JOHN BAPTIST DE LA SALLE, Saint. - Born into a family of magistrates on 30 April 1651 at Reims, died at Rouen on 7 April 1719, his youth unfolded in the serene and honorable climate of his social circle. He attended the Sorbonne and the Seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris; he was ordained a priest in April 1678. In his native city, in August 1678, he took up and defended the work of Canon Roland: he insisted that the community of the Sisters of the Infant Jesus be recognized as a female Congregation without solemn vows (the archbishop obtained letters patent for it in April 1679, but did not place the Saint at the head of the community): this first trial of his reveals his ability as an organizer, which he was to display more clearly in the education of youth.
The first school of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools may be considered the one opened in April 1679 at Reims in the parish of St. Maurice. The example (even though the Saint soon withdrew) bore fruit: the pious lady Lévêque de Croyère summoned the Saint, offering him an annual income to maintain two teachers and found a new school in the parish of St. James; in his humility the Saint wished to leave the charge of education to Adrien Nyel, but he had to return to his labor as an educator because of Nyel's weak organizational qualities. On 24 June 1682 the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools was born; the spread of the Institute was immediately very wide, in the neighboring countries, in Paris, in Chartres, throughout France, in Europe, and the activity of the Saint merges into the very history of the Institute.
Harsh oppositions were not lacking to the work of G. B. de La S. (especially on the part of the writing masters, who at Chartres succeeded in having the Institute accept only pupils whose parents were enrolled in the poor register, and on the part of the Huguenots and the Jansenists); but the work showed its vitality because it corresponded to a deeply felt need of the century, wholly intent on the pursuit of the experimental and technical sciences.
A lucid and graceful writer, G. B. de La S. left various ascetic and mystical writings, pervaded by a tone of devotion to the mysteries of Christ of a plainly Bérullian flavor: Recueil de différents petits traités (Avignon 1711); Méditations pour les dimanches de l'année (Rouen s. a.); Méditations pour le temps de la retraite (ibid. s. a.; Italian trans. by D. Bassi, Il manuale religioso del maestro [Rome 1938]). He was canonized by Leo XIII in 1900 and proclaimed by Pius XII principal patron of all teachers who concern themselves with children and young people (AAS, 42 [1930], pp. 631-32). His feast falls on 15 May.
Bibliography7 works
Massimo Petrocchi
PEDAGOGY
The Saint's principal pedagogical work is the Conduite des écoles chrétiennes (Avignon 1720), in which he sets out in three parts the rules concerning the exercises of the school, discipline, and the formation of the teacher. And the extraordinary merit that is recognized in him in the pedagogical field derives both from the timely institutions he brought to life and from the new or renewed and perfected methods that he introduced into teaching.
As for the institutions, to him are owed: 1) the "free primary schools," for which he presented something like a "charter," in which the whole design is perfectly defined and set out in its essential part and in its developments. Thus he solved the age-old problem of popular schools, which had fallen very low in universal esteem because of disorder, the lack of selection of teachers, the absence of any method, and the scarcity of persons willing to commit themselves to the career of teaching. 2) The "seminaries for the formation of country teachers," a kind of teacher-training institute, the first of which mention is made, with an attached school in which the students did their practice teaching under the guidance of an experienced Brother. 3) The "technical institute" of St-Yvon (Paris) to meet the need for a predominantly technical and scientific education, one that left aside Latin and Greek, whereas until then classical teaching had prevailed. 4) The "vocational schools," in which to prepare future merchants and artisans for their trades. 5) The "Sunday schools for adults," which were to satisfy the desire for culture also of workers, who during the week were taken up by their work.
As for the methods: 1) he radically changed the practice, then widely prevalent, by which the child learned to read the first rudiments of the various subjects through the Latin language; this had to cease, because the first rudiments were to be taught and learned in the mother tongue, which is easier, more comprehensible and more fully understood. Therefore he dictated in French his spelling books, catechisms, and manuals of grammar, arithmetic, manners, and religion. For those times the gesture, now so natural and understandable, smacked of revolutionary audacity. 2) To the still fashionable practice of individual instruction, by which the aim was to instruct each pupil separately, while nevertheless keeping them all together in the same class, he substituted the "simultaneous method," already used by reforming pedagogists: all the pupils of a class were to have the same textbook and follow the lesson under the guidance of the same teacher.
As for the formation of teachers, the Saint wants them full of enthusiasm and deeply conscious of their mission; whence derives the resolve to devote themselves completely to the good success of the pupils; preparing therefore with diligence every lesson and correcting their work well. Here lies the secret of the excellent reputation enjoyed by the institutes directed by the Brothers of the Christian Schools: to possess men solely intent on the educational goal and always progressing in the study of their subject. The Saint himself sets out the twelve virtues that form the model of the perfect educator: gravity, silence, discretion, prudence, wisdom, patience, reserve, goodness, zeal, vigilance, piety, generosity.
Finally, as for the formation of the pupils, he demanded first of all religious instruction (he prescribed half an hour a day of it); then serious discipline, to be obtained by preventing faults and laziness through the spirit of healthy emulation, solemn award ceremonies, and small prizes; the repressive method is to be used only when the first is not enough and, even in this case, proceeding gradually: warning, reproof, punishment. Naturally, full impartiality must be maintained and it must be shown that everything is done for the good of the one punished.
For all these reasons the Saint can rightly be considered the great reformer of the school and of discipline in a fully Catholic sense.
Bibliography6 works
Celestino Testore