An Honor Student Who Made Good
Luke Salm, FSC
Address by Brother Luke Salm, FSC
Lewis University
Romeoville, Illinois
April 17, 1990
It is indeed an honor and a pleasure to be here
once again on the campus of Lewis University, hallowed now by the memory of my good friend
and onetime colleague, Brother David Delahanty. I note with satisfaction that you now have
an award in his name for student athletes. That would have pleased David. He wasn't much
of an athlete himself, but at Manhattan College, as Dean of the Students of Teacher
preparation, where most of the athletes were enrolled, he held them to the highest
academic standards. During a period when Manhattan College's athletic teams were
disappearing from the lists of the top ten or the top twenty-five, maybe even the top
anything, Brother David was more concerned that our athletes graduated with a college
degree, and that they knew enough and had integrity enough to enjoy fruitful careers as
teachers and coaches. Most of them have since become a major influence for good on young
people in the New York metropolitan area and beyond.
It is also a genuine delight for me to congratulate those of you who are my fellow
honorees, students who have given proof that you take seriously the opportunities for
intellectual growth that this Lasallian institution of higher learning affords. You
deserve the honors you received tonight; you had to work hard to get them. All I had to do
to get mine was to prepare this little speech.
In a special way, I do want to thank Brother James, your President, and the Board of
Trustees for giving me this third degree treatment. I thank also the author of that
citation. Back home at Manhattan College I am often called upon to write citations for
recipients of honorary degrees. I know from experience that such prose belongs to the
literary genre known as historical fiction.
I should like to say a few words to you this evening about an honor student of long ago,
an honor student who made good and did great things with the talent God had given him.
That honor student's name was John Baptist de La Salle. The oldest son of a well-to-do
family, he graduated summa cum laude from the University College in Reims, France, in
1669. He went on for graduate study in theology, was ordained a priest, and eventually
earned the degree of Doctor of Theology with top honors in 1680.
So here was this brilliant 30 year old priest, recently ordained, with first class
academic credentials, plenty of money at his disposal, and an influential network of
family and friends. They were more than ready to further his prospects for a distinguished
career in the Church. It was only a matter of time before he might become a bishop or
maybe a cardinal. In today's language, he had it made.
But a funny thing happened on the way to becoming a clerical bigwig. Father De La Salle
got involved gradually with a motley crew of barely literate young men who wanted to teach
poor boys in the rundown charity schools of that day, at least until something better
might come along. Their leader was an older layman, Adrien Nyel by name. He was a good
man, enthusiastic and idealistic, but with little sense of how to run an organization, or
how to keep a good thing going once he got it started.
And so it happened, almost by accident, that the young Father De La Salle gradually
assumed the leadership of that little group of lay teachers. At first he helped pay their
rent. Then he moved them into a house near his own. When he saw close at hand how rough
and uneducated they were, he invited them to come for meals to see if he could improve
their knowledge, their religious practice, and their table manners. Then, much to the
shock and chagrin of the family, he decided to bring them into his own home to live.
Finally, in 1682, he moved with them to a house in a poor neighborhood. From that center,
this first community of Christian Brothers staffed three parish schools. It was a
beginning.
Through all of this, De La Salle himself did not fully realize what was happening. As he
himself wrote years later: God, who guides all things with wisdom and serenity and whose
way it is not to force the inclinations of persons, willed to commit me entirely to the
development of the schools. He did this in an imperceptible way and over a long period of
time so that one commitment led to another in a way that I did not foresee in the
beginning.
To appreciate the significance of what this one-time summa cum laude honor student was
able eventually to achieve, you have to understand something of the school situation in
the France of 1680. The university system, which provided a classical education from grade
school through to the doctorate, was in place and had been for centuries. But that was
accessible only to those who were socially and financially in a position to afford it, as
was De La Salle himself. Apart from the university schools, the only elementary education
available, and that also at a price, was from tutors who made a living running one-man
schools in their own homes.
If you were poor, forget it. Although most parishes tried to provide charity schools, they
were poorly run, there was little discipline, attendance was not enforced, the students
were unkempt and prone both to lice and vice, the teachers were incompetent and poorly
paid, and the school itself might be closed down for long periods at the slightest excuse.
