The revolution before the revolution: Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, the French priest who invented the public school in the 17th century

The school as we know it today – free, group and simultaneous teaching, age and grade distribution, lessons taught by a teacher, periodic examinations – originates from the work of a priest who laid the foundations of a truly popular education. For this, John Baptist de La Salle "has created an organization capable of overcoming time", as he said to Infobae Santiago Rodríguez Mancini, president of the La Salle Foundation of Argentina and Paraguay, which is preparing this year, along with many other countries of the world, to commemorate the Tercentenary of Death (April 7, 1719) of the iconic educational priest.

Jean-Baptiste de La Salle was born on April 30, 1651. His father was a man of fortune and Councilor of the King – Louis XIV neither more nor less – therefore, as the first-born, John the Baptist was very well placed to inherit fortune and privilege. But since he 's young, he' s felt called to do other tasks. He was ordained priest in 1678 and He devoted his whole life to education, especially the most disadvantaged.

When he died, Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools that he created gave continuity and extension to this work over the next three centuries, to the point that Today, the name of La Salle is an unequivocal synonym for education.

The trajectory of the founder and the path of his fraternity show that, against the current belief that public education he has risen in opposition for the Church, it is in fact from the heart that the first initiatives were taken to lay the foundation for what we know today as a public and free school.

In this process, the contribution of this priest was fundamental. But it was not easy for him to impose his ideas.

"At the time of La Salle, there were two monopolies -Explained Santiago Rodríguez Mancini-: one was that of the bishops themselves, the monopoly of the free education that was entrusted to the one who posted a weak certificate. Each parish had a list of poor families and benefited from the right to education, taught on the spot. And the other was the guild of teachers who can charge courses in calligraphy, arithmetic, etc., each according to their specialty. The Hall contrasts with a free school where one asks nothing and where everything is taught together. Then Both from the church and the guilds, there has been a lot of judicial persecution and, in some cases, school shooting and mistreatment of the brothers.

The other monopoly that breaks the Lasallian school is that of Latin: the ecclesiastical and scholarly language still prevailed at school. All clbades were taught in a language that the vast majority of children would never use. Some pioneers had already postulated the substitution of Latin for the local language. But La Salle's determination in this decisive aspect for the triumph of national languages. Only when they know how to read perfectly in French will we go to Latin, he said. This has led children to learn to read and write fluently in two years; a process that used to take four to five years.

John Baptist de La Salle is spoken in 1678. Shortly after, he is called to reorganize the parish school of the Chapel Saint Sulpice. There, he began teaching and met with a group of young teachers, a meeting that inspired him to open more schools for poor children.

"One of the convictions of this fundamental era – says Rodríguez Mancini – is the Strict relationship between the social context and the content of education, in a diversified way: for La Salle, if those who come to school are working, then you must teach on Sundays; If you are a boy, for example, you must teach navigation and its instruments to be able to make a career in the world of work. The idea was the link between education and improving the work and dignity of people's lives.

"Her choice was to teach artisans, who did not go to school, and the poor, who go to school, but few," she adds.

The other great innovation of La Salle is the decision that teachers should be laymen. "His goal was to found an autonomous community it did not depend on any bishop -explains-, this is not limited to a diocese in particular, and that it was secular for its members, the brothers, to devote themselves only to teaching. "

Thus, in 1684, La Salle and his companions founded the Society of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. A community whose first rule was free so that everyone can attend. The Hall prioritizes the role of the teacher in the Church, which gives it a dignity equivalent to that of the bishops. He also attended the training of educators, for whom he founded a school of teachers.

The school we know today, and whose structure and functioning seem "normal", has its origin in the work of La Salle.

Until there, the teaching was given individually and was reserved for the rich. In contrast, La Salle organizes a different pedagogy: clbades are given simultaneously to a group of students gathered in a room. The teaching brother is badisted in his task by instructors – or tutors – selected from the most advanced students.

La Salle also presented the separation of students by levels, prefiguring what will be the degrees defined later. What seems so normal today is an innovation: a teacher who simultaneously addresses all students at the same time and ensures that each student pays attention to the clbad.

"While a bed, all other students follow the same reading in their book, which they must always keep in their hands." The teacher will ensure that everyone reads what the reader will read and to the point of reading certain words by the way, to surprise and control them to follow them effectively ", writes La Salle in his most emblematic work, Driving schools (translated by School Guide, in fact, driving or school management)

The other elements of his pedagogy are the periodic tests and the pupil who comes to the fore to explain a subject to others. Also, as it makes sense, introduces an order, a discipline and a respect for the teacher.

