the keenest impression on youth”.740

What follows are two overall fundamental dimensions of youth psychology, which embrace the entire personality of the young and have an impact on the entire educational system. They can be noticed especially in boys throughout their teenage years and can be properly directed towards a more mature youth. They are: a very keen sense of justice, intolerance of any kind of injustice and a strong affection, heart. The two features are explicitly highlighted, once again, in the 1877 'preventive system'. They are both connected with two radical preventive experiences: reasonand loving kindness.

Don Bosco gives teachers a reflection on his concern:

Experience teaches that the young do not easily forget the punishments they have received,

and for the most part foster bitter feelings, along with the desire to throw off the yoke and

even to seek revenge. They may sometimes appear to be quite unaffected but anyone who

follows them as they grow up knows that the reminiscences of youth are terrible. They

easily forget punishments by their parents but only with great difficulty those inflicted by

their teachers, and some have even been known in later years to have had recourse to brutal

vengeance for chastisements they had justly deserved during the course of their

education.741

All in all, education is a 'thing of the heart', because, as a rule and almost naturally, a boy is 'heart'. 'For

this reason, an educator will be always able to’ win over' the heart of the one he protects', and to speak with the language of the heart.”742

As a matter of fact, "in every youngster, even the most unfortunate one, there is a spot accessible to what is good. It is the task of an educator to look for this spot, the sensitive string of the heart, and to draw profit from it.743

Don Bosco reserved some remarks of a psychological and moral nature for the chil dhood stage, the age prior to eight years old, and for the age of eight to twelve.

In reference the childhood stage, this is what Don Bosco wrote of Dominic Savio: “Even at that happy go lucky age, he entirely relied on his mother.” And “he also came to know from his parents testimony that he was like this ever since his tender age... when, due to lack of reflection, boys are a bother and a continuous source of grief to their mothers; an age when boys want to see everything, touch everything and, most ofthe time, mess up everything”.744

As we have mentioned, 'small boys' were not admitted to the Oratory, because “they cause trouble and are unable to understand what they are being taught”.745)As for the eight to the age twelve year old stage, judgements expressed by Don Bosco are not optimistic.

This is the age, so Don Bosco says, when boys are bored or unwilling to pray and are inclined to the pranks common to that age.746 Don Bosco does not even excuse boys of this age from their serious

moral responsibilit ies. We see this in reflections collected by Father Bonetti for his chronicle, dated

March 1, 1863: “I find that many boys' confessions can't be treated as indicated in the norms given in theology. Most of the time, no consideration is given to faults committed from the age eight to twelve, and if a confessor does not take steps to find out, and ask about them, they will pass them over and will

740G. Bosco Conversione di una valdese. Fatto contemporaneo. Turin. P. De-Agostini Printshop 1854, p. 27, OE V 285. 741Il sistema preventivo (1877), p. 48, 50, OE XXVIII 426, 428

742Il sistema preventivo (1877), p. 48, 50, OE XXVIII 426, 428

743Cited in MB V 367

744G. Bosco, Vita del giovanetto Savio Domenico... pp 12-13, OE XI 162-163

745Regolamento dell'Oratorio...per gli esterni, part II, Chap II, art. 3, p.30, OE XXIX 60.

746[G. Bosco]. Cenni storici sulla vita del chierico Luigi Comollo morto nel seminario di Chieri ammirato da tutti per le

sue singolari virtù, scritti da un suo collega. Turin. Speirani and Ferrero 1844, p. 5 and 11, OE I 5 and 11.