him or makes him a victim of some offence or rebellious or discourages him”. The practical development of the preventive method revealed its marvelous effectiveness in Don Bosco's educational practice.353

It is actually possible to discover the essential features of a complete preventive system in Aporti’s educational and teaching method. In fact, “provided it is possible, it is better to stay healthy than to allow oneself to get sick just to be healed. The reason is that health resulting from being healed always has the tendency to fall ill again”.354 We find the well-known constitutive elements of education: assistance, affection, charity, and loving kindness, reasonableness, joy, singing, recreation, movement. Even for an intellectual education to be successful the recourse to strongly affective elements was needed. This was the first among the many maxims dedicated to teaching: “Win over the affection and trust of children first of all”.

There is no doubt that an objective is more easily and securely achieved by kindness. The educator, once he has the affection of his pupils, will succeed in having the pupils try their best to please him in attention and behaviour; they will not be bored or turned off, but will find satisfaction and delight in the learning process. However, the educator should be careful enough not to confuse gentleness, loving kindness, affability in dealing with children with the familiarity which might lower the value of authority. He should be a kind and loving father but still always graciously authoritative”.355Elsewhere Aporti added “strong persuasion and affection”, 356 “loving kindness” and reasonable behavior”.357 The lectures on method, given in Turin, are full of reference to affectivity.

The two principles which create good method are: 1.Take into account the nature, character

and development of the child's faculties, 2. One's own experience and the experiences of

others, drawn from the implementation of pre-established rules... Among the principles

drawn from consideration of the nature of the child and from experience, first place should

be given to the importance of winning over the affection of children. We should bear in

mind that the means most suitable for achieving kindness is kindness. Contempt breeds

contempt. We love those who treat us with loving kindness, not those who treat us with

contempt… To whom do children show affection? To the ones who welcome them, show

that they love them and do well to them. Jesus Christ gives all of us a great example of

this. The Apostles, not yet enlightened by the Holy Spirit, wanted to keep children away

from Jesus and Jesus prevented them from doing this – to the contrary, he welcomed them

with kind words…Now, realising that children love those who love them, the educator

should be concerned about showing them kindness and showing them, at every opportunity,

a sincere eagerness to care for their moral and physical good…This will be the end result: a

child who recognises his teacher's affection in order to please his teacher will be well

behaved and will study. This did not ordinarily happen when severe punishments were

used together with the stick, in place of human, conciliatory and kind means. The former

method humiliated and hurt without correcting. While recommending that the teacher

should win his pupils’ love and confidence through his ways of dealing with them, we

should also let the teacher know that he should not exaggerate to the point where affection

and confidence may turn into familiarity. The teacher should welcome every child with

kindness but never joke with them, never lower himself to their level, never place himself

353 Ibid., 114-115, n. 1.

354 Letter to C. Bon Compagni on 30th June 1838, in A. Gambaro, Ferrante Aporti e gli asili, vol 2, 397.

355 Elementi di pedagogia, in F. Aporti, Scritti pedagogici, vol 2, 85.

356 Lezioni di metodica in the Turin course 1844, in F. Aporti,Scritti pedagogici, vol 2, 442. According to Lemoyne, Don

Bosco, given the task by the archbishop, would have been at Apporti’s lessons (MB 2, 212-214): the judgements

attributed to Don Bosco concerning the pedagogue, by Salesian Fr Cerutti appear completely unfounded and unjust. 357 Manuale di educazione ed ammaestramento, in F. Aporti, Scritti pedagogici, vol 1, 36.