Thus De La Salle could write in his Rule:
The need for this Institute is very great, because
artisans and the poor, being usually little educated, and occupied all day in gaining a
livelihood for themselves and their families, cannot give their children the instruction
they need, much less a suitable Christian education. It was to procure this advantage for
the children of the artisans and the poor, that the Christian Schools were established.
But the Institute of the Christian Schools might
not have been established at all if De La Salle had not been willing to put his own
intellectual gifts and advanced education at the service of those in need. In the process,
he created a new type of school system for the elementary education of the poor, a new set
of standards that would transform teaching school into a profession and a vocation, a new
community of consecrated lay teachers as a new form of religious life in the Church.
To achieve all of this, to enter into the world of the poor with creativity and
authenticity, Father De La Salle had to sacrifice all of his personal ambition, his family
fortune, his ecclesiastical honors, his comfortable lifestyle, and even his family
disowned him. The educational authorities of the time had him hailed into court,
condemned, and fined because the educational policies he introduced threatened to break
down the social barriers of the time. Who ever heard of giving rich and poor the same
education in the same classroom, and for free? That was against the law.
Then there were the Church authorities. Pastors, bishops, and even the Cardinal Archbishop
of Paris, persecuted Father De La Salle relentlessly. They could neither understand nor
control this persistent innovator who didn't want his Brothers to be priests, who had his
own ideas about how to run a school, and how to make the Christian message of salvation
appealing to those who rarely heard good news of any kind.
De La Salle did not limit his educational vision to gratuitous elementary schools for the
poor. He realized that there were other needs. Well trained teachers were high on his list
of priorities. On three distinct occasions he was able to establish experimental training
schools for lay teachers. Aware that there was no provision at the time for working
teenagers to continue their education, De La Salle founded a Sunday program of advanced
courses in practical subjects just for them. He opened a boarding school with offerings in
advanced technical or pre-professional courses, unavailable, unheard of, and unthinkable
in the colleges and universities of the time. He pioneered in what we now call programs in
special education for backward students. He opened one of the first institutions in France
to specialize in the care and education of young delinquents.
The creative vision of this honors student from 1669 and 1680 has survived for more than
300 years and is alive and well among the Brothers and their lay and clerical colleagues
in more than 80 countries all over the world. This worldwide extension of De La Salle's
work has provided opportunities to apply the Founder's vision to new times and new
circumstances.
When the Brothers came to this country, for example, they found that the elementary
education of the urban poor was already fairly well provided for. The need was rather to
provide for the children of the Catholic immigrant generations a more advanced education
under Catholic auspices that would give them access to the professions and leadership
positions in American society. That meant high schools and academies, of course, but the
need was even more urgent for a Catholic presence in the field of higher education.
It was not clear at first that this was something that the Brothers could or ought to do.
For one thing, the Jesuits were already conducting colleges in several American cities, a
work that seemed better suited to their special ministry to train and educate a Catholic
intellectual elite. But many bishops seemed to prefer to have the Brothers conduct their
colleges, perhaps because the need was so great; perhaps, too, because they feared a
monopoly, realizing that no single type of college could satisfy all the needs of an
American Church coming of age.
However that may be, the Brothers responded wholeheartedly by opening their first colleges
ever. Within twenty years of their arrival from France in 1848, the Brothers had colleges
operating in New York, Philadelphia, Saint Louis, and San Francisco, literally from coast
to coast. It took a bit longer for us to find Romeoville. At present there are in the
United States seven institutions of higher learning operating under the sponsorship of the
Christian Brothers.
The extension of the Lasallian vision into the field of higher education is perhaps the
most distinctive and most radical characteristic of the American Brothers. The amazing
thing is that in making this adaptation to a particular need, the Brothers were able to
remain faithful to the basic trust of De La Salle's vision and, at the same time, to be a
creative as he was in bringing something new to the field of higher education in this
country.
