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.

Factors that influence one’s philsophy

Physical Features: The Physique of the person matters a lot in his/her outlook towards life. For instance Sartre was short and even his friends made fun of him.Don Bosco was strong and robust. This made him develop all sorts of skills to attract the young. He learned carpentry, music, shoe making, tailoring and many other manual skills.

Mental capacity: Personally, I felt that I was not so bright in studies, but the moment I found myself in the seminary set up I could see that I could show my mental ability. I could memorise things, pick up English fast, act in the skits, etc. I could get prizes for the many quiz competitions.

Don Bosco showed a high mental acumen. He loved books and could read at length. He could memorise with just one reading. When he used to hear sermons, he could remember and repeat word for word. In the Latin class when he forgot to bring his Latin text books, he could repeat what was taken in the class without even looking at the books.This later helped him to be jack of all trades and almost master of everything.

Personality traits: Don Bosco by temperament was short tempered. He used to get angry. Perhaps this temperament made him to work at himself by adopting just an opposite of this in the loving kindness of St. Francis De Sales. He was attached to people (commollo, Don Cafasso, and others). He even was attached to things – His little black bird.

He lost his father at the age of two. He himself was a father to many and he had his need for a father met in the father figure like Don Cafasso.

Family status: Who can earn a living doing full time philsophy? This is the case with any writers today. Without money there is no way out. Most of the know philosophers came from noble families. They had their basic necessities met. Don Bosco was from a peasant family background.

Family problems: Don Bosco had problems with his elder brother. For this reason he even had to stay away from the family. Later with his experience of being away from home helped him to understand his boys. His concern was to help the needy and the abandoned. His boys were unemployed, poor and mostly run away lads due to problems at home.

Political Events: In Don Bosco’s time the situation of politics was very volatile. When he was born Italy was only in a temporary peace. Later there were revolutions, political upheavels and strife. Those events in a ways were violent. It could also have an impact on the temperament of a person. I remember in my own earlier days the clash between political parties, killings, etc. I even saw a dead body lying on the road with a five rupees note stuck on the but of the victim. That picture is clear in my mind.

Natural calamities: Natural calamities are difficult to understand. It remains a mystery. Some attribute to human errors as a cause of it. Yet some others attribute it as a God’s Will. In Don Bosco’s days famine, poverty, plagues, lightening, etc.were really grief striking. Yet with all these the attitude towards life and surrounding were in no way pessimistic. The outlook of Don Bosco was optimistic filled with hope. He even learnt it from his mother. For example when their harvest was destroyed Mamma Margaret said, “The lord of the harvest has given and he has taken it.”

Religious life, Formation and Sexuality.

Celibates can be the most loving of people or the most cruel. History carries examples of both. If I don’t love, my celibate life would degenerate into a barren state of being merely unmarried. We need formators who have faced their own sexuality, their deep desires and needs. How many of our formators are comfortable accompanying another person in this area of sexuality. Many so- called formators are persons with degrees in a theoretical subject, with little experience of personal growth themselves, and even less training in helping another on their personal journey. (borrowed from the words of fr.joe mannath)

Sexuality is an area where lot of hiding takes place. No one speaks to the other openly about his or her sexuality, especially in the Indian culture where sexual experiences are accompanied by shame and taboos.

Lot of repression takes place in the seminary formation. If we take into consideration Freud and why he became so sexual in his psychology and methods, we cannot neglect the fact that his age was the Victorian age wherein Puritanism was the main stream. People were not allowed to talk about sex or sexual experiences. And so many people who came to him with their sexual experiences (a factor that constituted his world view). The contribution of Freud to the field of psychology consists in the fact that prior to him people thought “I am what I am conscious of”. With Freud the meta-narrative changed into “I am no aware of what I am”. His conception of the interior man – id, ego and superego does have significance in religious life.

Many religious we see today are unconcerned and heartless people affected by persecution syndrome. All this is because of the repressed feelings inside. For example when a child touches his genitals, the elders say, “dirty boy/ girl”, “do not touch”. But later when the have freedom, they just explore their sexuality for a desperate need to know and put to test what the elders said about it. These expressions from the part of the child are normal and a part of discovery.

The superego of Freud (injunctions, the do’s and don’ts appropriated from parents, society, etc. that condition the mind) is very much domineering today in the religious structures and communities. Once you enter the seminary, you have to follow the bell and be conditioned for the reasons to make the life into a mode of asceticism and discipline. Even people compare the seminary formation to that of the military discipline. Have we gone wrong somewhere in our understanding of the human person?

In the formation house they follow the behaviorist school of psychology focusing so much on the reformation of behaviours. The preventive system of education is also behaviouristic by nature. The presence of the Salesian is a stimulus in keeping the boys away from misbehaving.

Formation and different therapeutic schools:

Existential therapy in religious life: Everyone has an existential cry for meaning, of being loved, satisfaction and a sense of achievement. In religious life once has to live his/her life amidst the personal history of discovering oneself and adapting to the personal philosophy of life. The superiors who direct you at different stages of formation can only be sign posts on the way or in some cases the formees totally become depended on them even for deciding what you need to do next. In a way being involved in a process of control and being controlled.

Cognitive aspect of formation: In the Salesian pedagogy, we give emphasis on being reasonable. When a rule is established there has to be reasons for that. For example, the reasons for not talking in the dormitory must be told to the boys rather than following a tradition blindly.