taking on distinctive features which characterise the Christian preventive pedagogy of the 19th Century from within. The main objectives are:
To see to the salvation of souls, religious instruction as a means of wresting children from
vice, and forming their hearts, their consciences and their wills. Devotion to Mary — the
Brothers take the blessed Virgin Mary as their exemplar, who served and educated the child
Jesus; the method of love is to be used for discipline, which has as its goal not to hold back
the pupils by means of force and fear of punishments, but to keep them away from what is
evil, to correct their defects, to form their will. Educators are expected to be fathers and not
slave-masters; there must be a family spirit with feelings of respect and of love, with
mutual trust and not with feelings of fear”.323… The Brother is a perfect model to be
imitated by fathers and mothers, with tender charity towards his pupils, with patience in
putting up with their faults, with zeal in forming them to achieve virtue and useful
knowledge, with vigilance concerned with keeping far away from them all that can be
harmful, with steadfast dedication to their spiritual and temporal interests,; he is an ongoing
lesson which shows them what they should do and what they should be in order to give
their children a true Christian education”.324…He does good to everyone: to the children
whom he educates and helps improve by means of instruction, Christian instruction; the
families whose place he takes; the parishes which he helps to build up, being steadfast and
becoming better; the entire country by having the children prepared to be good citizens; the
church, by helping pastors to instruct the most interesting section of their flock; by
tirelessly forming new generations of learned, convinced and faithful Christians for the
Church. The Brother is entirely dedicated to the service of religion, to the service of the
community, and offers his energies and life to promote the glory of God and the
sanctification of his neighbor”.325
The tasks assigned to the Director of the community of religious educators are full of wisdom, undoubtedly close to the features of the effective and gentle manner of governing proposed by Binet.326 The Director's qualities are abundantly explained: common sense, reasonableness, a good disposition, piety, observance, sanctity or solid virtue, charity, humility, gentleness, firmness and constancy, vigilance and ability to correct.327 The pedagogical life-project presented for the Brothers in “lessons and instructions” appears no less clear and complete. The project starts off from the notion of education, its objectives and its requirements, namely: catechesis, respect towards the child, discipline and the personality of the teacher-educator. This is a systematic vision, which leaves no reason at all to envy the lived and reflective experience of Don Bosco the educator.328
Education has to reach and grasp all the dimensions of a child's life: to enlighten his intelligence including by correcting his deviations and prejudices; to mould his heart; to form his conscience; to create the habit of being pious; to form his will, his judgment, his character; to inspire him to love, to work; to make whatever needs to be known available to the child; to maintain and develop a child's physical strength; to provide a child with the means needed to develop who he is.329
According to the cannons of current pedagogy, stress is placed on the need for education to be
323 Cf. P. Braido, “Marcellino Champagnat e la perenne “restaurazione” pedagogica cristiana”, in Orientamenti
Pedagogici 2 (1955): 721-735.
324 Avis leçons, sentences, 26.
325 Ibid., 28.
326 Cf. E. Binet, Quel est le meilleur gouvernement, already cited nel ch. 3, par. 3., (Lyon: J. Nicolle 1869).
327 Cf. Le bom Supérieur ou les qualités d’un bom frere directeur d’après l’esprit du vénéré père Champagnat,( Lyon: , J.
Nicolle 1869).
328 The last chapters, 35-41 are dedicated to this in Avis leçons, sentence et instructionss, 399-495.
329 Avis leçons, sentences, pp. 399-411.