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What Does A Lasallian Educator Do?
Brother Luke Salm, FSC
The subject assigned to this presentation is: What Does a Lasallian Educator Do? The answer is obvious: the Lasallian educator educates. In an audience such as this, it might well be presumed that there is enough intelligence and expertise to know all that implies.
The theme of the workshop is broader: Sharing the Lasallian Vision. How this presentation relates to the theme may not be quite so obvious. There is that word Lasallian again. It now enjoys a vogue that it did not have even a few years ago. Only recently have we been able to agree on how to spell it. The word may now be in danger of becoming a buzz word or, perhaps, a fuzz word. The word becomes even fuzzier when we speak of a Lasallian vision. That envisions the visionary, the obscure, the ephemeral, the vision open to annual revision.
The way out of this is to realize that the vision, if it is to be Lasallian, is rooted in a tradition. Sharing the vision must, therefore, mean sharing the tradition. The most recent General Chapters of the Brothers have tried to convince the Brothers that we do have a tradition from the past and a vision for the future that are worth sharing. Now we have to convince ourselves and our colleagues in the educational ministry that we are willing to share the tradition and the vision.
The tradition is Lasallian because it is rooted in the life, the personality, the accomplishments, and the writings of John Baptist de La Salle. The vision is Lasallian because it is modeled on the vision of John Baptist de La Salle who was able to create something fresh and vital in the field of education. His was a practical vision that led him to seize with vigor and determination new opportunities in an educational climate that was weighed down by complacency and cliché. All of us, then, as Lasallian educators, are part of that tradition and share in that vision.
The vision part of it, however, is not the topic I have been asked to address. The two G's who planned this workshop, Gary and Gery, the York and the Short of it, keep telling me that they want this session to be practical: Get down to the brass tacks, the nitty-gritty, as soon as possible! Tell them what a Lasallian educator does, with a capital DO! To be honest with you, I can't really do that. It is not up to me to tell you how to organize your programs, how to get through the school day, or how to deal with unruly adolescents. You will have to do that for yourselves. This is supposed to be a workshop. I'm willing to do my part of the work; you will have to do yours.
The best contribution I can make to the work of the workshop is to probe the Lasallian vocabulary to find there some clues as to what the Lasallian educator does. In the process, it will become clear that there is a necessary connection between what the Lasallian educator is and what the Lasallian educator does. With this in mind, I should like to examine four words in the vocabulary of John Baptist de La Salle that have been particularly forceful in shaping the image of the Lasallian educator. De La Salle described the Lasallian educator as a Brother, possessed of a certain spirit, dedicated to the ministry of teaching, in the framework of a Christian School.
It should be noted at the outset that this approach involves a real hermeneutical problem. First, we must have some idea of what this language meant during the years from 1680 until the death of the Founder in 1719. Then, from 1719 until rather recently, the traditional description of the Lasallian educator was considered to apply only to the Brothers. If the Lasallian vocabulary is to have any meaning in a workshop such as this, our hermeneutical or interpretative principle will have to avoid two traps: anachronism and exclusivism.
To warn us away from anachronism, we have the 1967 Declaration on the Brother of the Christian Schools in the World Today. That document, from the 39th General Chapter of the Brothers, has this to say about fidelity to the Founder and fidelity to the present age:
Fidelity to the present moment of history and fidelity to the Founder, far from opposing or excluding each other, are closely related, provided we do not expect St. John Baptist de La Salle to have known in advance all our problems and the answer to all our questions... Fidelity to the specific intentions of the Founder and to the tradition of the Institute is entrusted to us as living men. It is we who carry on the task of discerning how fidelity to his charism can be lived in the present time.
Our traditional exclusivism is effectively abandoned in the new Rule of the Brothers, adopted at the 41st General Chapter in 1986 and subsequently approved in the Vatican. Article 17 reads in part:
The Brothers gladly associate lay persons with them in their educational mission. They provide, for those who so desire, the means to learn about the Founder and to live according to his spirit.
This principle is specified in article 17c which states: "The Brothers' community makes known to the rest of the educational community the essential elements of the Lasallian tradition."
