Don Bosco’s Education Journey (Continued) – By Redaktor Strony / June 14, 2024 / Salesian Bulletin Online –
(Continued from previous article)
Even today, in a different cultural and social context, Don Bosco’s grasp of things is not all all outdated, but still works. Especially surprising, in the dynamics of rehabilitating children and young people who have entered the penal circuit, is the inventive spirit in creating concrete job opportunities for them.
Today we encounter problems offering employment opportunities for our minors at risk. Those who work in the social sector know how hard it is to overcome bureaucratic mechanisms and gears in order to realise, for example, simple work grants for minors. Don Bosco used agile approaches and structures, having boys “fostered” by employers, under the educational tutelage of a guarantor.
The first years of Don Bosco’s priestly and apostolic life were marked by a continuous search for the right way to take boys and young men away from the dangers of the street. The plans were clear in his mind, as ingrained in his mind and soul was his educational method. “Not with blows but by gentleness.” He was also convinced that it was no easy feat to turn wolves into lambs. But he had Divine Providence on his side.
And when faced with immediate problems, he never backed down. He was not the type to enter into discussion about the sociological condition of minors, nor was he the priest for political or formal compromises; he was saintly stubborn in his good intentions but was strongly tenacious and concrete in realizing them. He had great zeal for the salvation of youth, and there were no obstacles that could restrain this holy passion, which marked every step and punctuated every hour of his day.
“In the prisons, he saw a great number of boys, ranging between twelve and eighteen years of age, [basically] healthy, sturdy, and intelligent. He was horrified to see them inactive, bitten by insects, hungry for both spiritual and material food while they served time, expiating through detention, and even more through remorse, their precocious depravity. They were a blot on their country, the dishonor of their families, an infamy to themselves. They were above all, souls that, redeemed by the blood of Christ, were now reduced to slaves of vice, and in the greatest danger of eternal perdition. Who knows, if these boys had had a friend who had taken loving care of them by helping them and by giving them religious instruction on holy days, perhaps they would have avoided coming and returning to these prisons. Certainly, the number of these young prisoners would be diminished.” (MB II, 49-50)
He rolled up his sleeves and gave himself body and soul to the prevention of these evils; he gave all his contribution, his experience, but above all, his insights in launching his own initiatives or those of other associations. It was the release from prison that worried both the government and private “societies.” It was precisely in 1846 that an associative structure authorized by the government was set up, which resembled, at least in its intentions and, in some ways, what is happening today in the Italian juvenile penal system. It was called the “Royal Society for the Patronage of Young People Released from the House of Correctional Education.” Its purpose was to support young people released from the Generala.
A careful reading of the Statutes brings us back to some of the penal measures that are nowadays provided for as alternative measures to prison.
The Members of the Society were divided into “operatives”, who took on the office of guardians, “paying members”, and “paying operatives”. Don Bosco was an “operative member”. Don Bosco accepted several, but with discouraging results. Perhaps it was these failures that made him decide to ask the authorities to send the boys to him before they ended up like that.
It is not important here to deal with the relationship between Don Bosco, the houses of correction and collateral services, but rather to recall the attention the Saint paid to this group of minors. Don Bosco knew the hearts of the young men of the Generala, but above all he had more in mind than remaining indifferent to the moral and human degradation of those poor and unfortunate inmates. He continued his mission: he did not abandon them: “Ever since the Government opened that Penitentiary, and entrusted its direction to the Society of St Peter in Chains, Don Bosco was able to go from time to time among those poor youngsters […]. With the permission of the Director of the prisons, he instructed them in catechism, preached to them, heard their confessions, and many times entertained them amicably in recreation, as he did with his boys at the Oratory” (BS 1882, n. 11 p. 180).
Don Bosco’s interest in young people in difficulty was focused over time in the Oratory, a true expression of a preventive and recuperative pedagogy, being an open and multifunctional social service. Don Bosco had direct contact with quarrelsome, violent youth bordering on delinquency around 1846-50. These are the encounters with the cocche, gangs, or neighborhood groups in the ongoing conflict. The story is told of a fourteen-year-old boy, son of a drunkard and anticlerical father who, having happened to be in the Oratory in 1846, threw himself headlong into the various recreational activities but refused to attend religious services because, according to his father’s teachings, he did not want to become a “moldy old cretin.” Don Bosco attracted him with his tolerance and patience, which made him change his behavior in a short time.
Don Bosco was also interested in taking on the management of re-educational and correctional institutions. Proposals, in this sense, had come from various quarters. There were attempts and contacts, but drafts and proposals for agreementscame to nothing. All this is sufficient to show how much Don Bosco had the problem of discarded children at heart. And if there was resistance, it always came from the difficulty of using the preventive system. Wherever he found a “mixture” of the repressive and preventive system, he was categorical in his refusal, as he was also clear in his rejection of any group or structure that brought back to the idea of the “reformatory.” A careful reading of these attempts reveals the factthat Don Bosco never refused to help the boy in difficulty, but he was against the management of institutes, houses of correction, or directing works with an obvious educational compromise.
The conversation that took place between Don Bosco and Crispi in Rome in February 1878 is very interesting. Crispi asked Don Bosco for news about the progress of his work and, in particular, spoke about the educational systems. He lamented the unrest that was taking place in the correctional prisons. It was a conversation in which the Minister was fascinated by Don Bosco’s analysis; he asked him not only for advice but also for a program for these houses of correction (MB XIII, 483).
Don Bosco’s replies and proposals found sympathy but not willingness: the rift between the religious and political worlds was strong. Don Bosco expressed his opinion, indicating various categories of boys: the unruly, dissipated, and good. For the saintly educator, there was hope of success for all, even for the unruly, as he then used to refer to what we nowadays call at-risk boys.
“Let them not become worse.” “…In time let the good principles acquired produce their effect later … many will come to their senses.” This is an explicit answer and perhaps the most interesting.
After mentioning the distinction between the two educational systems, he determined which children must be consideredto be in danger: those who go to other cities or towns in search of work, those whose parents cannot or do not want to take care of them, vagabonds who fall into the hands of the public security. He points out the necessary and possible measures: “Weekend recreation areas, care of those placed at work hospices and preservation houses with arts and crafts and withagricultural colonies.”
It proposes not direct government management of educational institutions, but adequate support in buildings, equipment and financial grants, and presents a version of the Preventive System that retains the essential elements, without theexplicit religious reference. Besides a pedagogy of the heart could not have ignored the social, psychological and religious problems.
Don Bosco ascribes their misguidance to the absence of God, to the uncertainty of moral principles, to the corruption of the heart, to the clouding of the mind, to the incapacity and carelessness of adults, especially parents, to the corrosive influence of society and to the intentional negative action of “bad companions” or the lack of responsibility of educators.
Don Bosco played a lot on the positive: the will to live, the fondness for work, the rediscovery of joy, social solidarity, family spirit, and healthy fun.
Don Alfonso Alfano, SDB