Saint mary's and the lasallian tradition
The word "Lasallian" appears in Saint Mary's College literature and is used in presentations describing the College's educational tradition and mission. In fact, it is a term which has gained world-wide currency in the international Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, or the Christian Brothers, who conduct this College. It has rightly been asked, just what does the term "Lasallian" mean?
To invest the word "Lasallian" with some concrete meaning which will prevent it from becoming merely an ideology (we don't use the word "Lasallianism," for example) it is best to begin with the person from whose name "Lasallian" comes, namely John Baptist de La Salle. The Brothers honor him as their Founder, the Catholic Church honors him as a saint, and in 1950, Pope Pius XII declared him "Patron of All Christian Teachers."
- "Lasallian" refers to - a person, St John Baptist de La Salle
- "Lasallian" refers to - his original educational vision and mission
- "Lasallian" refers to - that vision and mission in the world today
John Baptist De La Salle
Recent scholarship has enabled us to know and understand this man of 17th century France and his educational vision and achievement better than ever before. We know he was a devout young cleric of the cathedral of Rheims. At the age of 21, because of the death of his parents, he took charge of his younger brothers and sisters. He became skilled in managing financial matters for their care and looked after his father's estate. While taking care of these family matters he continued his personal studies and completed the requirements for ordination to the priesthood and a doctorate in theology at the Sorbonne in Paris.
This 30-year-old priest, with excellent academic credentials, from a well-to-do family, with influential friends, and prospects for a distinguished ecclesiastical career, gradually became involved in an educational enterprise without any clear idea of where it might lead. He suddenly found himself involved with a small group of young men trying to teach poor young boys in the substandard charity schools of the city. In those days schoolteachers had no social or professional status, and with little motivation to stay with the job any longer than necessary, they were ill-prepared for their work and transient.
De La Salle gradually assumed the leadership of that uncultured, gauche group of teachers. He proceeded by stages, not knowing what each successive stage might be. At first he helped pay their rent. Then he installed them into his own house - to the shock and chagrin of his distinguished family and social circle. Finally, in 1682, he moved with the teachers to a rented house in a poor neighborhood. From that center this first community of teachers staffed three parish schools. It was a beginning.
To appreciate the significance of what this reluctant newcomer on the educational scene was eventually able to achieve, we must remind ourselves of the school situation in late 17th century France. Education was accessible only to those who were socially and financially in a position to afford it. As for the children of the working class and the poor, nobody much cared. Their general illiteracy was joined by idleness and vice, and a lack of understanding of their dignity as human beings. De La Salle was willing to sacrifice his personal ambition, his family fortune, his ecclesiastical honors, his comfortable lifestyle, even his reputation for the service of these young people.
People thought he was crazy; his family disowned him. Educational authorities of the time had him hailed in court, condemned, and fined because the educational policies he introduced threatened to break down the established social barriers of the time and to provide competition for students. In his determination to give rich and poor the same education in the same classroom, and for free, he had to act against the law. Church authorities - pastors, bishops, and cardinals - attempted to interfere with the autonomy of the Community. They could neither understand nor control De La Salle, who did not want his Brothers to be priests, who had his own ideas about how to run a school, and how to make the Good News of the Christian message appealing to those who rarely heard good news of any kind.
In the process he created a new type of school that would transform teaching into a profession and a vocation, and a new community of lay teachers as a new form of religious life in the Church, called the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools - a community of laymen, not monks or priests, who sought the glory of God in their profession of teaching.
Well-trained teachers were high on John Baptist de La Salle's list of priorities. In addition to training the members of his community of Brothers who would work together in towns and cities, he established training schools for lay teachers destined to work alone in rural areas. He also founded a Sunday program of advanced courses in practical subjects for working teenagers. He opened a boarding school with offerings in advanced technical or pre-professional courses, unavailable and unheard of in the colleges and universities. 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. He provided instruction and lodging for a group of Irish boys who had followed King James II of England into exile and were in need of more advanced instruction. The city Council of Calais petitioned king Louis XIV for help toward supporting two Brothers to open a school by the harbor for the sons of sailors, which opened in 1705. To pay for a third Brother the king agreed with the request of the Council to use money from buccaneer raids on enemy shipping. At the request of church authorities, he opened a school in a remote Protestant outpost in the south of France to teach children of the Huguenots.
