Chapter 7
Don Bosco's pedagogical formation
We can easily recognise the influence of a number of significant life experiences in the educational synthesis developed by Don Bosco. This synthesis is linked, to a great extent, to the same kind of general formation, both personal and cultural, during the early part of his life. The schooling provided by his family and the Church was evident during his infancy-childhood period. His work: in the fields and early schooling formed him during his adolescent period. The Latin school at Chieri, the Seminary and the Convitto Ecclesiastico were the significant factors during his mature youth period, up to the priesthood and beyond.
Don Bosco’s future personality, as a priest, as a friend of the young, as a pastor and as an educator is clearly rooted in these essential features. In fact, the nucleus of Don Bosco's educative vocation is born and develops with the growing and maturing of his Catholic and priestly formation.470
Don Bosco's mentality will also have been formed by contact with a network of significant personalities in the Catholic world of his time. There were the Saints who were renowned for their works of charity, theologians, people involved in social work, and of course the books he read and his experience of life. All of this would improve and enrich Don Bosco's personality, already
extraordinarily gifted with exceptional emotional, intellectual and moral qualities.
1. Family and Church
The family was Don Bosco’s first school, his mother his first teacher. Don Bosco’s family came from a small, rural, Catholic community, rich in religious symbolism. The first and the fundamental religious sign was the Sacrament of Baptism, followed in due time by the religious practices laid down by ecclesiastical discipline and blessed by a century-old tradition: daily prayers, Sunday Mass, sermons, catechism, and a host of religious practices.471
The early years of Don Bosco's family life are marked by the earlier than expected absence of his father, who died when he was hardly two years old; by the presence of the stepbrother seven years older than him; by the presence of his paternal grandmother, and especially by the significant influential presence of a mother, who was gifted with sound humanity and a rich spirituality. She was in reality a fatherly mother.472
Margherita Occhiena (1788-1856) was Don Bosco's mother. She was the first one to provide Don Bosco with his education: she was Don Bosco's first teacher.
Writing about her, 60 years after her death, Don Bosco says:
Her greatest concern was to teach her children religion, training them to be obedient, and
470In Don Bosco there is evidence of the priority, chronologically and psychologically, of his priestly vocation vis-à-vis his
vocation as an educator. Various aspects of this issue are offered by J. Klein – E. Valentini, “Una rettificazione
cronologica delle ‘Memorie di San Giovanni Bosco’”, in Salesianum 17 (1955): 581-610; F. Desramaut, Les Memorie I
de Giovanni Battitsta Lemoyne, Étude d’un ouvrage fondamental sur la jeunesse de saint Jean Bosco, (Lyon, 1962),
186; P. Braido, Il sistema preventivo di San Giovanni Bosco, (Turin: PAS, 1955), 49-59.
471On primary education and religious instruction and, then, on the catechism marking Don Bosco’s menality as an
educator, cf MO (1991) 33-34, 42-44 and P. Braido,L’inedito “Breve catechismo pei fanciulli ad uso della diocesi di
Torino” di don Bosco, (Rome: LAS, 1979),Introduzione, 7-8, 22.
472There were, however, no lack of male figures who influenced the makeup of his personality, enriching it wth traits
already given him by a strong and forward looking mother: cf. G. Stickler, “Dall perdita del padre a un progetto di
paternità. Studio sulla evoluzione psicologica della personalità di don Bosco”, in Rivista di Scienze dell’Educazione 25
(1987):337-375.