safeguards all the other virtues. And, if this virtue is necessary for everyone, even more so is it necessary for youth. Therefore if you want to acquire this virtue, begin by obeying your superiors, submitting yourselves to them without any kind of opposition just as you would submit to God.878 By means of obedience, a young man either as in individual or in community becomes a disciple and
by inwardly conforming to what is ordered, expressed in rules and prescriptions, he becomes
disciplined at every level and in every sector of his inner and ou tward existence. So education becomes
a work of obedience and discipline in the broader sense: fulfilling one's duty is really fulfilling all
duties towards God, others, and self. Duty and doing things dutifully are deeply connected: everything
we need to do for our salvation goes back to the duty of our state in life - study, work - which turns out to be like a measuring rod to test and verify the authentic fulfillment of all other duties.
'Discipline', for Don Bosco, has a holistic meaning. In a circul ar to Salesians in 1873, Don Bosco
stated: “By 'discipline' I mean a way of living which conforms to the rules and traditional customs of an institution. Therefore to reach the good results connected with discipline it is essential that all the rules be kept by everyone.” “Observance of these rules must be evidenced by members of the Congregation and by the young entrusted to our care by divine Providence... And so, discipline will have no results at all if the rules of the Society and of the school are not kept. Believe me, my dear friends, it is from the observance of the rules that the moral and other benefits for the pupils, or their ruin, depend... The rules are really nothing but a synthesis of all the values human and Christian, to be pursued”. And to conclude Don Bosco wrote: “The Lord said, one day, to his disciples: 'Do this and you shall live' (Lk.10: 28). I am saying the same thing to you”.
Don Bosco assured his Salesians and their pupils that by practising these things: “You will have the Lord's blessings, you will enjoy inner peace, discipline will triumph in our houses, and we will see our pupils grow in virtue and walk along road to eternal salvation”.879
It is an essential ingredient of the preventive system to “make the rules of an institution known” and then help the young to keep them, with the help of the educators who mention them then guide, advise and correct with loving kindness.880 To grow, it remains for the pupils to cooperate obediently and with
conviction.
There is no doubt that at ti mes Don Bosco presents obedience as sacrificing intellect and will and as
having an intrinsic moral and religious value. Tertullian fell into heresy because he did not have
humility and did not submit to his legitimate superiors and especially to the Vicar of Jesus Christ.
881
“By obedience we offer to God as a sacrifice what we hold most precious, namely, our freedom. Consequently this is the sacrifice we can offer God and to Him, this is the most dear offering”.882 But above all, obedience has a functional value since it is educationally productive. After all, even for Don Bosco, education was equated with discipline, understood in its widest sense.
It is, however, hard to determine the degree of freedom and autonomy granted and favoured by this type of pedagogy of obedience. Perhaps the overall comparison with the effective experience of the preventive system in all its aspects might provide a flexible interpretation of what has been said thus far. We might see this in the chapters to follow.
878Regolamento per le case..., part II, Chapter VIII Contengo verso I Superiori, p. 75 OE XXIX 171.
879Circ. Letter 15 November 1873, E II 319-321
880Cf. Il sistema preventivo (1877), p. 46, OE XXVIII 424.
881G. Bosco, Vita de' sommi pontefici S. Aniceto, S. Sotero... Turin, G. B. Paravia& CO., 1858, p. 46, OE X 250. “If
Savanarola had submitted to his Superiors those evils would not have befallen him”, his opinion in Storia d'Italia, in
reference to his being tortured and condemned to death.
882G. Bonetti, Memoria di alcuni fatti..., p. 15.