The Lasallian Teacher
Gerard Rummery, FSC
Keynote Address
Huether Workshop
Chicago, Illinois
November 19-22, 1987
Introduction
I understand the title of this topic, on which I have been asked to speak, as referring to
those teachers today throughout the world who take their inspiration and particular
approach to teaching from the life and writings of Jean Baptist de La Salle and the
religious brotherhood which he founded. Such teachers are to be found in more than 80
different parts of the world. They teach in primary schools, high schools, colleges and
universities; they work with delinquents, drop-outs, runaway children, drug addicts,
refugees, immigrants and nomads, young people from Europe, Africa, North and South
America, Asia and the south Pacific, from the Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, Hindu,
Shintoist, Confucianist and animist traditions. Although today the Brotherhood itself
numbers some 9,000 members, Lasallian teachers are many times more numerous: women as well
as men; Protestant, Orthodox, Free Church and Quaker as well as Catholic Christian;
Buddhist, Moslem, Hindu, Confucian and Shinto as well as Christian.
To do justice to the richness, vastness and complexity of the topic deserves a treatise,
rather than a single address. I propose, therefore, to frame my presentation within the
following limits:
- What were the salient characteristics of the founding
tradition of Jean Baptist de La Salle and his first Brothers from 1680 to 1719?
- How did the religious brotherhood maintain and develop this
tradition over 300 years?
- What are some of the challenges of being a Lasallian Teacher
today?
Salient Characteristics of the Founding Tradition
1680-1719
At the age of 29 in 1680, Jean Baptist de La Salle, a young French priest, became aware of
the "pitiable condition" of many of the poor boys in his native Rheims.
They had little opportunity of receiving even an elementary education, and being both idle
and unemployable, fell easily into criminal habits. To their general illiteracy and
ignorance was joined a lack of understanding of their dignity as human beings, destined
for eternal happiness with God through the saving, redeeming work of Jesus Christ. De La
Salle became aware of all this largely though the intervention of someone whom I like to
think of as the first "Lasallian" teacher, a layman from Rouen called
Adrien Nyel, an experienced schoolmaster. With Nyel as first instructor and former of
teachers, De La Salle opened a number of schools in Rheims and its immediate neighborhood
between 1680 and 1688, formed the teachers into a group who chose eventually to call and
associate themselves as "Brothers" - "brothers to one another and
older brothers to the children" - moved to Paris by 1689, and eventually opened
other "Christian schools" as he called them in 23 places in France. By
the year 1705, after 25 years of experience, De La Salle had written for and with his
first Brothers, an impressive number of educational, spiritual and practical works. These
workings enable us to see clearly the main characteristics of what was to become an
educational movement, carried forward by the "brotherhood" which
he founded. Allow me to recall these salient characteristics by a series of contrasts
between what De La Salle found when began and what he offered as counter-cultural
initiatives.
First, he lived in an age of great cruelty, where children found stealing were often
branded on the forearm with the letter "V" (voleur = thief), where young
offenders so branded could, if they were again apprehended, have their hand cut off or, if
they were strong youths, sent to row in the King's galleys for seven years. But De La
Salle and his first Brothers wrote in The Management of Schools of 1705:
"Often children do not have enough strength of body
or mind to bear the many difficulties with which life presents them."
This sense of compassion, of pity for the plight of the poor,
overflows in many quotations from De La Salle's meditations for Sundays and Feasts as well
as in the Sixteen Meditations for the Time of Retreat, for example:
"Recognize Jesus under the rags of the poor children
whom you teach" (96:3) or, "You should look on the children whom you are
entrusted to teach, as poor, abandoned orphans for indeed, although the majority have a
father on earth, it is as though they had none, and are left to their own efforts as
regards the saving of their souls. That is why God entrusts them in some way to your
responsibility." (37:3)
Or, from the Meditation of the Feast of St. Margaret of
Scotland which we celebrated this week:
"You are entrusted by your work with instructing poor
children. Do you love them? Honor Jesus Christ in them....." (133:3)
Second, De La Salle found that "it is only too common
for the working class and the poor to allow their children to live on their own, roaming
all over as if they had no home, until they are able to be put to some work. These parents
have no concern to send their children to school because they are too poor to pay
teachers, or else they have to go out to look for work and leave their children to fend
for themselves. These unfortunate children, accustomed to an "idle" life for
many years, have great difficulty when it comes time for them to go to work."
