Don Bosco's system arose and took shape in conceptual terms precisely through real, factual contact with this unlimited youthful reality. So it is necessary to identify the structures, features, detail the 'face' of the young whom he encountered: both in his immediate concrete involvement and through the images he built up in their regard.683
It is not an easy task because if his pedagogy is not doctrinal and systematic, his experience of young
people that led to is even less systematically developed. But it is not impossible, just the same, because here too his consistent and realistic activity is accompanied constantly by clear insights and
formulations. In reality what he did and the intentions he expressed — to gain the needed consensus, seek charity, impose some unity on the involvement of his helpers — help us bring together fairly adequately his basic ideas concerning the 'youth situation' from a threefold point of view: sociological, psychological, theological-anthropological.
1. Elements of the sociology of youth
What undoubtedly impressed public opinion from the outset was Don Bosco's systematic interest in and intentions regarding 'poor and abandoned' youth, 'the poorest and most neglected' youth, 'poor and derelict youth', 'the most needy and risky children'. Recalling this thirty years later in the Memoirs of the Oratory of St Francis de Sales, the story of that early 'little oratory', he loved to go back to the original scope of “gathering up only the boys most at risk, and preferably those who had come out of prison”.684far from their families, strangers in Turin”, “stonecutters, bricklayers, stuccoers, road pavers, plasterers and others who came from distant villages”.685At times his preference is expressed broadly by his intention “to be able to decrease the number of rascals and youngsters who end up in prison”.686 This course of action does not mark the beginning of something new but rather the continuation of Don Bosco's renewed fervor and growing organisational vigour, according to the needs of the times and experiences past and present.687
The problem did not go unnoticed, even in Turin. Initiatives had come into being in the preceding
centuries providing help for unfortunate young people whose parents could not or did not care to
provide for them. This assistance was given through catechetical instruction and introduction to skilled
labor.
Charitable persons, moved “only by Christian charity", by loving kindness went looking for them; they gathered up as many as possible of them, and with admirable patience instructed them in Christian doctrine, and provided, to the best of their ability, for their greater needs. Some were introduced to some kind of civil culture.
From 1850 on, this was the aim of those people who backed the “Hotel for Virtue” which was established on July 24, 1587, by R. Patente. Workshops were set up to train textile workers, hatters, lathe workers, upholsterers, blacksmiths, carpenters, furniture experts, foundry workers, tailors and shoemakers, and give them increased cultural enrichment.
are the hope of society”. BS 7 (1883) no. 8, August, p. 129.
683Cf P. Stella,Don Bosco nella storia economica e sociale, pp. 123-157 (Collegi e ospizi in Piemonte e in Liguria 1860-
1870). 159-174 (I giovani degli oratori festivi a torino 1841-1870), 175-199 (Giovani e adulti convittori a Valdocco
1847-1870), 289-294 (La popolazione giovanile degli altri collegi).
684MO (1991) 123; “especially those who came out of the prisons” (p. 122). It is significant however that in the Storia
dell'Oratorio di s. Francesco di Sales, written by Fr Bonetti, which would use the manuscript
685BS 3 (1879) no. 2 Feb. p. 8 = MO (1991) 122; MO (1991) 124 = BS 3 (1879) no. 3 March p. 6.
686MO (1991) 147 = BS 3 (1879) no.7 July, p. 16.
687Cf R. Chartier, M.M. Compère, D. Julia, L'éducation en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle. Paris, Sedes 1976, pp. 57-58;
L. Chevalier Classes laborieuses et classes dangereuses à Paris pendant la première moitié du XIXe siècle, Paris,
Librairie Plon 1958; P. Pierrard, Enfants et jeunes ouvriers en France (XIXe-XXe siècle). Paris, Les éditions Ouvrières
1987, 225 p. However, Turin in the 1840s was certainly not Paris.