of his teachers and details about the schools he attended. For example in recalling his grammar classes, he sums up the school environment in Chieri in the following way: “kindness of teachers” (MO, 77). Each of these is then given a brief description for his attitude to preventive education: Prof. Valimberti “gave me a lot of good advice” on “how to keep out of trouble”, while Prof. Pugnetti “was very kind to me” (MO, 78-79). Prof. Peter Banaudi “was a model teacher. Without having recourse to corporal punishment, he succeeded in making all his pupils respect and love him. He loved them all as if they were his own sons, and they loved him like an affectionate father” (MO, 88). Don Bosco, on the other hand, did not neglect to highlight the limitations and faults he observed in his teachers. For example he tells us that a “beloved teacher” was replaced by another one, who, “unable to keep discipline, almost scattered to the wind all that Fr Virano had taught in the preceding months” (MO, 77).

Also with regard to the formators at the seminary, he hints at their qualities and limitations, including some rather severe criticisms: “I was greatly attached to them, and they always treated me with the greatest kindness; but my heart was not satisfied. The rector and the other superiors usually saw us only when we returned after the holidays and when we were leaving for them. The students never went to talk to them, except to receive corrections …. In fact if a superior came on the scene, the seminarians, with no particular reason, would flee left and right as if he were a monster.” (MO, 105).
c. Religion: “fundamental part of education”

The “kindness” which fascinated the young Bosco—and which he so readily emphasised when alluding to his teachers—was not limited to a superficial “niceness” or to simple “good manners”. The genuine kindness he is suggesting depends on right moral conduct and a solid religious basis. Recalling the period he spent at the “College” in Chieri (1831-1835), Don Bosco traces out a very detailed picture in the Memoirs of the Oratory of the disciplinary regime then in vogue in the public schools, under the Regulations for schools outside of university (1822). After indicating the meetings of the “Society for a good time” which were held during the week at one of the member's home “to speak about religion”, he says: “Here it is good to recall that in those days religion was a basic part of the educational system. A teacher faced instant dismissal should he make any statement unbecoming or irreligious. If this was the way teachers were treated; you can imagine how severely pupils were dealt with for any unruly conduct or scandal!” (MO, 83). The emphasis on “severity” in these situations suggests, understandably, that the measures taken by the "rigid" and “conservative” school arrangements in 1822—inspired by the practice in Jesuit boarding schools—were not something the narrator liked. “Nevertheless in the mature Don Bosco's mind, these prescriptions were perfectly in line with the fundamental dimensions of his "preventive" educational system because of the strong principles of religiosity, morality, order which inspired all scholastic life.”¹⁸

The experiences he had and the people he met as a child and in his youth—which we have briefly indicated—certainly contributed and to quite some degree, to forming the future educator and founder of congregations dedicated to the education of youth. From a pedagogical point of view on the other hand, the stage Don Bosco spent at the Pastoral Institute in Turin (1841-1843) must have been an especially fruitful one for him. The pastoral practice and theological studies there did not fail to give him “the basic guidelines for religious and moral, essential and practical pedagogy.”¹⁹ Over those years Don Bosco also had occasion to integrate his formation with the religious experience and spirituality of two Saints who had a real impact on his 'preventive' educational style: Philip Neri and Francis de Sales, appreciated as they were in the Piedmontese cultural setting and especially at the Pastoral Institute in Turin.

It should be sufficient to point to just one fact. Wanting to demonstrate the reason why the first work dedicated to his boys “began calling itself by the name of St Francis de Sales,” Don Bosco writes “because we had put our own ministry, which called for great calm and meekness, under the protection of this saint in the hope that he might obtain for us from God the grace of being able to imitate him in his extraordinary meekness and in winning souls.” (MO, 137).

The seminary at Chieri and the pastoral Institute in Turin could not provide the young priest with a specific culture in pedagogical and teaching matters. Nevertheless they contributed by giving him the “basic mental structures” which then allowed him, thanks to his uncommon intelligence and innate practical sense, to integrate without difficulty within the educational and social welfare activities for youngsters in the capital of the the Kingdom of Savoy.

