Chapter 19
Towards tomorrow
At the end of this summary presentation we can ask ourselves to what extent historical reality can be the basis for formulating a valid preventive project now and in the future. It is clear that the preventive system was thought out and implemented by Don Bosco in the 1800s and therefore is inevitably dated, and not only chronologically! It would not be presumptuous to say once more, that with the preventive system of the 1800s a period of the history of Christian education came to an end.
The vital continuity of this system, we concluded, was entrusted to the regenerating task of new reflection and future research.1327
1. Modernity's educational revolution
It is already difficult, no doubt, to reconstruct yesterday's preventive system with today's mentality: that is the advantage and disadvantage of any historical work. But more difficult still is to understand past events in terms of their eventual implementation in the present or projection into the future.
Regarding Don Bosco's world, the world of his educational institutions and therefore the world of the system he practised or proposed for various and wide-ranging ways of implementation, we have to acknowledge that such disconcerting events have intervened that understanding the old terminology and its general interpretation has been made difficult.
We have already mentionedsome of the more outstanding changes: the gradual expansion of the Industrial Revolution; the triumph of science and technology (up to the appearance of scientism and positivism); the birth of the so-called human sciences (sociology, psychology etc.); a new evaluation of the body and sex; the transition from monarchic absolutism to a liberal parliamentary system and democracy; the commanding prominence of the 'social question' in socialism, Marxism, 'the social doctrine of the Church'; growing disputes between revealed religions, with touches of anti-clericalism and atheism; the appearance of Freudian and in-depth psychology; the 'discovery of the child; 'new education' and activism; religious evolution within the Church from modernism to Vatican Council II (Christian practice, theology, liturgy, Scripture, ecumenism, the role of the laity and of the young) and, at the same time, wars and political and social revolutions of global dimensions; more recently, widespread relativism in the fields of thought, ethical thinking and moral practices.1328
We should pay particular attention to a modern 'Copernican revolution' with secular roots but with
effects relevant to the world of education, achieved well before the experience of 'preventive' educators
who were born w ithin the traditional Catholic world and active during the 19th and 20th centuries. This
is particularly significant because it highlights with exceptional vigour the two hinges of the preventive
system as it proposes, once again, but in new terms, the cl assic opposition between authority and
freedom:
1. Attention given the child, its exuberant energies and therefore central role in education;
2. The consequent reconsidering of the preventive, protective and promotional function of the adult
educator.
Amon g pedagogical theoreticians we could consider as forerunners of the new approach to education,
J. Amos Komenski (1592 -1670), and John Locke (1632 -1704), and as the recognised 'founding father',
1327 Cf. P. Braido, Presentation, second volume of Esperienze di pedagogia cristiana nella storia, ed. P. Braido, Rome.
LAS 1981, p.8.
1328 P. Briado, La prassi di don Bosco e il sistema preventivo. L'orizzonte storico, in Il sistema preventivo verso il terzo
millennio,Atti della XVIII Settimana di Spiritualità della Famiglia Salesiana, Rome, Salesianum 26-29 January 1995.
Rome. SDB 1995, p. 12.