|
Miss Tam, Rev Fathers and Sisters, Members of the Board, Ladies and Gentlemen and dear students
It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to our Graduation Ceremony and to thank you for your encouragement and support. It is hard to find time for events like this because of the hectic pace of life in Hong Kong and because of the low priority Speech Days have in our social calendar. The fact that you made the effort and took the time to be present demonstrates that your scale of values differs from that generally prevailing here. We are grateful for that and our graduates and students particularly appreciate your presence.
We are still the year marking the centenary of the death of St John Bosco so I would like to echo the words of the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, gloriously reigning, when he spoke on the Preventive System of Education. This is the system popularised by Don Bosco and is the one used by his spiritual sons and collaborators in educating the young committed to our care.
John Bosco died at Turin on 31st January, 1888. Deep and complex political, social and cultural changes were taking place in his native land at the time. Revolutionary movements, wars and a migration of people from the countryside to the towns were among the factors that had a significant effect on the life of the people, especially those who were poor. These were ill-equipped for what awaited them as they huddled together on the outskirts of the towns. They became the victims of exploitation and unemployment and their moral, human, religious and occupational development were almost totally neglected.
Traditional methods of education became disjointed and ineffective in the face of this rootless mass of people, and efforts were made for various motives by different concerned organisations and individuals to address the problem. One of these who came to the fore in Turin through his clear Christian inspiration, courageous initiatives, and the rapid and wide extension of his work was Don Bosco.
He felt deeply that he had received a special vocation and that in the carrying out of his mission he was assisted by God and the motherly intervention of the Virgin Mary.
Young John, whose father died when he was very young, was brought up with profound insight by his mother, and was blessed by Providence with gifts which made him the generous and conscientious friend of his companions.
The youth situation today, a century after the saint's death, has changed a great deal and presents a whole variety of different conditions and aspects as those of us engaged in education well know.
And yet today too there remain those same questions which occupied the mind of the priest John Bosco in his desire to understand and his determination to work. Who are these young people? What are they looking for? Where are they going to? What are they in need of ?
These were difficult questions to answer at the time as they still are at the present day, but they are unavoidable and every educator must face up to them. Today groups of young people can be found all over the world who are genuinely sensitive to spiritual values, and who want help and support in the maturing of their personalities. On the other hand it is quite clear that youth is a prey to allurements and conditioning elements of a negative kind, the result of various idealogical outlooks. The attentive educator will be alive to the practical reality of the youth situation and will know how to intervene with sure competence and wise foresight. In this he knows that he is prompted, enlightened and sustained by the incomparable educative tradition of the Salesian Society and the Church.
For St John Bosco one may say that the peculiar trait of his brilliance is linked with the educational method which he himself called the Preventive System. In a certain sense this represents the quintessence of his pedagogical wisdom and constitutes the prophetic message which he left to his followers. This system has received the attention and recognition of numerous educators and students of pedagogy. The term Preventive which he uses is to be understood not so much in its strict linguistic sense as in the richness of the characteristics typical of the Saint's educative skill.
It implies in the first place the intention of foreseeing and preventing anything that might give rise to negative experiences which could compromise youthful energies or commit young people to long and distressing efforts at recovery. But the term also includes deep intuitions, precise options and methodological criteria, all lived with particular intensity: examples are:
- the art of positive education by putting forward what is good through appropriate experiences which call for the involvement of the pupil and are attractive because of their splendour and lofty nature;
- the art of producing growth IN THE YOUNG PERSONS FROM WITHIN BY APPEALING TO their inner freedom to oppose external conditioning and formalism;
- the art of winning the heart of young people so as to inculcate in them a joyful and satisfied attraction to what is good, correcting deviations and preparing them for the future by means of a solid character formation.
Evidently this pedagogical message supposes in the educator the conviction that in every young person, no matter how far he may seem to be from the straight and narrow, there are hidden sources of good which if properly stimulated can lead to an option for faith and honestly. We may therefore fittingly reflect on what, as a providential reflection of the Word of God, constitutes one of the most characteristic aspects of the Saint's pedagogy.
A man of tireless activity in many forms, Don Bosco has provided by his life a most efficacious teaching, to such an extent that even by his contemporaries he was considered outstanding as an educator. The few pages in which he described his pedagogical experience acquire their full significance only when read in the light of all the long and rich experience he acquired through living in the midst of the young.
Education implied for him a special attitude on the part of the educator and a collection of practices, based on convictions of reason and faith, which serve as guides on pedagogical activity. At the centre of his vision stands pastoral charity of which he says: "The practice of the preventive system is wholly based on the words of St Paul who says "Love is patient and kind; it bears all things, hopes all things and endures all things."
It inclines the educator to love the young person in whatever state he may be found, so as to lead him to the fullness of humanity which is revealed in Christ, to give him the awareness and possibility of living the life of an upright citizen as a son of God. It leads to intuitive understanding and gives strength to what the Saint summed up in the well-known threefold formula: reason, religion, loving kindness."
REASON
The term Reason emphasises, in line with the authentic view of Christian humanism, the value of the individual, of conscience, of human nature, of culture, of the world of work, of social living, or in other words of that vast set of values which may be considered the necessary equipment of man in his family, civil and political life. In his pedagogical plan there is a successful combination between the permanence of what is essential and the contingency of what is historical, between what is traditional and what is new. The saint offers young people a programme which is simple but at the same time exacting, happily summed in an evocative formula: an upright citizen because a good Christian.
In brief the Reason in which Don Bosco believed as a gift of God and an unfailing obligation of the educator, indicates the values of what is good, and also the objectives to be aimed at and the means and manner of using them. Reason invites the young to an attitude of sharing in values they have understood and accepted. He called it also reasonableness because of its necessary accompaniment by the understanding, dialogue and patience through which the far from easy practice of reasoning finds expression. The modern educator must be able to read closely the signs of the times to glean from them the emerging values which are attractive to youth: peace, freedom, justice, communion and sharing.
>> next
|
