Chapter 16
The pedagogy of joy and festivity
It was a happy intuition of the sharp-minded philosopher, Francis Orestano, when he said: “If St Francis sanctified nature and poverty, St John Bosco sanctified work and joy... I would not be surprised if Don Bosco were to be proclaimed Patron Saint of games and of modern sports”.1152
In a summation of the most recent scholarly research work done on Don Bosco and his ‘modernity’, Peter Stella remarks that some studies have highlighted the intuitions, rather than the wording ofthe Preventive System (1877) which governs the role of free time and games in Don Bosco's educational experience.
This holds true both in reference to the spontaneous gathering of boys at the Oratory and the rather uninhibited gatherings of boys in a Salesian boarding school where the playground games were an important moment in the life of the young, besides being a healthy release valve (though not without some constricting and even repressive elements)1153
1. Joy
Joy, cheerfulness are constitutive elements of the preventive system and they cannot be separated from study, work, piety and religion. “If you want to be good”, Don Bosco suggested to young Francis Besucco “just put these three things into practice and all will be well: cheerfulness, study, piety. This is a great program, and if you put it into practice you will live happily and do much good to your soul”.1154
A year earlier, in l862, Fr John Bonetti, then a student of theology, jotted down the following remarks in one of his diaries:
Don Bosco usually tells the Oratory boys that he wants only three things from them:
cheerfulness, work and piety. He often repeats a saying of St. Philip Neri: at the proper time
run, jump, have as much fun as you want but, for goodness sake, don't commit any sins.1155
Joy is an essential feature of a family -like setting and an expression of loving kindness. It is the logical outcome of a system based on reason and an inner and spontaneous religious sense, which has as its
ultimate source peace with God and the life of gr ace.
The fatherly and brotherly contact of the educator with his pupils would have neither value
nor effect on the spirit of the young without the effectiveness of a joyful, cheerful
existence. It is thanks to these that the boy are open to what is good.
1156
Before being a methodological approach and a way of getting a boy to accept what is serious in
education, joy was a way of life for Don Bosco. He draws this from an instinctive psychological
appreciation of the young person and from family spirit.
At a tim e when education in the family context was generally austere, Don Bosco understood more
than anyone else that a boy is a boy and wants to be treated as a boy; he knows that his deepest need is
1152 F. Orestano, Celebrazioni, vol I, pp. 76-77; cf. G. Söll, Don Bosco-Botschafter der Freude, Köln, Kölner Kreis
1977.
1153 P. Stella, Bilancio delle forme di conoscenza e degli studi su don Bosco, in M. Midali (Ed.), Don Bosco nella
storia..., p. 35.
1154 G. Bosco, Il pastorello delle Alpi..., pp. 90-91, OE XV 332-333.
1155 G. Bonetti, Annali II (1861-\862), 2 May 1862, p. 77.
1156 Cf. A. Caviglia, Introduzione alla lettura de La vita di Savio Doemnico, pp. XLI-XLII. The theme of joy as a factor
in education for Don Bosco is especially developed also by F.X. Eggersdorfer, Jugenderziehung..., pp. 263-264.