(194:1)
The counter to this was the school which "ran well" (a frequent
expression of De La Salle), where all children could come irrespective of their social
status, and where all could obtain the basic education which made them capable of
obtaining useful steady employment, thereby enhancing their human dignity.
Third, De La Salle found many young people corrupted by bad companions. "(These
unfortunate children), through association with bad companions, learn to commit many sins
which later on are very difficult to stop, the bad habits having been contracted over so
long a period of time" (194:1). The response was again the Christian school where
each child was known, called by name, where careful supervision precluded many bad
associations, and where a growing sense of mastery of the demands of school, encouraged
and sustained young people in their sense of their own dignity. De La Salle, long before
we used the word "peer group", frequently counselled his Brothers about
the real dangers of bad companions for those children who were weak.
Fourth, De La Salle found young people ignorant of their faith. Religion had to be
integral to the school through formal teaching and religious practices. The young people
came to know and understand the great mysteries of the Christian religion - the loving
creating God, who sent his son Jesus, born of Mary, human like us in all except sin, who
suffered, died and rose, and who in turn sent the Spirit to sustain the Church as his
continuing presence in the world. Thus they found the sense of their own lives with
respect to God and their fellow human beings through the morning and afternoon reflections
given by the Brother, and by their apprenticeship through knowledge and practice to the
duties of the Christian's life as learned in the daily and Sunday catechism lessons.
Fifth, De La Salle found a society where the rich and the middle class could pay for an
education, but where the lack of esteem for those who usually taught the poor children in
the existing charity schools meant that there was no stability in teaching. Teachers
taught only so long as they had no other employment which paid better. To this state of
affairs, De La Salle and his Brothers brought the idea of gratuity. No tuition was
to be paid by any of the pupils in the Christian school. A foundation grant of money was
sought and "no gifts were to be received by the Brothers from the pupils or their
parents on any day or occasion whatsoever." With this one imaginative stroke, De
La Salle made it possible for the poor boy and the better off boy to sit on the same
benches. He also freed his Brothers from the ambiguity of gifts and presents, as well as
freeing his pupils, temporarily at least, from the rigorous barriers of a class dominated
society. And in doing this, he stabilized the school by raising teaching to a vocation
rather than an employment. With his own Brothers, he was led to deepen his understanding
of vocation not as something we have, but as something we are. In a certain
sense we do not have the vocation, but we allow the vocation, the calling, to possess us.
These five salient characteristics were translated into practices to be found in the
foundation writings and traditions.
- Cruelty gave place to love, so that the longest section of the
Management of Schools is given to a profound treatise on correction and the conditions
which should accompany it, and two meditations of the sixteen for the Time of Retreat are
on the same topic;
- Erstwhile vagabonds became daily scholars so that as
punctuality and attendance became the norm, progress in school became noticeable and the
school gradually won the support and interest of parents and pupils through the weekly and
monthly tests, the visible signs of advancement through good notes and changing places;
- Young people vulnerable to corruption through bad companions
found a good companionship and good example in the school where teachers knew them by
name, loved them, and encouraged them in good habits;
- Children "far from salvation" became
accustomed to being reminded of the presence of God whom they came to know and love
through the regular practices of prayer and religious activities in the Christian school;
- The principle of gratuity meant that all children were
respected and loved for who they were and not for what they could give. Indeed, De La
Salle often insisted that his Brothers try to love the poor children even more than the
better off. This was no theoretical ideal, but a firm principle which brought him into
conflict with the authorities of the time who wished to identify and certify the poor as
poor - an indignity and humiliation of the poor De La Salle could never accept, but which
cost him dear in lawsuits brought against him.
If we wish to examine these five salient characteristics, we
have an impressive literature to consult:
- The Daily Regulations for the Community and the School
- The Duties of a Christian
- The Rules of Good Living and Christian Politeness
- The Canticles and Prayers to be used in the Christian School
- The Management of Schools
- The Meditations for Sundays and Feasts
- The Meditations for the Time of Retreat
The first five of these writings and possibly
even some of the meditations for Sundays and Feasts, were in the hands of the Brothers by
1705. Despite their different subjects, the wordings have a unity which it is important
for us to note from the following perspective: They envisage the pupils as called to
attain their true dignity as human beings and "true disciples of Jesus Christ."