This relatively new policy challenges us to keep in balance three levels of meaning in the Lasallian vocabulary we are about to analyze: what the words meant to the Founder and the early Brothers; how they apply to the Lasallian educator today; how they can be shared with Lasallian educators who are not members of the Institute.
The first thing that a Lasallian educator is and does is to be a Brother and to act like one. In the beginning the only Lasallian educators were Brothers who had been formally received into the Institute: all male, all celibate, all living in community, all bound by a common Rule, all wearing the same distinctive garb. The title Brother was chosen originally to distinguish the members of the young Society from the ordained clergy on the one hand and independent lay schoolteachers on the other.
But the idea of being a Brother need not be such an exclusivist or organizational concept. The reality is much deeper. Brotherhood implies sisterhood. It expresses a personal relationship on a common level, as distinct from the vertical relationship we have with persons we call father or mother. Brother, and sister, are the words the New Testament uses to express the relationships among all the members of the Christian community. In the New Testament, only God is called Father and only Jesus Christ is a priest: in the New Testament churches none of the ministers were called priests and no minister was addressed as Father.
In the modern world, the words brotherhood and sisterhood are being used more and more often to express the longing for community and solidarity: among nations and peoples worldwide, or among persons united in a common cause, or within closely knit interpersonal communities. That is why we Christian Brothers now more than ever want to share our tradition of brotherhood. We can apply here a line from a hymn often sung at communion time: "Our brotherhood embraces all, whose Father is the same."
In speaking to the Brothers of his time, De La Salle himself used the image of the older brother to describe the relationship between the Lasallian educator and the students. There is a bonding between an older and a younger brother that provides a special relationship and a special opportunity to teach and to learn that is not present in a youngster's relation to father, or mother, or uncle, or aunt. The l967 Declaration, already cited, puts it this way:
In the words of the Founder, the Brother is with the students from morning to evening. This means that Saint De La Salle conceived of education in terms of a fraternal relationship between the teacher and the student. The Brother is totally immersed in the life of the students: he shares their interests, their worries, their hopes. He is not so much a schoolmaster instilling a set of teachings as he is an older brother who helps them to be aware of what the Spirit is speaking within themselves, what their own abilities are, and little by little how they may discover their true place in the world.
The fact that Lasallian educators have traditionally been Brothers rather than a "Fathers" helps to foster a significant characteristic of our schools. They are not clerical, although the dignity of the priesthood, and the dignity of biological fatherhood for that matter, are deeply respected. But teachers with previous experience in schools conducted by religious or diocesan priests will tell you that the atmosphere in a Brothers' school is different. There is less pomposity and posturing, and more direct involvement in the concerns and the lifestyle of the students.
The non-clerical aspect of the Lasallian educator that is implied in the title Brother has special relevance in the Church today. The Christian Brothers and their colleagues living in the secular world share a common status and vocation as lay persons. There are many signs that the age of exclusive clerical control and clerical privilege in the Church may be coming to an end. In virtue of their lay character, Lasallian educators have an opportunity to be in the forefront of movements to claim for the laity their rightful role in the governance and leadership of parishes and dioceses, as well as in the sacramental life of the Christian community. The promotion of the laity has always been and continues to be an important concern of the Lasallian educator precisely as Brother.
It may be that not every Lasallian educator would be happy to be given the title Brother. The term may strike some as male chauvinist, and in a way it is. Surely, not many of the increasing number of women who are or who want to be Lasallian educators can be expected to be enthusiastic at the prospect of being called Brother. They might not want to be called sister either, for fear of being mistaken for a nun. The same might be true of Lasallian educators who are fathers—either in the clerical or biological sense—or mothers, as some are. The point here, in focusing on this fundamental word in the Lasallian vocabulary, is not what the Lasallian educator is called, but what such a person is or does as a result. The essential thing is that the Lasallian educator exemplifies all that being brother implies: personal relationship, freedom from paternalism and clericalism on the one hand, solidarity in a human community of brothers and sisters on the other.
