the psychology of growing up, which Don Bosco loved to tie to his rather bare formulas1388 have, at their disposal all the tools which were unthinkable for Don Bosco, the tools needed to describe and
interpret the causes, effects and measures of what has become “degenerate in the hands of man”, compared to their original status. Both at the local and regional level and beyond, it is possible to carry on the needed research with more precise, systematic and properly articulated information on the real situation of the young. Only this way can old and new language overcome its status as mere
terminology, as it reflects notions which are real and call for action: poverty, abandonment, risk, deprivation, social distress, violence; needs, aspirations, opportunities, values; family or school education either in crisis or lacking or even deviant; 'dangerous' society which produces children 'at risk';' distant' 'closed' ecclesiastical institutions. Education and pedagogy call for an ongoing creative imagination, instead of tired repetition of formulas.
8. A serious theological vision also correctly guides us in understanding the real circumstances of the main players in the growing-up process, their potential, the energies they have and their need to be respected and assisted in their development. This assistance must be provided through differentiated resources and approaches for childhood, boyhood, adolescence and adulthood. The fact that we rely on these resources does not mean that we are following Naturalism as viewed, conceived and implemented in different theoretical contexts by Komenski, Locke, Rousseau and Montessori, or the 'new schools' by 'activism', and ‘institutional pedagogy’.
We do not have to be child or youth 'worshippers' to understand the real historical discoveries made. These discoveries can be confirmedand enriched by old and updated anthropological and theological beliefs. On the one hand there is an innate tendency to happiness in every human being, eudaimonia. The great Greek moralists have written pages of high even though elitist calibre on this and the great Christian theologians of the first centuries and of the Middle Ages welcomed it in their writings. This is the starting point of every authentic moral and educational journey at a human level, which calls for mobilising every human energy, psychic, physical and spiritual, capable of reaching the constantly moving goal-posts: the realisation of a complete, individual and social existence.
Added to all this is the abundant in-pouring of the gifts of grace infused in a human being at Baptism: the sharing of divine life, the theological and moral virtues which protect it and help it grow towards the attainment of happiness in the beatific encounter with God.
Human and divine pedagogy meet to bring about human happiness, which is sublimated in the Gospel Beatitudes. The young will be able to proclaim these Beatitudes because of the aspirations and impulses of their age, but they will be seriously and responsibly proclaiming them only if they are in a situation of doing it one their own, thanks to the twofold and unified pedagogy of God and man. 9. From this perspective it becomes a duty to appeal to all the experiences and kinds of knowledge which may provide us, even through nature and reason, with information on the real situation and disposition of the various stages of the young. For a correct education we have an abundance of research work at our disposal and scientifically precise information, both on the fundamental importance of childhood and the psychological and cultural complexity of adolescence. As far as childhood is concerned, no authentic theology of sin leads us to deny what experience and science have discovered and have already made public on the original virtue of the child. The intuitions of the great educators, from Froebel to Aporti, to Montessori, agree on the data provided by the sciences on the child: the child possesses a huge potential of marvellously creative energy which, if not tampered with at its roots, has a decisive impact, beginning from the earliest years, on his future.
Modern psychology and in particular depth-psychology, in their investigations into the adult psyche, have found evidence of the deep causes from an adult's far distant childhood, marks of character flaws,
1388 Cf. Chap 9, §1 and 2.