BOYS’ TOWNS (VILLAGES, REPUBLICS, COMMUNITIES)
I. HISTORY
The first boys’ town was established in the United States at Omaha, Nebraska, in 1917 by Fr E. G. Flanagan (v.), who borrowed ninety dollars to pay the first month’s rent. It began with five boys; by Christmas 1917 there were twenty-five, and the number continued to grow. Today Boys Town covers three square kilometres, has about a thousand young citizens, its own post office, town hall, and regular court that sits every Monday; it also has schools, workshops, houses, farms, churches, and an arena seating 2,500 with standing room for 8,500. The work, which baffled physicians, psychologists, priests, veteran policemen, economists, and statesmen, drew its irresistible strength from love of God and of children.At Trogen in Switzerland, in September 1946, the first pavilion of the “Pestalozzi Children’s Village” was inaugurated under United Nations auspices to house war orphans from many nations. The children are grouped into “families” of sixteen to twenty, each occupying its own quarters under the guidance of “house-parents,” teachers, and educators of the same nationality and language as the children. Instruction is given in the pupils’ mother tongue.
Many similar communities have since arisen across Europe; in 1948 they united in the Fédération internationale des Communautés d’enfants (F.I.C.E.), which embraces all boys’ institutions pursuing these aims: a) to free the child from fear, the source of mistrust and spite; b) to develop his capacity for affection through creative activities parallel to school duties; c) to give him a sense of security through an upbringing close to family life; d) to acquaint him with the mechanisms of social life by active and responsible participation in the community’s work and organizations; e) to rescue him from group ego-centrism by teaching him to love objectivity and international understanding.
In Italy there are more than twenty boys’ towns, almost all founded by priests with the help of Italian and foreign benefactors, especially the American Relief for Italy (A.R.I.).
The “Children’s Village” at Santa Marinella (near Civitavecchia), founded in 1945 by Monsignor J. Patrick Carroll-Abbing and Don Antonio Rivolta on twenty square kilometres, has a highly democratic organization. Every barracks-like terminology is banned: the dormitory is called the “hotel,” the refectory the “restaurant,” the store the “emporium.” The only discipline is that imposed by the assembly, by self-government, and by civic responsibility. Offices such as mayor, treasurer, and judge rotate monthly; the governing board meets three or four times a week. Anyone may leave at will and is readmitted on returning, provided that while resident he observes the citizens’ statutes loyally. Study and work are paid for with a special currency called “merit,” used to pay for the hotel, restaurant, clothes, etc.; during vacations it is convertible into cash, thus providing a means of contact with the outside world.
The “Republic of Boys” at Sassi (Turin), founded in 1946 by Don Arbinolo, is organized on less democratic lines: according to its statutes it functions as a presidential republic in which the founder is president for life and retains approval or veto over any decision by the mayor, the general assembly, etc.
II. UNDERLYING PRINCIPLES
The success of boys’ towns rests chiefly on the pedagogical principles that inspire them, harmoniously combining awareness of the irreducible autonomy of the person, respect for the child’s freedom, and a lively sense of personal and social duty that issues in self-formation that is enlightened, felt, and constant. This can be summed up in three maxims:1) Every child can become an upright man. Anyone interpreting this maxim in an absolute sense and excluding all supernatural grace would obviously be mistaken, for experience and faith teach that human nature is born with the wounds of original sin and suffers their consequences in both the physical and the moral order. Equally mistaken would be the opposite view that human nature is so corrupt as to be incapable of redemption. Properly understood, the pedagogical maxim means that one must steer a middle course between the dreamy optimism of J.-J. Rousseau and the harsh pessimism of Baius and Jansenius. Above all, one must believe in the child and in his moral and supernatural possibilities of redemption and rehabilitation, which animate his effort to achieve them.
2) One cannot educate a child without his cooperation. An education that relies solely on abstract formulas and precepts, endlessly repeated and imposed perhaps by force, will achieve nothing. Education is essentially an interior work, both in the natural order and in the supernatural order of grace; the child must give his active cooperation while the educator creates a favourable environment for this cooperation, encourages it, elicits it, and sustains II.
3) Children are the best collaborators in educating their companions. An educator who truly wishes to strike an echo in the hearts of children and young people must feel their problems, impressions, reactions, and difficulties with the same sensitivity they do. This is not so simple for an adult, who would have to renew himself interiorly, so to speak, to descend to their level. A child, however, has no such need; he already feels as his companions feel, and therefore his educational work is more natural and spontaneous. This is not to say that the role of adults—especially the family and parents—is superfluous; on the contrary, the presence and action of older people is indispensable, for the younger child, with his inexperience and weakness, urgently needs guidance, good example, support, and love.
### III. THE CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIAN PEDAGOGY
Faced with this new conquering movement and these new pedagogical structures, Christian pedagogy has much to contribute, provided that its guiding principles are rightly interpreted and put into practice. The Christian, in fact, must know that the life of the child is the life of a child of God, who can bear within himself a supernatural life through grace, and sustained and strengthened by it, can ascend to the highest peaks of heroism. He also knows that God is love, and that therefore the Christian educator must imitate God even in this respect. These children who arrive at the [children’s communities] dirty, vicious, undisciplined, perverted, who know how to answer back, domineer, and rebel, are nonetheless loved by God as they are, for He knows their capacity to respond to a selfless call.
On the other hand, the doctrine of original sin and its consequences provides the educator with the stimulus to cooperate with grace, so that the educator may become aware of his own condition as a sinner and a creature; hence absolute autonomy is illusory and vain, and there is the duty to free oneself from the slavery of evil and sin in order to return to being a child of God. Moreover, Christian doctrine sets before us the social spirit by which every child of God must be animated: Jesus gave Himself even unto death; and the educator too must form within himself the inner conviction that he must live not only for himself but also for others, even to the point of total self-giving. Grace makes us all brothers of Jesus, whence arises within us a spirit of universal brotherhood.
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