person into your office and in the most charitable way make sure to have him declare his guilt and the wrong he has caused by doing what he did. Then correct him and invite him to fix up all those things that pertain to his conscience.
When you give orders, always be charitable, meek. Threats, anger and worse, violence, should always be kept far away from your words and deeds.1207
Don Bosco expressed his thinking on this matter with utmost clarity, speaking to the boys at the
Oratory in a Good Night on 26 October 1875. This reflects the content of so many other talks given by
Don Bosco.
You have increased in number again. We have begun everything just as usual. They say that
someone who has been warned on time is worth a hundred others. So, now that we are in
time still I should warn you of a few things. First of all, keep well in mind th at we are
starting right now and we will continue throughout the year giving you marks for your
studies, your behaviour in the classroom, the dormitories, the dining room and similar
places. Anyone who does not behave well will receive a poor mark and will hear his name
mentioned in public, in front of all the others, to his great shame. Anyone who does not
hear his name mentioned in public can see that as a sign that everything is going well for
him. hose who get poor marks should know that they will be t olerated for a while, but
then, no longer. I am sorry, but this is what we are forced to do every year with someone.
We are forced to show him the door and tell him: “You are not for the Oratory anymore”.
With some others we will bear a little longer and let them go on for a while to see if they decide to change their ways, but then you know what the proverb says “The water pail goes to the well so often that it in the end it breaks”, meaning that one thing added to another eventually becomes something big.We will let someone go on until the end of the year, but at that time all of his pranks will seem bundled up together and we will give him a poor mark, then during holiday time we will be forced to send a note home saying that he can stay home and enjoy a longer holiday since there is no more room available for him at the Oratory. This is exactly what we had to do this year. And if you notice that several people are missing, it happened because of this. Now you are all well advised in advance and I hope that no one will ever see this happening to him.1208
3. The role of the superior, rules as the concrete embodiment of duty, initiation into responsibility Reason is fundamental. The preventive system supposes that the educator is protective and always present. But there is something which makes the preventive system look like the repressive one: the clear indication of the objectives to be achieved and the way to achieve them. Concretely, this is referred to as the Rules, prescriptions broken down into precepts, written and oral, which encompass the daily life of the pupils. They represent the code of duties towards God, one's neighbour, one's self. The pupil is bound to follow this code. Surveillance might be entirely reduced to 'assistance', help, support, but this does not remove the fact that it should begin by presenting the code of duties. Both the preventive and the repressive systems consist in making the rules known to the individuals and then making sure that they are kept – this is surveillance.1209 In both situations the code may be
identical.
Even though discipline and the related practice of correction and punishment differ according to the
1207 F. Motto, I «Ricordi confidenziali ai direttori»..., p. 151, 154, 155, 156-157, 159. 1208 MB CI 459-460.
1209 Il sistema preventivo (1877), p. 44 and 46, OE XXVIII 422 and 424.