A second element in De La Salle's description of the Lasallian educator is his use of the word spirit. In the earliest version of his Rule that we have (1705), he wrote: "That which is of the utmost importance, and to which the greatest attention should be given in an Institute is that all who compose it possess the spirit peculiar to it... for it is this spirit that should animate all their actions, be the motive of their whole conduct."
De La Salle is very explicit as to what that spirit is: "The spirit of this Institute," he writes in Chapter 2 of the 1705 Rule, "is first, a spirit of faith... Secondly, the spirit of the Institute consists in an ardent zeal for the instruction of children." In the next chapter he uses the word spirit again when he writes "A true spirit of community shall always be manifest and maintained in this Institute." The spirit of the Lasallian educator,
therefore, has three components: faith, zeal, and community. These are not three distinct spirits, but really only three aspects of the one spirit of faith, overflowing into zeal, and lived in a concrete way in an apostolic faith community.
The Lasallian educator motivated by a spirit of faith is necessarily a religious person. That idea may scare some people, but it shouldn't. Religiousness need not be confused with religiosity—church attendance, devotional practices, adherence to church teachings, and the like—however important these expressions of faith may have been and still are to many people. In sharing this spirit with our colleagues this does not mean, either, that we expect them to adopt the lifestyle of professed religious living in community. In using the word spirit in connection with faith, De La Salle intended something more profound than any merely external expression of religious faith.
Rather, in his writings on the spirit of faith, De La Salle urges the Brothers to develop a faith vision that would enable them to see beyond appearances. He wanted his Lasallian educators to be able to find God, that is, ultimate meaning and value, in the street urchins they faced every day in the classroom, in their colleagues, in their personal and professional failures as well as their success, in the reversals that beset the Lasallian movement as well as in its providential growth, in their material poverty as well as in the richness of their association together. In the Lasallian sense, then, the spirit of faith has to do with the perception of value, ultimate value. The spirit of faith gives the Lasallian educator an uncanny ability always to suspect that in persons and events there is more than meets the eye, to catch a glimpse of the divine spark that is hidden beneath the external appearance of the most unlikely carriers of divinity.
The spirit of faith that characterizes the Lasallian educator is not something that can be taken for granted: it has to be cultivated. In order to be able to see persons and events as God sees them, the Lasallian educator must learn how to be in touch with God, that is, to pray. Prayer in this sense is not the same as saying prayers: it is more meditative, more personal. It is the discovery of the divine spark within oneself. It takes place in those moments when we open ourselves up to that something "more" that always seems to be just beyond us. Saying formal prayers can help, of course, especially in communal and liturgical prayer that breaks through the formulas and routine to become itself an authentic faith experience. The spirit of faith can likewise be nurtured by the kind of reading we do, reading that forces the right questions on us, that challenges us to come to grips with who we are and the ultimate reason for what we are doing.
The Lasallian educator possessed of such a spirit of faith cannot help but want to share it. That is why De La Salle describes the spirit of the Lasallian educator in terms of zeal as well as faith. Faith overflows into zeal; zeal is a manifestation of faith; the spirit of faith and the spirit of zeal are in reality two aspects of the same spirit.
De La Salle refers to this aspect of the spirit of the Lasallian educator as an ardent zeal, that is, a zeal that burns, that sets us on fire. It isn't easy to experience that day after day in the classroom, as we all know. That is why De La Salle again uses the word spirit. It suggests something more than merely being zealous, that is, keeping busy all day, doing one's job, earning one's pay. Neither does the spirit of zeal, even zeal rooted in faith, refer primarily to a crusading zeal to get the students to go to church, or to stay away from drugs, or to bring their sexual urges under reasonable control.
Rather, the zeal of the Lasallian educator is an insistent and dynamic urge to want to share the best of oneself with the students: to communicate one's sense of ultimacy or, in other words, to share one's faith; to share what one knows and has experienced; to put one's personal values and vision into creative tension with those of the students. In short, the spirit of zeal drives the Lasallian educator to make the students aware that their lives have meaning and value.
