Reconstructing Don Bosco’s Preventive System: sources

To reconstruct Don B osco’s educational praxis and theory it seems we should employ some basic methodological criteria which in turn should take the following into account:

1. The complexity o f Don Bosco’s activity and his vision o f the young;

2. The constant interaction betw een action, w ritings and life experiences, both personal and institutional;

3. The constantly changing historical context.

All o f these should be kept in mind as well as the complex reality o f the historical context, oscillating between rigid patterns and efforts to adapt.

2.1.

Don Bosco, Christian Apostle o f the young

Don Bosco is not only an educator in the strict and form ai sense o f the term.

His educative activity;8 properly so called, is part o f a wider gamut o f interests related to youth and ordinary people at all levels.

Practically speaking, the peculiarities o f Don Bosco’s educational activity should be seen in the context o f a threefold concern interconnected yet formally distinet:

1) The welfare and charitable activity directed to providing basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter and work.

2) The pastoral ministry carried out for the salvation o f souls, for living and dying in G od’s grace, with all the specific interventions required by that.

3) The spiritual animation o f the educational and religious communities he founded, in order to help support the various undertakings on behalf o f the young.

This complex activity finds adequate expression in complementary statements which clearly evidence their doublé dimension: Action and Religious Consecration.

For twenty years I have been carrying out my priestly ministry to prisons, hospitals, all along the streets and city squares in Turin; I gave shelter to abandoned boys, to direct them to good morals, work, according to their talents and abilities without asking for or actually receiving any sort o f compensation for it. I actually used my own money to build a house and provide a livelihood for poor boys. I would do the same thing today.9

This is the objective o f our Society: our personal sanctification, and, through the practice o f charity, the salvation o f souls. To achieve this, we have to be extremely careful, in assigning to leadership positions on behalf o f others only those who are outstanding in virtue and in the knowledge o f what they try to teach others. It is better to be without a teacher than to have one who is incapable o f teaching.10

8 “Educative” strictly speaking is what impaets positively on the development and formation o f human faculties, so as to make each person capable o f habitual free decisions, generous life commitment both as an individuai and in society, morally and religiously.

9 Letter to the minister for Internai Affairs, Carlo Farini, June 12,1860, Em 1407.

10 First o f a series of marginai notes in Latin to the recently approved Constitutions 1874.

MB X 994-996.

A t least two consideratioris can be drawn from the above for any reconstruction o fth e Preventive System:

F irst o f ali the presentation o f the proper pedagogical elem ent o f thè Preventive System does not cover its entire range. In fact, it also includes a ciear pastora! and spiritual dim ension both in reference to educators and those to be educated.

Secondly, to adequately use Don B osco’s w ritings w hich are the expression and dim ension o f its entire lived experience, w e should interpret their explicitly pedagogical contents when necessary. These, in turn, should be connected with other appropriate elem ents: theological, juridical, hagiographical, spiritual, ascetic and organisational.11

2.2

L ife’s integrating role in any reconstruction o f thè Preventive System There is a huge num ber o f D on B osco’s writings which owe their existence to his radicai aim o f cham pioning the im provem ent o f the young and the masses. They end up being incomprehensible or even misleading, even theoretically, if not connected w ith his personality and with the real life o f the institutions he created and governed.

This does not mean thè Preventive System is to be precisely equated with Don Bosco him self. Undoubtedly, Don B o sco ’s outstandingpersonality as a clever and holy educator gives the system a particular tone o f its own, but the system takes on its own structure and validity. It even becom es a doctrine to be handed on, and it was actively handed on firstly to his own immediate co-workers and to the various groups working in the field o f youth assistance. Don Bosco and his followers ended up clearly setting the Preventive System, w ith its structure and effectiveness, against another doctrine and educational praxis, the repressive system.

It does not exclude, but implies rather th at the best interpreter o f D on Bosco for theorising and writing about the Preventive System is Don Bosco himself. It is he who creates and moulds his educational experience and enfleshes it in his own institutions together with all his co-w orkers and young people who are the first and m ost active beneficiaries o f the system. Bartholom ew Fascie wrote: “ One who approaches Don Bosco’s education system with the idea o f subjecting itto painstaking analysis, dissecting it, dividing it into many parts, rigid patterns, is following the wrong lead. Don Bosco’s method o f education should be looked at as a living form in its entirety, by study ing the principies which gave origìn to its life, its bodies, its vitality, and the fìinctions developed from them”.'2

u R. Farina provides valid criteria for reading Don Bosco’s literary production in L eggere D on B osco oggi. N ote e su ggestion i m etodologiche, in L a fo rm a zio n e perm anente in terpella g li Istituti religiosi, ed. R Broccardo, (Leumann-Turin, Elle Di Ci 1976), 349-404.

12 B. Fascie, D el m etodo educativo di Don Bosco. Fonti e commenti, (Turin, SEI, 1927), 32.

On the relationship between writings and personal and institutional experience as a criterion

2.3

Relationship between stabilìty and innovation in the Preventive System The attention given to the historical, contextual and vital nature o f the Preventive System should help rem ove the possibility o f its reconstruction being too rigid and uniform, In fact Don B osco’s educational experience and the theoretical reflection accom panying it occurred at a considerably different tim e and in a different social, environmental and institutional context.

The years priorto 1848 and the birth o f Italian national unity (1860), as welì as the Piedm ontese period o f expansion o f Don B osco’s undertakings (up to 1870), are not easily identifìable either in themselves or in the years and periods that immediately followed. The psychological climate, cultural impulses, social conditions and politicai and religious contexts appear to have been radically different. Besides, even within these periods there cannot be any comparison with the experiences Don Bosco had at the festive oratoiy, the homes for apprentices, for student-seminarians, in the boarding colleges for students and artisans, for boys o f middle and upper classes (like those at Alassio, Turin-Valsalice and Este), in the Pcitronages o f Southern France and in similar institutions in Argentina and Uruguay.

It is quite naturai to find the essential elements and basic inspirations everywhere but with quite different accents and elem ents as well. And at the same tim e it is also naturai that sim ilar differences m ight be noticed in w ritten docum ents w hich are different because o f the reality they refer to, or because o f the situations at the time they w ere w ritten or because o f the literary genre. We have already hinted at the hypothesis o f a Preventive System carried out with a variety o f preventive m ethods and firstly the reference to the different “open” institutions, an “open” institution like the oratory, and comprehensive schools like the colleges or boarding schools.13

Nel documento PREVENTION, NOT REPRESSION (pagine 132-135)