By learning the duty of loving God and neighbor, by acting with respect towards others;
they envisage the Brothers, the first Lasallian teachers, as people called to the ministry
of teaching, sustained in their faith and zeal by frequent meditation on the great truths
of salvation. But De La Salle and his Brothers were never destined to be catechists
only. Their examination of conscience was frequently directed to their competence in
teaching basic subjects which allowed their pupils to master the skills necessary for them
to live their working lives with dignity and with a clear sense of their calling as
children of God. Let me sketch in a few strokes, some historical incidents which show
clearly how the Lasallian tradition was preserved and developed.
The Development and Extension of the Tradition
De La Salle died in 1719, leaving about 100 Brothers in 23 communities in France. By the
time of the French Revolution in 1789, there were more than 1,000 Brothers, all in France
except for one small group in Rome. This tenfold increase had not pleased everyone in this
age of Enlightenment, because the growth of such schools increased the number of people
who could read and write. Le Chalotais, one of the French "philosophers",
wrote in some alarm to Voltaire to complain that these "Freres ignorantins"
(ignoramuses, because they taught no Latin!) were putting pens into hands "better
fitted for the plough and the hoe!." Le Chalotais was right in fearing a better
informed peasantry or urban working class, because books teach their own use and spread
ideas more quickly. After the first onslaught of the Paris Revolution, many private
schools for the rich were hurriedly closed, but in the Faubourg Saint Autoine, the
Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul and the Brothers of the Christian Schools were
allowed to carry on their work, so esteemed were they by the poor. In the city of Angers,
the revolutionary mob recognized the work of the Brothers for the poor by installing them
and their pupils in the school for the wealthy, hastily vacated by the Oratorians. But the
later anti-religious direction after 1792 eventually led to the suppression of the
Institute.
Thirteen years later in 1805, the Brotherhood re-formed near Lyons and went through a
period of spectacular growth during the nineteenth century. Soon after the end of the
Napoleonic wars, a select committee of the House of Commons under Lord Brougham discussed
the extraordinary achievements in the schools of the Abbe de La Salle. It seems that the
committee was greatly impressed by the "order, system and method" of such
schools, as well as by the fact that the children were so well disciplined that the police
station in the Feubourg Saint Antoine was able to reduce its numbers from 200 to 50
policemen!
In the same period between 1802 and 1820, the Irish Christian Brothers of Edmund Ignatius
Rice and the Brothers of Mary of Blessed Marcellin Champagnat, were founded. Each drew
substantially on the Lasallian writings and traditions in establishing their individual
traditions of education. In the same way, the Sisters of the Christian Schools of Blessed
Marie Madeline Postel and the Brothers of Christian Instruction were to take the Lasallian
workings as their basis in evolving separate traditions.
In the continuing search for a national system of primary school education, another Select
Committee of the House of Commons in 1859 commissioned Matthew Arnold, the future poet and
author, to visit elementary schools in western Europe. His comprehensive report gives us
some interesting insights into the schools of the Christian Brothers. He was particularly
impressed by the peaceful silence, the order and the industry of the pupils, but noted in
his recommendations that the strength of the schools came from their uniform methods and
from the fact that there were never fewer than four Brothers in the schools. He emphasized
that this minimum number of Brothers associated together in a community made them the
strongest schools he visited, but copying such a system in England would not be easily
done with teachers who did not share the life of the Brotherhood.
It was in the missionary expansion into the near East, far East, Canada and the United
States, that we first find the growth of lay teachers who were not members of the
Brotherhood. In Egypt and the near East, these first teachers were usually employed to
teach languages which the missionary Brothers did not know. But the school was first and
foremost a "Brothers' school" in which such other teachers were usually
not associated with the general aims and directions of the school. Part of this reticence,
however, it must be said, was based on the idea that the Brothers were to have only
minimal contact with "people of the world." Such was the spirit and
interpretation of the Rule and this attitude was to last for many more years, even to
recent years in places which some of you could cite.
