preventing vice from being born or being diffused… What solicitude is needed to prevent the onslaught of so many dangers! How much vigilance and delicacy are needed to have one accept the removal of dangerous occasions...! In short, uninterrupted prevention is absolutely necessary, during study periods, recreation, walks, day and night. The great goal is that of leading the pupils to freely obey. The success of an educator depends on the attainment of this free obedience which distinguishes freedmen from slaves”.279 However, any familiarity or intimacy which may detract from authority and prestige should be avoided.280

Patience, which holds second place, will help. Patience should take into account the impetuousness of a youngster, his changing moods and patience will be necessary, most of all, at the critical point of repression, in moments of fear, inflexibility and when medicinal chastisements (not punishments) must be administered.281

Repression is the third stage. It is the stage of emergency, relationships between pupils and educators. Repression is preceded by two factors more authentically preventive and constructive. The first factor is an inner discipline or discipline of the will directed toward love of duty in particular, by appealing to reason, the heart and the sense of honor.282The second factor is that of vigilance which implies a kind of continuous, discreet and loyal preventiveness.283 “All educators know that it is incomparably better to prevent evil rather than to have to fight against it and punish it”.284Repression is involved when the two more noble ways of reasoning prove momentarily inadequate, that is when motives of duty and honor fail, along with supervision. 285For educational activity to be kept open and allowed to continue, according to Monfat the norms should be as follows:

l. Do not use (repression) until all other means have been exhausted.

2. Know how to choose the appropriate time.

3. Exclude anything which might arouse suspicion that you are acting out of emotion.

4. Act in such a way as to leave the door open for hope, forgiveness. 286

On this last, Monfat suggests that punishment be just, moderate, proportionate to the fault and useful for improvement.287

279 A. Monfat, Les vrais principes, 303-304. Prevention as a method is framed in a wider perspective, theological in its

roots, in the prior dilexit of God (359; cf. 299, 301, 303); therefore, also giving the child “the certainty that he is loved”

(305). In Pratica dell’educazione cristiana, Monfat returns to the “careful supervision” as a specific competence of the

prefect.

280 A. Monfat, Les vrais principes, 329.

281 Ibid., 320-330. (Doveri particolareggiati del rispetto verso gli alunni) and 338-341 (Repression with profit). 282 A. Monfat, La pratica dell’educazione cristiana, (1879), 58-138. Monfat recalls the practice of short familiar

conversations by the Director with the pupils, held in the evening before they go to bed: it is the “evening conference”

which Dupanloup writes of and which Don Bosco called the Good Night or Good Evening (91-92).

283 Ibid., 138-155.

284 Ibid., 144.

285 Ibid., 156-193.

286 Ibid., 157. developments, 157-173. On the influence of these pages on the letter on punishments attributed to Don

Bosco, J: Prellezo has written, Dei castighi da infliggersi delle Case Salesiane. Una lettera circolare attribuita a Don

Bosco, RSS 5 (1986) 263-308.

287 A. Monfat, La pratica dell’educazione cristiana, (1879), 173-193.