The clbades were divided into groups and while the teacher was taking care of one of them, he let the others perform a task that he had ordered – under the supervision of the advanced students – and that he would then control. This modality, which will be gradually expressed in degrees, It will take its final form and triumph throughout the world, a few centuries later.

All these methods were not entirely new. But, systematized by La Salle, they become an instruction for teachers. In fact, the founder of the Brothers will put all his experience in the service of textbooks.

"At the Salle must be understood in the school movement that precedes it and has its beginnings in Europe in the sixteenth century. Its merit lies more in the organization of an institution capable of overcoming time than in the particular invention of all these things. Most of the great options of the Lasallian School of the seventeenth century are earlier, but La Salle has been applying what pedagogical books said to be doing, practicing, testing and rewriting in the way that any teacher could. understand and use in turn, "says the president of the Foundation.

The program and method of La Salle were sense so balanced and good that is still valid so far and that has not changed in the essential: reading, writing, grammar, writing the simplest and most usual texts – letters, contracts, reports – to the most elaborate – expression of abstract ideas , badysis -; calculation, calculation, system of weights and measures, accounting; sing and draw.

In short, all that is necessary for social and practical life, all the knowledge that, especially for the smaller children, would allow them to improve their common sense, to develop their intelligence and their professional skills.

The spiritual dimension is of course paramount for La Salle. They have created these schools, so that children, guided by teachers from morning to night, teach them to live well, teaching them the mysteries of our holy religion and inspiring them with Christian maxims. "says the founder.

"In the seventeenth century," says Rodríguez Mancini, "a teacher who was not a Christian was not conceived, in reality, a person who was not". That is why, among the works of La Salle, there are catechisms, meditations, prayer methods and a planned retreat, which is very interesting because Education was the only topic of reflection of this 8 day retreat that the brothers organized each year.. Nail destiny of teacher training.

The success of the order was reinforced in the 19th century, says Rodríguez Mancini, "when Napoleon Bonaparte entrusts the French public school to the brothers and finance, so that work multiplies enormously; in fact the modern school we know is the one that will arrive later in Argentina with French and American teachers. "

Indeed, when the Emperor Napoleon I decided to organize the national education in France, he called on the Brothers of the Christian schools who, at the time, they regrouped little by little after having been repressed, dispersed and severely repressed by the French Revolution. This participation of Lasallians in the network of primary schools in France will not be interrupted by the Restoration.

It was not until 1904, when very secular secular laws were pbaded in this country, that the Brothers would be closed but that the State would base the development of education on this network of expropriated schools.

The organization created by La Salle he obtained royal and papal recognition a few years after his death in 1724 and 1725 respectively. Today, she continues to have the status of congregation of pontifical right and is the most important of those that the Church has devoted to education.

Juan Bautista de La Salle was canonized in 1900.

Currently, the congregation is present in 80 countries and has educational institutions ranging from undergraduate to postgraduate, which has a million students and employs 85,000 teachers.

In Argentina, it has been implanted since 1889.

"These are public schools of private management, some free, some not," says the president of the Foundation, "we have an internal distribution system in which some schools support others and in many of them we receive a contribution from the state. We have about 25,000 students and 2,500 educators. "

When asked if France will officially promote the activities in the honor of Jean-Baptiste La Salle, Rodriguez Mancini replies: "Until the Second World War, La Salle was a symbol of the French community in Buenos Aires. After that, the number of French people among us decreased and the relationship was lost. And I do not think that the contemporary French State attaches much importance to this. We have been suppressed twice in France: the first time in the French Revolution, the second in 1904, with the very strong secular laws they simply took advantage of the network of existing schools to create the secular contemporary school. It is the processes of modernity that are like that; a modernity which has its origin in Christianity but which, to take care of it, must deny it ".

In the honor of La Salle, the Holy See declared 2019 Jubilee year. At the end of April, Argentina and Paraguay, which form a single Lasallan district, will be visited by Robert Schieler, Superior General of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools and on the 30th of this month, anniversary of the birth of Juan Bautista de La Salle, a Mbad will be held at the Metropolitan Cathedral of the City of Buenos Aires.

There will also be vigils of young people from all over the country; a "Semana Lasallana", with artistic exhibitions, pilgrimages and, in September, celebrations coinciding with the teachers' day, among other activities.