As we all know, you can fool some of the students some of the time, but not very often and not for long. Whether or not this or that teacher really cares about them is something they discover soon enough. Perhaps the best test of whether the zeal of the Lasallian educator is authentic, is whether or not the students are set on fire with the same zeal to share their values and vision with others, to make sacrifices for the cause of justice and peace, for example, or to find other ways to break out of their characteristic adolescent preoccupation with themselves.
A third element in the spirit of the Lasallian educator is the spirit of community. A community is the context in which one lives the spirit of faith and zeal. Strangely enough, De La Salle did not use the term community to refer to what we call community today. When he wants to speak of the local community of Brothers, he uses the word "house." For him the community was the Institute, the spirit of community was the esprit de corps that held together the whole Society he had founded. This was especially important at a time when the very existence of the Institute was precarious, when its distinctive character was continually threatened by those who wanted to take it over and turn it into something else.
In some respects, the situation today is different. At the same time, never before since the time of its foundation has the Institute been so threatened by internal and external forces. That is all the more reason to preserve the spirit of community in the Founder's sense. That spirit is being translated today into the spirit of interdependence in a worldwide community with a common mission; a community of apostolic communities implanted in a variety of cultures, all sharing the same brotherhood and motivated by the same faith and zeal; a community composed of Brothers, professional colleagues, parents, students, and alumni that together constitute what we are beginning to call the Lasallian family. Everyone here is part of that Lasallian family and shares in the challenge to exemplify what De La Salle meant when he insisted that "a true spirit of community shall always be maintained in this Institute."
The third expression in the Lasallian vocabulary that I would like to devote some attention to is the teacher as minister. John Baptist de La Salle pushes his language to the outer edges of orthodoxy when he tells the Brothers in his Meditations for the Time of Retreat — "You are ambassadors and ministers of Jesus Christ"; and, even more boldly: "The Church, whose ministers you are, commissions you", and, more boldly still, "You are the successors of the apostles in their task of catechizing and teaching the poor... Thank God for the grace he has given you in the work of sharing in the ministry of the great bishops and pastors of the Church." De La Salle was enough of a theologian not to identify the teaching ministry of the Brother with that of the bishop, but he comes awfully close.
Without doubt, one of the major achievements of De La Salle was to elevate the teaching function to the status of a vocation, worthy of the dedication of a lifetime. We have to remember that in the seventeenth century, schoolteachers, as distinct from university professors, were recruited from the scum of society. Most of them were dropouts from universities or seminaries, rough characters generally, barely literate and not much better disciplined than their students. De La Salle himself tells us that when he first became involved with the schoolteachers he thought of them as lower in status than his own valet. He changed all that by transforming the function of teaching school into a vocation and a ministry. That is one of the major reasons that De La Salle did not want the Brothers to be priests: he considered the priesthood irrelevant and unnecessary, an element that would distract them from the obligations and dignity of their vocation to be teachers.
De La Salle knew full well that the dignity of the teaching vocation could not be established simply by affirming it, even in the lofty biblical language of ministry and apostolic succession. He saw to it that the Brothers were trained for their teaching ministry. Much of it in those days was on the job training, but it was a corporate effort, and the instantaneous success of the Christian Schools is proof that it was effective. When special opportunities arose for the Brothers to expand their teaching beyond the elementary level, De La Salle provided the necessary advanced training. On three separate occasions he opened training centers for teachers who were not Brothers, thus extending the principle that all schoolteachers ought to be and could be properly trained.
When he tells the Brothers that they are ministers of Jesus Christ and ministers of the Church, De La Salle refers most obviously to the teaching of religion. In his day, and up until recently, every Brother, and only Brothers, taught religion. Now it is more customary to hand this part of the curriculum over to specialists, whether Brothers or not. Important as religious instruction was and still is, it does not mean that teaching a religion is the only way, or even the best way, to be a minister of the Gospel. De La Salle never made a sharp distinction between teaching religion and teaching the other school subjects, any more than he did between the religious life of the Brother and his professional life as a teacher.
