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Cahiers Lasalliens Cahiers lasalliens TEXTS STUDIES - DOCUMENTS THE CONDUCT OF SCHOOLS Pedagogical Approach Brother Léon LAURAIRE, F.S.C. 62 MAISON SAINT JEAN-BAPTISTE DE LA SALLE - 476, VIA AURELIA - ROME French original; LA CONDUITE DES ÉCOLES APPROCHE PÉDAGOGIQUE English translation by Brother Allen Geppert, F.S.C. If not stated otherwise, this English translation follows the first printed French text of the 1706 man- uscript of the Conduct of Schools. French text in: Saint Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, Œuvres Complètes. Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes, Rome, 1993, pp. 1575. Parallel in Lasallian Publications are given. ABREVIATONS CE : The Conduct of the Christian Schools according to Œuvres Complète [OC], Rome 1993. OC : Œuvres Complètes by Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes – Rome, 1993. CL : Cahiers lasalliens are cited as (serial number and page). LS : Lasallian Studies are cited as (serial number and page). MF : Meditations for the principal feasts of the year. MR : Meditations for the time of retreat. LT : Lasallian Themes - 3 volumes, Rome, 1992-97: LT1 (Themes 1-32), LT2 (33-65), LT3 (66-99). RC : Règles Communes - The Rule [1705 / 1718]. FSC : Fratres Scholarum Christianarum, Latin for: Brothers of the Christian Schools. Brother Léon LAURAIRE, F.S.C. THE CONDUCT OF SCHOOLS Pedagogical Approach Translated by Br. Allen GEPPERT, FSC ROME 2006 PREFACE At a time when in France - and not only in France - the memory of fratrici- dal conflict still persists, what is the significance of commemorating the ter- centenary of the writing of the Conduct of Christian Schools which appeared in manuscript form in 1706? For John Baptist de La Salle’s disciples whose work is governed by the rule of his Institute, as for all those who cooperate in this educational undertaking, it is most certainly a family celebration, for it is a commemoration of something which unites them. At a deeper level, this return to sources is a means of understanding our present in the light of the differentness of a past which endures. Anyone who set out to find in the Conduct of Christian Schools a collection of magic formulas which could solve the present-day crisis in education would certainly be quickly disappointed. It is enough to open this book to find ourselves immediately in an unfamil- iar world: nothing corresponds to the situations we know today, even if edu- cational historians have sought to find in it the origins of popular school instruction, traces of which, they believe, can still be found in our system of primary education: these include the school calendar and class timetables, cumulative teaching programmes beginning with reading, followed by writ- ing and then by counting, arrangements making simultaneous teaching pos- sible. However, to borrow an expression from Michel de Certeau, this pre- scriptive ideal, this past historical model “appears simultaneously as our native land and a deserted country”1. We are no longer in tune with the language used by John Baptist de La Salle. Two examples will suffice. We can no longer accept his views on social hier- archy, considered as an order willed by God; and the corporal punishments he mentions would not be tolerated in our own days, even though he rec- 1 Michel de Certeau, La Faiblesse de croire, Paris, Seuil, 1987, p. 58. 6 PREFACE 62 ommends they be sparingly used, without emotional involvement, and invites the teachers in his charge to avoid all violence in administering them. So, what should we salvage from this book which has inspired generations of Brothers of the Christian Schools, if the “Lasallian” spirit we hoped to find there vanishes as we examine it from a historical point of view; and the age in which it was written seems quite alien to us? In reality, we should not be astonished by the fact that John Baptist de La Salle thinks, writes and acts according to the concepts of his time. The interpretation of the Conduct of the Christian Schools proposed by Brother Léon Lauraire is intended precise- ly to place this work in the specific context of France at the end of the 17th century and at the beginning of the 18th, while avoiding all anachronisms. While the initiatives and original discoveries of John Baptist de La Salle cor- respond to the historical context in which they took place, they cannot, how- ever, be reduced to the language of that context, unless we wish to reduce the past to a mere object. The passing of time enables us today to realise the dis- tance there was between what John Baptist de La Salle did and what was nor- mal practice at the time. He was a man who disturbed, who did not hesitate to upset ecclesiastical authorities: for a group of teachers, who were neither ecclesiastics nor lay persons, to set themselves up as models for their