Reflections on the educational system of Don Bosco

The application of Pavlov’s conditioning has a deep insight into the way we salesians present ourselves to the young. Our presence can be a positive reinforcement or a negative reinforcement. When superiors are away, you may find the boys most happy. Sometimes boys may be terrified in the presence of a Salesian depending on what type of person he has become over the years. In Indian context we speak of the aura that surrounds each person and the vibes that each person sends out to the other. When Don Bosco used to go for mass, boys used to throng about him and the assistants or the sacristans find very difficult to control the boys. Don Bosco had a magnetic personality able to attract many boys.

The notion of punishment that Don Bosco had has to be evaluated. In those days the system of punishment was repressive. The method that Don Bosco used was psychological punishment. If we evaluate this we would find how hard it is to accept psychological punishments. Let me look at certain ways that Don Bosco used to punish the boys:

Most of the boys who came to the oratory needed affection. He would often withhold the affection. After the goodnights when boys used to kiss his hands, he would not give his hands to some. Inducing fear is another dimension of punishment: he had the custom of praying for the first one to die in the oratory after each recollection. In a way he was using emotional blackmailing. His narration of dreams was symbolic and had the elements of fear (snakes, wolves, etc.). What would we find in the salesians today? It is very interesting to analyze some phrases used by the salesians to elicit the expected behaviour psychologically:

“How much do you pay as the hostel fees? I would expect you to behave better than expected.” (hostel)

“When you got a seat in the hostel, you were among the many and fortunate enough to get inside, there were many others waiting to get into the hostel, if I could have given a seat to someone else he would have behaved better than you.” (hostel)

Some of the words that salesians use are guilt inducing. For example, “we all work for you sacrificing our sleep and time and this is the way you reward us.”

The boys can react to the situations in different ways. One of the ways they react is known as passive aggression. They rebel silently.

There are also certain contradictions in Don Bosco’s systm:

Denial v/s Reason: What is the role of reason when there is a denial of affection?

Religion v/s utilitarianism: Clerics in his days wore cassocks not so much to evoke religious feelings but to gain a certain ascendency over the boys.