When Don Bosco arrived at the Pastoral Institute in 1841 he had his first experiences of teaching catechism to young migrants under the guidance of Fr Joseph Cafasso, and went to Turin's prisons. His contact with boys in prison and his active involvement in concrete educational experiences were certainly determining factors in forming Don Bosco the “educator” and “author of pedagogical works”. He himself tells us: “The idea of the oratories came from visiting the prisons in this city. In these places of spiritual and temporal misery there were many young men in the flower of their youth, alert, good-hearted, well able to be the consolation of their families and an honour to their town; and here they were locked up, discouraged, the opprobrium of society. Carefully considering the reasons for this misfortune one could see that for most of them they were unfortunate more for want of education than out of malice.”²⁰

Elements and guidelines came from the experiences he had, which would then guide and characterise his work: “I was beginning to learn from experience that if young lads just released from their place of punishment could find someone to befriend them, to look after them, to assist them on feast days, to help them get work with good employers, to visit them occasionally during the week, these young men soon forgot the past and began to mend their ways. They became good Christians and honest citizens.” (MO, 129). At other times Don Bosco speaks of meeting boys in the squares and lane-ways, often fatherless or motherless or both, having come into the city from the countryside looking for work; he recalls the name such as in the case of Bartholomew Garelli, with whom he “begins” his work of religious formation in the sacristy of the Church of St Francis of Assisi (MO, 127-129).

Already from the early 1840s then there was a firm position in John Bosco's life: the choice of education of the young. “My inclination is to work for young people”, he confessed to Fr Cafasso; he told the same to the Marchioness Barolo, and with equal frankness told this to the civil authorities who had invited him and his boys to take part in the national celebrations.

Attentive to the “voice of his time”, he did not try to avoid the complex problems that came from the Italian Restoration, especially the conflict between the national and the religious conscience. But like “many liberal Catholics and moderate clerics, he understood the possibilities of a common working base: popular education. Like all Catholics he suffered at the humiliation of the Church and felt for its transcendent mission …. Finally, he felt that his life was substantially committed almost entirely to the problem of education, seen as what could give an overall solution to the religious and civil problem.”²¹

e. Don Bosco was not the only one active at the time in the history of education

In his special and final choice of the young as his life's commitment, and in the works he began for the education of the most abandoned of them, Don Bosco was not alone in his pursuit. He found himself in harmony especially with a broad group of educators of Christian and Catholic orientation. Similar pedagogical efforts were pursued and proposed by others. “The preventive system which he practised, spoke about and finally, wrote about, arose in a context in which similar directions were pursued, codified and proposed by others. We are talking about educators, men and women, often neighbours geographically, who in some cases influenced or could have influenced him, or maybe because he was able to read some of the things they had written or had heard about. These especially were men and institutions who shared his concerns about youth in new and difficult times and set up not dissimilar initiatives on their behalf with a style of education that one could legitimately call preventive.”²²

Amongst the educators he met in Turin an important place must go to the Brothers of the Christian Schools (De la Salle Brothers). Don Bosco dedicated one of his most relevant books to fratel Hervé de la Croix: his Church history for use in the schools (1845). Albert Caviglia, thought, seems to go too far when he writes that the Salesian founder was “a great scholar” of “Lasallian methods”; we cannot even document whether he had read the spiritual and pedagogical works of John Baptist de la Salle. Instead it is entirely likely that he did not remain unmoved by evening classes for workers opened by the de la Salle Brothers in 1846, and that he had a small work in hand – The twelve virtues of the good teacher (Marietti 1835) – by fratel Agathon, a de la Salle Brother. This latter, speaking of the virtues of the good teacher and his behaviour, insists on: “goodness”, “warmth”, “loving kindness”, “meekness or gentleness”… these are terms that often turn up in Don Bosco's written corpus.

His two years spent as chaplain in the Marchioness Barolo's work must have also been filled with educational experience. It would be reasonable to suppose that Don Bosco, as a young priest, had been particularly influenced by the principles which led to the various charitable and religious initiatives of this famous noble woman: distributing the bread of faith, but first giving people their daily bread; seeking the salvation of souls by looking after both body and mind; re-educating in a loving way rather than repressing; offering the basic instruction need for new times. Those two years “had to be an organised school for Don Bosco, despite it not being an academic one, for the preventive system.”²³

Along with the educational experiences we have pointed to it is essential to take other founders of institutes for the education of needy young people into account. We limit ourselves here to citing the most significant of these.