For De La Salle, the entire teaching activity of the Lasallian educator is a ministry, a service in the name of the Gospel for those he described as "far from salvation." De La Salle knew that salvation in terms of human dignity in this world was as problematic for the students as their salvation in the next world; that the gospel of Jesus Christ had good news to offer for this world as well as for the next; that the Christian School was engaged as much in the struggle against human ignorance and poverty as against unbelief and sin.
Just about the best expression of this Lasallian tradition that teaching secular subjects constitutes an authentic ministry or "apostolate" can be found in the 1967 Declaration:
It is true to say that a Brother exercises a ministry whenever he truly educates. It is apostolic to awaken in students a serious attitude toward life and the conviction of the greatness of the destiny of each human being; it is apostolic to make it possible for them, with intellectual honesty and responsibility, to experience the autonomy of personal thought; it is apostolic to help the students to use their liberty to overcome their own prejudices, preconceived ideas, social pressures, as well as the pressures that come from the disintegration within the human person; it is apostolic to dispose students to use their intelligence and their training in the service of their fellow human beings, to open them to others; to teach them how to listen and try to understand, to trust, and to love; it is apostolic to instill in students a sense of trust-worthiness, brotherhood, and justice.
That, it seems to me, is one way of saying what a Lasallian educator does: such a person exercises a ministry.
The fourth expression from the Lasallian lexicon that I would like to comment on is the term Christian Schools as it appears in the official title of the Institute. Note, by the way, that it is the schools, not the Brothers, that are designated as Christian. With all due respects to the label on our wonderful wines and brandy, we are not Christian Brothers but Brothers of the Christian Schools. The Conduct of the Christian Schools is the title of the school manual elaborated by the Founder in consultation with the early Brothers and first published shortly after his death.
The most solemn context in which the official title appears is the vow formula of the Brothers, first enunciated in 1694, and only slightly modified since: "I promise and vow to unite myself and to remain in Society with the Brothers of the Christian Schools who are associated to keep together and by association gratuitous schools." The term Christian Schools has become so much a part of the Lasallian vocabulary that we might easily overlook what it has to say to our question: What does the Lasallian educator do?
Why did De La Salle call his schools Christian Schools? A bit of history is needed to understand this. In the France of his day there were two types of schools for those not intending to go on for university studies: the Little Schools and the Charity Schools. The Little Schools were in charge of a single schoolmaster who offered elementary instruction in reading and sometimes writing, beginning with Latin, and usually in his own home. Students came to the teacher to recite their lessons one by one, while the others waited their turn. Franchises to operate Little Schools were carefully controlled by the diocesan authorities. The Charity Schools, by contrast, were schools conducted by the parish for the children of the certified poor, where poor discipline, casual attendance, disrupted schedules, dubious sanitation, and ill prepared and poorly motivated teachers were the rule rather than the exception. Although these traditional schools were under the control of church authority, and therefore Christian in that sense, De La Salle wanted his schools to be identified neither with the one nor the other.
The clue to the distinctive character of the Christian Schools lies in the formula used by the early Brothers to express their vows. In those days they took three vows: association to keep gratuitous schools, obedience, and stability. It was because of this commitment that the Christian Schools were good schools, providing a Christian and a quality education for all who cared to attend. The teachers were trained, committed, highly motivated, and they taught as a team, "together and by association." Students were grouped in classes and taught simultaneously, instruction beginning in French rather than Latin. There was an organized program and schedule; discipline was insisted upon, as was regular attendance. The subjects taught were practical, providing useful knowledge and skills for advancing in this world while piling up treasure for the next. That is the reason why De La Salle wanted a new name to designate his schools. The term Christian Schools was a kind of trade mark that stood for practicality, creativity, discipline, and quality.
The Christian Schools were also gratuitous. In itself this was nothing very novel or distinctive. The Charity Schools of the parishes were entirely gratuitous and intended exclusively for the certified poor; although the Little Schools were required to accept children of the poor without charge, very few of the poor attended since they were not made to feel welcome. De La Salle did want to provide a quality education for the poor, and that was certainly novel, and to provide it without cost. Of course, somebody had to pay, usually the parish, or the diocese, or some wealthy patron, or the public treasury. De La Salle could drive a hard bargain when it came to the Brothers' salaries. But he didn't want the Brothers to be concerned about that. Above all, he wanted them to have special concern for the poor and the disadvantaged, to discern, as he did, the call of God in the cry of the poor. For him, therefore, gratuity was essential.