This is enough to give an idea of who John Baptist de La Salle was and what he achieved.
De La Salle's Educational Vision and Mission
De La Salle's educational vision and mission emerged from a double contemplation: on the one hand, from a theological perspective, he contemplated the goodness and power of the divine will that everyone should be saved; on the other, he saw first-hand the situation of the neglected children of the working class and the poor, "far from salvation" as he perceived them to be. Their poverty and ignorance were a barrier to their salvation in this world; their street vices a barrier to salvation in this world and in the next.
De La Salle knew that it would not be enough to lead the neglected children to hope for salvation in the next world if something wasn't done to give them some hope of fulfillment in this world. He envisioned the school as the ideal context for them to acquire the skills they would need to be saved from the hopelessness of their human condition and to grow in dignity as children of God. He wanted the school to be engaged in the struggle against human ignorance and injustice as well as in the struggle against unbelief and sin.
De La Salle knew he had to form a community of competent and professional teachers whose vocation would be to provide the disadvantaged youth with a human and Christian education in schools he called "Christian Schools." The term "Christian" carried its full weight in the title the Institute had adopted for itself, "Brothers of the Christian Schools." Christian schools for a neglected area of a society which was officially Christian were what De La Salle and his Institute provided. In organizing his schools, De La Salle was enabling the working class and poor to become integrated into the French social structure and the Church. He realized that the school could provide a unique opportunity to integrate the full human and spiritual potential of the youth the school would serve.
In De La Salle's view, the Christian School, or as we would put it today, the Lasallian school, would have several characteristics:
- it would meet urgent educational needs, especially the needs of the most neglected, and it would be open to all irrespective of their social status - the poor and the rich sat on the same bench;
- it would be centered on the persons of the students, not on what they had or where they came from; there was to be no discrimination whatsoever in the school, students would experience what today we would call "social justice education"; the word "Brother" not "Master" expressed the relationship De La Salle wanted his teachers to have toward their students;
- it would offer a practical education - a school of quality where students really learn, where culture, values, and faith are effectively transmitted - where students are oriented toward service and the good of society - where they would become, as De La Salle put it, good citizens of the State and the Church;
- it would be a school well-run, based on consultation and shared responsibility - by educators working "together and by association," to use a well-known phrase in the Lasallian tradition;
- it would proclaim the Good News of salvation, both in this world and hereafter.
The Lasallian Mission Today
We are not in 17th century France - we are in the United States on the eve of the third millennium. However, the creative vision of De La Salle has survived for more than 300 years and it continues to inspire Brothers and their colleagues in more than 80 countries all over the world. We are part of a world-wide Lasallian family, an international network of educational institutions, and of a world that De La Salle could never have imagined - more than 7,000 Brothers, over 67,000 teachers, almost 900,000 students, in just over 900 schools! This worldwide extension of his work has provided opportunities to apply De La Salle's vision to new times and new circumstances. The Institute's international educational service is offered in developed countries and in countries which are extremely poor to thousands of students of all religious affiliations - Catholics, Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and those with no religious alliance.
Our educational mission in the world today is caught in a process of evolution in a world in evolution. One of the most significant aspects of the evolution the Lasallian educational tradition is experiencing is what we call "shared mission." By this concept we mean that the educational mission of the Brothers, as stated in the Brothers' Rule, "takes place in an educational community in which all the functions, including positions of responsibility, are shared" (Rule, Art. 17a). This became a major and dramatic theme of our General Chapter of 1993 in Rome (a General Chapter is a meeting every seven years of Brother-delegates from all over the world). Twenty persons who were not Brothers, "consultants" as they were called, were invited to participate in the Chapter for two weeks. These men and women from various parts of the world were explicit in their desire to belong to an international, cross-cultural movement in which they would be partners, in an educational mission that cannot be realized fully without them. They were clear that the Lasallian vision and mission were something integral to their personal and professional lives.