Especially brothers Marco and Antonio Cavanis, who began the Congregation of secular clerics of the schools of charity, founded in Venice in the first decades of the 19th century. They expressed the core of their educational approach with the terms “prevention”, “loving discipline” and “fatherly love”. These expressions were certainly not unknown to Don Bosco when he was putting the finishing touches to his Regulations for Salesian Houses (1877) and preparing the most important of his writings: The Preventive System in the education of youth (1877). In fact some years earlier, as he himself said while drawing up the Constitutions of the Society of St Francis de Sales, he had the Rule of the’“Cavanis Institute in Venice”²⁴ in hand. He would certainly have read the article, amongst others, that said: “Let teachers propose to carry out their task amongst the children not so much as teachers but as fathers; therefore let them take care of the children with the greatest charity …; let them try always to fill them with Christian habits, and preserve them with fatherly vigilance from the contagion of the world” (art. 94).

Similar conjecture can be made about the writings of the priest-educator from Brescia, Ludovico Pavoni, whose institution (1847) proposed educating "poor and abandoned boys ... in religion and the arts”, with a view to giving them back “to the Church as excellent Christians, and to the State as good artists [tradesmen], and virtuous and faithful subjects.” In this case too, the parallels between the texts found in this collection of Salesian sources are easily discovered. However they are texts and testimonies that are quite frequently found in the cultural environment of the time. So it is not so easy to suggest which depended on what. So we need to go a step further. More than once Don Bosco indicates the author of a work he has used in drawing up one or other text or whom he recommends to his helpers, who were involved not only in teaching catechism in the festive oratories or the Sunday and evening schools, but in his more complex and articulated educational works.
f. Openness to the Piedmontese pedagogical context of the second half of the 19^th century

Don Bosco's first educational and welfare institution – the Oratory of St Francis de Sales in Valdocco (1846) – and his first pedagogical and spiritual publications (1845) were written in a particularly lively cultural atmosphere. In the second half of the 19^th century, the question of education was being tackled in Piedmont with resolute awareness, not only as a “pedagogical problem”, but also as a “political problem”. There are some particular issues at the roots of such a movement. In 1844 pedagogue and educator Ferrante Aporti was called to the University of Turin to give a course on method, which met with much interest. In 1845 the first edition of L’Educatore Primario saw the light of day, and it gave particular attention to the study and spread of “popular pedagogy”. At the conclusion of one of its articles, pedagogue Vincenzo Troya wrote that education, “to be complete, should primarily propose being good Christians, but also hard-working, intelligent, busy citizens who are useful to society and their families.”²⁵

We do not know if V. Troya's article had influenced the formulation of the notable pedagogical principle often put forward in several variations by Don Bosco in his writings: “good Christians and upright citizens”. At any rate it is possible to document that the Saint had some copies of this journal on his table while he was finishing some of his writings. In his Bible history for use in the schools (1847), for example, he draws passages from the L’Educatore Primario and accepts the view of the journal's editor, Antonio Fecia, who spoke of the need to “popularise” the Bible to make it more available to readers. Don Bosco also recognised that he had used various illustrations, following the advice of “wise teachers”, according to which the Bible should be taught with the aid of maps, drawings, pictures representing the more important facts.

We are talking of the so-called “intuitive” approach, widespread in Italy under the name of the “demonstrative method” — by Ferrante Aporti, whose lessons in Turin were published in the L’Educatore Primario.

His openness to the Piedmontese pedagogical movement was not limited to this publication. In 1863, in a personal letter to the Superintendent of studies in Turin, replying to some criticisms of another of his books the History of Italy—in particular, that he had said nothing about the “deplorable actions” of certain “characters”—Don Bosco justified his choice: “I did this following the principle established by the well-known educators Girard and Aporti who suggested leaving out of books for children anything that might give a bad impression to the tender and fickle minds of young people.”²⁶

After approval of the Constitutions of the Society of St Francis de Sales, Don Bosco's attention to education and schooling became an increasingly more aware. That same year (1874), in agreement with his closest helpers, the founder saw that young people joining the Salesian Society would have a regular “school of pedagogy”. He appointed Fr Giulio Barberis as the teacher for this subject. After thirty years of teaching this latter explained that in drawing up his text—Notes on sacred pedagogy—he used what he had heard viva voce from Don Bosco, and what he had picked up from pedagogical writers the saint had recommended—G. A. Rayneri, G. Allievo, A. Franchi, A. Monfat, mons. F. Dupanloup—and publications of “various other well-proven authors”.