More than that, De La Salle insisted that the schools be gratuitous for all, even for those who could pay. The quality of the Christian Schools was such that the sons of doctors, merchants, inn keepers, butchers, and other bourgeois began to abandon the independent schoolmasters in large numbers to come to the Christian Schools. Unlike the Charity Schools, it was safe there for the sons of the bourgeoisie to associate with the sons of the poor: cleanliness and discipline were insisted upon, the curriculum was more practical, and the teachers more competent. Besides, it was free.
It was this policy that got De La Salle in trouble with the Corporation of the Masters of the Little Schools and the Guild of Writing Masters. When they hauled him into the civil and ecclesiastical courts he inevitably lost the case. Why? Because he was breaking the law. In the stratified educational system of the time it was illegal to desegregate the rich and the poor. But De La Salle had a dream.
For De La Salle, there was a principle here that was above the law, namely that there be no favoritism in the school, no distinction among the students on the basis of family or wealth. As long as there were paying customers and non paying customers in the schools, there would always be the danger of favoring the one group over the other. For the same reason, the Brothers were strictly forbidden in terms of their vow to accept any gifts whatever from the pupils or their parents.
There are two elements in this history that are relevant for the Lasallian educator today. One is the quality of the school that comes from the close association of the Lasallian educators; the other is the principle of gratuity.
Enough has been said already I think on the subject of association. It is the very theme of this workshop: sharing the Lasallian vision. We have referred to the desire of the Institute to share our brotherhood, our spirit of community, our ministry, our conduct of the schools, which, by the way and according to our new Rule, means sharing administrative and policy making responsibilities. That is what association means in the concrete. And that, presumably, is what gives our schools their special quality.
Of all the elements in the Lasallian tradition, it is the principle of gratuity that creates the greatest number of problems in Lasallian education today. There is no way we can return to the financial arrangements that enabled De La Salle to conduct a network of tuition free schools. It is not even possible any longer to keep the tuition in our schools reasonably low without injustice to the Lasallian educators who have to be paid enough to support themselves and their families. That is why the fourth vow of the Brothers is now called a vow of association for the service of the poor through education.
In recent years we have made an effort to take this vow more seriously, now that it has been detached from any reference to tuition and fees. We are trying to attract more minority students to our schools by offering scholarship assistance or by seeking outside support. We are trying to address justice and peace issues more extensively in the curriculum and in extra curricular programs of social service. In some places the Brothers are considering handing over some of our traditional schools to lay Lasallian associates to free the Brothers to work directly for the poor.
Those are institutional measures that can be taken to keep the principle of gratuity a vital factor in the Lasallian school. But there is much that each individual Lasallian educator can do as well. Any educator imbued with the Lasallian ideal of gratuity would instinctively give priority of attention, time, and energy to those students who come from poor families, or those who are handicapped or disadvantaged in some other way: the slow learner, the emotionally insecure, the physically unattractive, in other words the dum-dums, the wimps and the nerds.
Yet I am not altogether sure that this is the case. Too often, perhaps, we prefer to spend time after school with the students who are charming and sophisticated, brilliant and responsive, handsomely built and athletically gifted. What is worse, we often find it difficult to resist the blandishments of those who have money. Many of our students now come from families that are more affluent and have more of the good things of this life than either the Brothers or any of the lay faculty. That makes it difficult not to be tempted, once in a while at least, to abandon the have nots to hob-nob with the haves. The problem is complicated by the extent to which the institution depends on such persons in fund raising drives and for support of school activities. Such relationships, innocent though they may be an sometimes necessary, cannot help but rearrange the priorities of those who are their beneficiaries.