The distinctive Lasallian character of the schools is also in a process of evolution. The problem has been aggravated over the last twenty-five years by the dwindling number of Brothers in the schools. We used to speak of Brothers' schools; now we speak of Lasallian schools, where Brothers and their colleagues work together in a common educational mission. The Brothers are called to be primary witnesses to the richness of the Lasallian heritage and to help give spirit to all who work in institutions inspired by the Lasallian tradition.
De La Salle wanted his teachers to be called "Brothers." Even though most teachers in Lasallian institutions today are not formally members of the Order, there is nothing to prevent the tradition and meaning of brotherhood, which indeed implies sisterhood, from being applied to them. This characteristic of a Lasallian educational community - fellowship, friendliness - applies to the relationship of the teachers to their students and to each other. An authentic spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood means mutual respect, friendly relationships between administrators, staff, faculty, students.
In today's complex educational scene, here at Saint Mary's College, for instance, not all who serve the cause of education are teachers, yet all contribute to our mission. As the mission of the college creatively defines its educational service, the fundamental Lasallian characteristics must continue to animate that mission. Saint Mary's College must be:
- an institution open to all and meeting needs of students of differing ages, backgrounds, and goals;
- an institution attentive to social justice as a crying need in our world today;
- an institution well-run, "together and by association," in a spirit of fellowship and mutual support, in a spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood, in a spirit diversity and creativity;
- an institution where students are convinced of their fundamental dignity, where knowledge, culture, values, faith, and a commitment to service are effectively transmitted.
The question of commitment to the Lasallian mission could create difficulties in a Lasallian institution that has on its staff or faculty or various Boards persons who are not practicing Catholics, not Catholics, not Christians or other believers, or even who are non-believers. An important observation at this point is the following: the mission of a Lasallian institution enjoys an objectivity that is, in a certain sense, independent of an individual person's attitude toward it. Whoever contributes to the smooth functioning and operation of the institution contributes to its mission. Obviously, to engage a person in a Lasallian institution who would be totally opposed to the mission as it is defined would be senseless. This does not mean, however, that every aspect of the tradition in which the mission is formulated is understood or assimilated by everyone.
Perhaps the point of this presentation can be summed up with a comment on what John Baptist de La Salle wanted the spirit of the Institute of the Brothers to be, namely the "Spirit of Faith." By that he meant faith in God, faith in education, faith in one another, and faith in our students and in the potential that education can awaken and nurture in them. But the "Spirit of Faith" also means that we should earn and deserve the faith that our students and friends put in us.
To buy into that "Spirit of Faith" is to be part of the Lasallian educational tradition. Without that spirit of faith we would not be here today. It is that spirit of faith that led Brothers to California and to Saint Mary's College more than a hundred and thirty years ago. It is that spirit of faith that inspired - and continues today to inspire - other Brothers and many lay colleagues to serve at this College over many years, and to be part of the development of the institution into what is now Saint Mary's College of California. It is that spirit of faith that sustains all faculty, staff, friends, and supporters - who serve to make the written Mission Statement of this College a reality for the students who come to us and for those who support us.
In one of the slums in a large city in India, the Brothers and their colleagues recently worked together to build some cinder-block rooms in which to teach poor children. The driving force behind this project was a wonderful Hindu widow whom everyone called "Auntie." In a small courtyard of her apartment building is a statue of St. John Baptist de La Salle with his hands on the shoulders of a child. The inscription on the pedestal sums up, perhaps, what the Lasallian educational tradition is all about. It reads: "Child, put your hand in mine and let the faith you have in me be the light that guides us both."
Bro. Michael F. Meister, FSC
(Special thanks to Bro. Donald Mouton, FSC, College of Santa Fe, whose articulation of the Lasallian mission forms the core of this presentation.)
