and these tasks, these dreams, the simple traditional formation process, however necessary, was not enough and not even a simple traditional pedagogy was enough for such visionary scenarios. The educator, whose heart was as wide as the sand on the seashore, had to be much more than a simple priest, religious, instructor and educator, and much more than a pedagogue or social activist. The new priest or religious or educator had to develop in contact with a living experience, a reality full of pressing needs such as misery and abandonment, with a great sense of humanity and a steadfast faith inflamed by charity, all of which was to be achieved along with an overflowing passion and sensitivity. What contribution could have been provided by 'a pedagogical Institute' or by 'a course or curriculum on formation of educators' when their presence was needed right away and so badly? However, on an historical and concrete level the processes of ecclesiastical formation of educators using the preventive system - a philosophical and theological formation - could not have stopped at just emergency structures, the rudimentary structures Don Bosco was constrained by all kinds of troubling needs to put into place.
In 1901 the Ninth General Chapter of the Salesian Society was finally able to tackle the problem of the general organisation needed for ecclesiastical studies for Salesians. That organisational plan included a period of practical training which was meant to be the experiential moment in the formation of the Salesian educator, in tune with Don Bosco's intuition as priest-educator formed according to the demands of the preventive system and of his added cultural, professional and practical formation.