By the very economics of the teaching profession, no educator is adequately compensated for the services rendered; a good part of what every teacher provides is already given gratuitously. People become teachers for some other reason than to make money. It would be unfortunate to dilute that kind of commitment, or the integrity and independence that comes with it, in order to roll around, however briefly, in the greener grass on the other side of the fence. That was why De La Salle insisted that gratuity be extended to all without distinction. Understood in this sense, it is not an anachronism to bring to the fore this principle of gratuity in a contemporary discussion of what a Lasallian educator does in relation to his students.
With these remarks, my part of the work of the workshop nears its long overdue conclusion. I have tried to suggest how every Lasallian educator might share in the tradition of being a Brother, possessed of a threefold spirit, exercising a ministry, in the context of a Christian School.
The rest is up to you. There is time over the weekend to ask yourselves questions, questions that may be as embarrassing to us Brothers as to anyone else, about what all this does or could mean in the specific situations in which you carry on the glorious ministry of education.
You might ask questions about brotherhood, for example. Are the relations between the Brothers and the rest of the staff, between administrators and faculty, faculty and students, genuinely fraternal? Or are they rather paternalistic? To what extent are faith, and zeal, and community, discernable as a characteristic spirit of the teaching staff? Again, is it an exaggeration to describe all the teaching activity as a Gospel ministry? Does that make any difference in the way teachers approach either the subject matter or their students? And what about the school: Is it a Christian school in the sense described? What is the level of association and how does it affect the quality of the school? Are there any specific ways in which priority is given to concern for the disadvantaged? for issues of justice and peace? Is favoritism a problem, and how can it be overcome?
All I can say, by way of conclusion, is that I am glad I don't have to answer those questions. The real hard work of the workshop is now in your hands.
SHARING THE LASALLIAN VISION: What Does a Lasallian Educator Do?
St. Helena, CA
February 13, 1988
(Brother Luke Salm, FSC)
LASALLIAN VOCABULARY
1. The members of this Institute are called by the name Brother. By the fraternal character of their community life and their active and selfless presence among those they serve, the Brothers witness to the possibility of creating true brotherhood among people and nations.
—1987 Rule
... Saint De La Salle conceived of education in terms of a fraternal relationship between the teacher and the student. The Brother is totally immersed in the life of the students: he shares their interests, their worries, their hopes. He is not so much a schoolmaster instilling a set of teachings as he is an older brother who helps them to be aware of what the Spirit is speaking within themselves, what their abilities are, and little by little how they may discover their true place in the world.
— 1967 Declaration
2. That which is of the utmost importance, and to which the greatest importance should be given in an Institute is that all who compose it possess the spirit peculiar to it ... for it is this spirit that should animate all their actions, be the motive of their whole conduct.
— 1718 Rule
The spirit of this Institute is first, a spirit of faith, which should induce those who compose it not to look upon anything but with the eyes of faith ... Secondly the spirit of the Institute consists in an ardent zeal for the instruction of children ... A true spirit of community shall always be evident and maintained in this Institute.
— 1705 Rule
3. You are ambassadors and ministers of Jesus Christ ... The Church whose ministers you are, commissions you ... You are the successors of the apostles in their task of catechizing and teaching the poor. — 1717 (?)
Meditations for the Time of Retreat
It is true to say that a Brother exercises a ministry whenever he truly educates. It is apostolic to awaken in students a serious attitude toward life and the conviction of the greatness of the destiny of each human being; it is apostolic to make it possible for them, with intellectual honesty and responsibility, to experience the autonomy of human thought; it is apostolic to help the students to use their liberty to overcome their own prejudices, preconceived ideas, social pressures, as well as the pressures that come from the disintegration within the human person; it is apostolic to dispose students to use their intelligence and their training in the service of their fellow human beings, to open them to others; to teach them how to listen and to try to understand, to trust, and to love; it is apostolic to instill in students a sense of trustworthiness, brotherhood and justice.
— 1967 Declaration
4. I promise and vow to unite myself and to remain in Society with the Brothers of the Christian Schools who are associated to keep together and by association gratuitous schools.
— 1694 Formula of Vows
Keynote Address
by
Br. Luke Salm, FSC
Christian Brothers Retreat House
St. Helena, California
February 12-14, 1988
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