pupils, was not normal practice. By formally forbidding the Brothers of the Christian Schools to learn Latin - “Brothers who have learned it will make no use of it once they enter the Society, and they will behave as if they did not know it”2 - the Founder removed all hope they could ever aspire to the priesthood and, by doing so, he bound them to their specific vocation of teaching the poor. He also avoided the creation of off-shoots as happened in the case of congregations founded initially to run poor schools and who, like the Scolopini, at the end of the 18th century, were running highly selective boarding schools for the nobility. For John Baptist de La Salle, the commu- nity of the Brothers of the Christian Schools was composed of “lay persons, without studies, with a very average intelligence”. While not wishing to refuse entry to “persons who had studied”, they would be admitted “only on 2 Rule and Foundational Documents, chap. 26, § 1, p. 96. 62 PREFACE 7 condition they would never study again”, and this for three reasons: “studies are not necessary for them”; they can make them wish “to abandon their state”; community spiritual exercises and school-work required “a complete person”3. These rigorous admission requirements explains why, by compari- son with all the other male congregations and orders, the Brothers of the Christian Schools continued throughout the 18th century to have a much more “popular” and mostly working-class social background, which served to draw teachers closer to their pupils. The unusual dress of the Brothers, to which John Baptist de La Salle attached great importance, was intended to distinguish them from the society from which they were separated, and espe- cially from the clergy whose functions they must never be tempted to exer- cise: “As the members of this community are for the most part unrefined, unpretentious and without learning, and their behaviour is governed only by what impresses them, there is a need for something which will impress upon them that they belong to the community, both to make them join it and to remain in it, and to make them observe the Rules in it.”4 The historian will perhaps seize upon the cultural distance which separated the Founder from his brothers in religion, given that John Baptist de La Salle came from one of the best families in the city of Rheims, and had links with the great merchant and public office dynasties which ran the city. But he chose this “lack of refinement” precisely to found a new and particular religious state which could not be classified as being clerical. It was exactly this same “lack of refinement” which shocked the members of De La Salle’s family when he invited “persons of low birth and no education” to his house. According to them, as François Élie Maillefer, his biographer writes, “in this way, he would drive away all respectable people from his house, and would find himself abandoned and despised by everybody.”5 We can understand better, therefore, the importance attached to the task of “civilisation” undertaken by the Rules of Christian Decorum and Civility - rules which were intended as much for the Brothers as for their pupils. What 3 Idem, Memoir on the Habit, § 5 & 10, p. 181-82 & 183. 4 Ibid., § 36, p. 188. 5 Cf. LR - Two early biographers - François Élie Maillefer (Rheims ms 1426, of 1740), p. 42. 8 PREFACE 62 we have here is a real missionary project, which aims at inducing ordinary townspeople to become converted and to practise their faith, providing them with memorised religious knowledge, including readings, and religious prac- tices adopted in childhood. The Brothers had to be for their pupils imitable models of the Christian virtues. Hence the insistence on modesty: “The Brothers shall endeavour by their whole exterior and by their entire conduct to be to their pupils a continual example of modesty, and of all the other virtues they ought to teach them and urge them to practise.”6 External appearances reflect what is interior: the rules of decorum should be observed “through purely Christian motives, which concern the glory of God and one’s own salvation.” “Parents and teachers should avoid telling children in their care that, if they fail to act in a certain way, people will blame them, will not have any respect for them, or will ridicule them. Such remarks will serve only to inspire children with the spirit of the world and turn them away from the spirit of the Gospel. Instead, when they wish to make children adopt external practices regarding bodily care and simple modesty, they should take care to induce them to do so because of the presence of God.”7 For John Baptist de La Salle, civility is a missionary undertaking to perme- ate all behaviour with Christianity, since “Christian decorum is wise and well-regulated conduct which governs what we do and say.
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