The works of one of those, Antoine Monfat, were familiar ones at Valdocco. On 16 November 1882 in the “great conference” for staff at the house—“with around 35 there, including clerics who were assistants, teachers and priests”—he had a paragraph read from “Discipline for educators. The practice of Christian education by Fr A. Monfat (A Marist priest who also gave rise—this was emphasised in the minutes of the meeting—to other observations, especially being united, being in agreement, and that this agreement amongst us seeps into the young people we educate.” Don Bosco was also at the meeting.

Amongst the “proven authors” whom Barberis alludes to, Barnabite Alessandro Maria Teppa deserves special attention. One of his most widespread publications—Advice for clerical educators of the young (1868)—was warmly recommended by Don Bosco and used by him for conferences he gave to young Salesians studying philosophy. This work by the Barnabite priest was still enjoying particular favour at the Mother House in the 1880s. On March 8, 1883, during a conference to staff at Valdocco dealing with problems of discipline, after reading a paragraph on “punishments” in the small treatise on the Preventive System, they also commented on “the chapter on punishments” in Teppa's work. In the following conference it was decided to “give each one” of those present a copy of it, so that it could function “as a guide” for not getting away from “the spirit of Don Bosco”²⁷. In the simple but substantial pages of this book we find statements like these: “So the one who wants to make himself loved by his pupils must first love them with fatherly affection and as a friend. Let him see to everything that they need or that could be of advantage to them in spirit and body.”

However it was not the first time that those responsible for the by now complex educational work at Valdocco had listened to these words or similar. Nor was it the only occasion where the initiator of that work invited his young helpers to practise these guidelines or others very close to them.

Though he did not arrive at drawing up a complete pedagogical system in theoretical terms, as has so often been said, Don Bosco nevertheless reflectively adopted consistent and valid elements in his writings and consciously tried them out in his educational work amongst young people. They allowed him to shape up a well-developed and unified educational proposal which was undeniably his own.

In this proposal we can identify a “doctrinal core” of notable “practical effectiveness”. We can list the most relevant and characteristic of them: 1) preventive attention: “prevent and not repress”; 2) pedagogical optimism: placing trust in youth on which “the hope for a happy future” is based; 3) formation as “good Christians and upright citizens”: the scope and aim of complete education; 4) “reason, religion loving-kindness”: the three pillars of the Preventive System; 5) assistance: positive, stimulating presence amongst the youngsters; 6) the importance of educators who are: “fathers, teachers and friends” of the young they are educating; 7) educational climate: welcoming, family style, joyful.

This is not a list of general and abstract formulas. On the contrary these are principles and guidelines which Don Bosco knew how to practise with his personal style: first of all in his encounters with needy youngsters on the streets in Turin or in open institutions like the weekend oratories; then in every more complete and complex works—secondary classes offered internally, hotels, boarding schools, arts and trades workshops …—appreciated by his contemporaries, and which have seen extraordinary development through to our own times.

These rapid indications of the contribution of the founder of the Salesian Society to the history of pedagogy and education can ultimately be completed—in terms of reading the Salesian Sources—by recalling the testimony of the first teacher of pedagogy to the young Salesians, Giulio (Julius) Barberis. Referring to the Preventive System, he stated that “Don Bosco only wrote it up in general terms”, but “applied it then completely” under the gaze of his followers and helpers²⁸.

To achieve an adequate understanding of Don Bosco's thinking on education and schooling, therefore, study of his writings, as careful and profound as it may be, is not sufficient. It is essential to dedicate careful attention to his life, the details of his educational experience: those he spoke of and those spoken of by his helpers and his contemporaries. All taken, obviously, with due critical understanding.

To sum up. The development of Don Bosco's pedagogical thinking and his educational works was obviously not simply the result of his organisational skills and circumstances that he wisely exploited. It was also the result of his pedagogical experience, “consistent in its essential principles” and “flexible in its progress and application in the context of changing historical circumstances. Nor was it a purely abstract pondering of things but the powerful incentive for an educational relationship and a complex system of works.”²⁹