For that reason, even in their colleges, the Brothers continue to honor their special
mission to the poor and underprivileged. The Brothers have always prided themselves on the
large numbers of young persons from deprived backgrounds that they were able to get
through college. As the memory of the immigrant generations and the great depression fades
into history, the Brothers now actively seek to recruit college students from minority
groups, or those whose environment has prevented them from realizing their full learning
potential. Our tradition demands that we put a high priority on education to social
justice across the curriculum and in the service activities sponsored by and for the
students of our colleges. Modest tuition rates and extensive scholarship aid continue in a
modern context the tradition of gratuity inherited from De La Salle.
Another feature of the Brothers' colleges is a certain lack of pretentiousness about them.
All of our colleges are content to stress a quality undergraduate education, with
occasional programs at the master's level, and leave it at that. Although three of our
colleges, including this one, are legally entitled to call themselves a university, none
of them, including this one, is a university in the full sense of the word, that is, an
institution offering a variety of doctoral programs with the emphasis on research and
scholarship for its own sake. The Brothers, along with our lay and clerical faculty
colleagues, do indeed have impressive academic credentials, and they continue to keep
abreast of their fields. But the exclusion of doctoral programs from the college means
that the knowledge and expertise of the faculty is totally at the disposal of the
undergraduates, that even senior faculty will teach introductory courses, that few if any
teaching assistants will come between the instructor and the student.
The result is a certain atmosphere of friendliness and informality on our campuses. That
derives from a 300 year old tradition of brotherhood. Although De La Salle himself was a
priest, he never wanted the Brothers to be anything but Brothers, brothers to one another
and brothers to their students. Today we consciously extend our sense of brotherhood to
our lay and clerical brothers and sisters who share our educational mission. This aspect
of the Lasallian tradition is usually pervasive enough to transform the impersonal
institution into an authentic community where the learning experience is shared with
persons we can call our friends.
In what concerns the curriculum, a Brothers' college is more likely to have a practical
orientation. Without neglecting the liberal arts and the life of the mind, the Brothers'
traditional mission has been to help young people plan and prepare for a useful and
humanly rewarding career. The programs here at Lewis in aviation, communications, criminal
and social justice, the arts, business, and nursing are a notable and typical example.
No school, much less an institution of higher learning, could claim to inherit the
Lasallian tradition if it were to neglect the religious development of its maturing
students. John Baptist de La Salle called the young society he created the Brothers of the
Christian Schools; not the Christian Brothers, mind you, but the Christian Schools. In the
France of his day Christian meant Roman Catholic, and the religious instruction in the
schools was geared to inculcate in the youngsters the doctrines and the practices of the
Catholic faith. But the intent was something more important, more profound, more
universal, and more enduring. De La Salle saw in the schools a chance to widen the
horizons of the young lads who came to the schools, most of whom lived in an environment
rife with poverty, misery, and crime. In the Christian Schools they learned that there was
more to life than what they saw and experienced on the streets, that they were created by
a loving God and endowed with a unique dignity and an eternal destiny, that they could
find in the school community a new set of values, new role models, and a new meaning and
opportunity for salvation both in this world and the next.
This broader approach enables the Brothers and their colleges today to find creative ways
to offer a religious education suitable for young adults, men and women, with varying
religious and ethnic backgrounds. Although the majority of our students tend to be Roman
Catholics, some more convinced and more observant than others, we now attract an
increasing number of students of other faiths, or no faith at all. The Brothers are
convinced that the tradition of the Christian Schools can still propose ultimate human and
religious values to college students of whatever religious persuasion. If De La Salle
could find creative ways to make religion attractive to the street urchins of his day, we
ought to be able to do something similar for our collegians, whose chronological age and
standard of living may be different, but whose basic needs and problems are much the same.
I began this presentation by introducing you to an honors student of long ago. Like
yourselves, he had no clear idea as he collected his academic honors what life had in
store for him. His creative intelligence, coupled with a willingness to sacrifice himself
to meet the needs of others, led to significant changes in the social structure, religious
life, and the educational system of his day. The momentum of that creative achievement
continues today in places like Lewis, where the Brothers and their colleagues provide a
socially responsible, practical, and religiously oriented education at the college level.
You have been the beneficiaries of that long tradition. You, like John Baptist de La
Salle, have talent and creativity, as your honors attest. There is a whole world of
opportunities and needs out there waiting for you. The only question is what you will do
about it. |