The most challenging event to this tradition of the "Brothers' school"
was undoubtedly the shock of the secularization laws of 1904 in France. In brief, these
laws forbade what were considered certain basic laws of religious communities - religious
dress, chapels, crucifixes in classrooms, etc. In protest against these laws, many
thousands of French Brothers left France between 1904 and 1909, and were associated with
the founding or development of schools and works in many different countries. As a result,
both in France itself as well as around the world, many lay teachers came to work with the
Brothers themselves in the foundation and development of their works. Successful schools
in traditional mission lands were soon sought out by families who were neither Catholic
nor Christian. The de-colonializing after the Second World War accelerated the change in
membership which sees the schools as a Christian presence in non-Christian lands,
non-proselytizing, modelling the possibility of differing ethnic and religious groups
living together in peace. Such has been the achievement of schools, for example in the
near East where often Moslem, Jewish, and Christian pupils sat on the same benches and
shared equally in the life of the schools.
Let me say a final word about the Lasallian tradition and its development:
First, although there was "order, system and method" based on the
Management of Schools, the Brothers never hesitated to adapt, to re-write, to change it as
circumstances required, in well over 100 editions in French, as well as in English and
Spanish editions. This was the case as well with the texts on politeness and on the duties
of a Christian.
Second, the very success of the original schools led to a prolongation of the years of
elementary education, and eventually to the development of high schools and colleges as in
this country. In France, the development has been more towards technical education as well
as towards agricultural schools. In Belgium there has been a continuing tradition in art,
graphic arts, and architecture.
Third, whenever the letter has been treasured more than the spirit, (as in the long
continued controversy over the teaching of Latin), there has been difficulty in making
progress, in meeting new needs.
Fourth, there has been an unbroken tradition of work with delinquents and the
underprivileged since the first work of St. Yon in 1705.
Fifth, the gradual internationalization of the Brotherhood and its works has diminished
the uniformity which marked the beginnings. At the same time, this presents a
continuing challenge as more Lasallian teachers, not members of the Brotherhood, are
developing their ways of drawing from this same heritage.
In summary then, we can note that the development of the tradition is present right from
the very beginning. Elementary schools gradually became primary schools, secondary schools
developed naturally from these, and so eventually did colleges and universities. The
school in Calais as early as 1705 was teaching basic navigation to the children of
fishermen. Sunday academies for former pupils were conducted in Paris as early as 1697. In
the 19th century the Brothers were to be associated with schools of viticulture and
agriculture, as well as with commercial academies and technical schools.
A word needs to be said about the teaching of Latin. De La Salle had judged that the
teaching of Latin was inappropriate for children who needed an elementary school education
and, against the custom of time, insisted on teaching in French and also on teaching
French grammar and syntax. For doing this, he and his Brothers were widely attacked in his
own lifetime, and at many times in the 18th and 19th centuries. This foundation principle,
based on common sense and ordinary observation, later became enshrined as an unchangeable
characteristic of the Brothers' schools. Its application, however, in a dogmatic way
brought great difficulty in most English-speaking countries, notably in the United States,
until after 1923.
But at this moment in history, the majority of teachers in the various works of the
Brothers around the world are not members of the Brotherhood. I myself lived this
transition in Australia where, after teaching for some years in a school with Brothers
only, we extended the school to cope with a strong immigration flow of Catholic students.
Decisions formerly made at the dinner or breakfast table in the community had now to be
tabled in a formal staff briefing. As one of my own blood brothers, a layman, was teaching
in the same school at this time, I was particularly conscious of the importance of clear
channels of communication!
Some Lasallian schools today no longer have a community of Brothers. If the Brothers
regret this, so too do their lay colleagues. I have had the experience of seeing many
schools, particularly in Asia, where a small community of Brothers continues to work with
a lay faculty of some 200 teachers, the majority of them not Christians. For many hundreds
of Moslem, Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto and Confucianist teachers there is no problem in
accepting the philosophy of a Lasallian school. De La Salle is recognized as a great
spiritual leader who devoted his life to improving the lot of poor children, giving them a
sense of their inherent dignity and of the meaning of life.
All of this involves change, not simply once, but many times, and the Brothers are
called to this perhaps even more strongly because of the natural tendency to freeze the
tradition. The community of the Brothers is to serve in a special way as the guardian of
the story, the living memory, but it is with our lay colleagues that we seek to share the
riches of the tradition as we go forward together in confidence to our fourth century. How
this may be done is now the concern of my third section
 
|
