vigilant authority. But what I love the most in a boarding school is the perfection achieved. This 'becoming a civilized person', as Montaigne says ,this being accustomed to community living, is the beginning of social life, it marks the beginning of the first development of human virtues….The boarding school does not create a precocious maturity but allows the boys to act as boys as long as possible. What a fine combination is this blending of graces and ingenuity of early age with the strong virtues, constant work and the severe constraint of studies! The Christian boarding school offers this kind of blending, and adds beautiful harmony, the ornament of the arts. This is why studies are agreeable, discipline is elegant, and instruction is both brilliant and attractive”.236
The author, however, staunch conservative that he is, also sees some dangers in the kind of friendship and brotherhood in some Catholic boarding school open to new ideas, ideas such as the proclamation of political equality. He sees this as a fantasy which causes conflicts which destroy the harmony of the old order with its various levels according to nature’s own immutable order”.237
5. Felix Dupanloup (1802-1878)
Felix Dupanloup, a great educator, an active Catechist, Bishop of Orleans, has handed down to us a rich literary pedagogical output. His Concerning Education is remarkable, and was available in its Italian translation in Don Bosco's Oratory library. It was known to Don Bosco, either directly or indirectly.238 In the third book in particular, first and second volumes, dedicated respectively to discipline and the instructor, we find clear indications preventive touch both in language and content.239
According to Dupanloup, the antithesis between repressive and preventive systems is expressed practically in the opposition between the civil and penal courts as seen in society and in the Board of education.
The art of governing implies the use of force and repression. The art of education implies and requires prevention. “The Ministry of education stands for fatherliness and the constituted authority of the Board at one and the same time and, I would almost say, a kind of priesthood. And this is how it does it. In all civilised societies the need was always felt not only to repress evil by controlling human passions through punishments but also to prevent it by training men to acquire virtue through education. To achieve this, peoples better schooled in wisdom have thought it best to make out of a magistrate, and a magistrate of the highest degree out of the teacher.240
But the difference between repressive and preventive interventions is evident in the educational area itself. They represent two of the three stages of the disciplinary action involved in the formation of the will and the forging of character. All of these stages are called for by the nature of the child we are helping in his growth. The word 'discipline' comes from the verb discere, to learn and the word does not stand only for an external type of discipline but also for a type of teaching which reaches the inner part of a child. It also stands for virtue. For this reason discipline stands for orderliness without which
236 P.S. Laurentie, Lettres à un père, pp. 44-49.
237 Ibid., 49-56. (Un péril au college)
238 L’educazione, by Bishop Felix Dupanloup, bishop of Orleans, member of the French Academy- Italian version by D.
Clemente De Angelis, 3 vols. Parma, Fiaccadori 1868-1869; De l’éducation par Mgr Dupanloup, book 1. De
l’éducation en général; book 2 De l’autorité et su respect dans l’éducation; book 3 Les hommes d’éducation (1st ed.
Paris 1850-1862). Paris, J. Gervais 1887 (11th ed). The French text is kept in mind but the quotes are from the Italian
edition which Don Bosco may have had in hand.
239 L’educazione per monsignor Felice Dupanloup vol.1 Dell’educazione in generale, book 3 Dei mezzi d’educazione,
143-256, and vol 2 Dell’autorità e del rispetto nell’educazione, book 3 L’istitutore, 377-600.
240 F. Dupanloup, L’educazione, vol. 2, book 3, 379. The highlighting is ours. In the distinction between the two courts we
find an echo in the opening of a note in 1878 by Don Bosco to Francesco Crispi: the repressive and the preventive
systems “are applicable in the midst of civil society and in educational places”; “while laws looks at the culprits, we
need to take grater care to decrease the number of them” (Il sistema preventivo 1878, 300-301).