The work of Calasanz

What were the most important intuitions of Calasanz?

Let us consider some.

The school of the saint is a school for all.
Jose sees that the children, the most in need, are lacking of a school. It should not be just for a few, since then they would always be the "privilege" ones. The school should be for all. Here lies the proper thing of the Calasanzian school.

 

A school where the priority should be the education.

 

An integral education, that should attend the human and Christian aspects, and embrace the whole person.

 

An education that looks for the good of children and youth; many of good intelligence are lost because of lacking the possibilities.

 

A preventive school; therefore, the Piarist ministry is an efficacious remedy for children and youth while they are in a difficult age.

 

A free tuition school and therefore it is for all.

 

A school for the children from the early years.

 

Calasanz, besides the elementary school, he wanted too the middle school studying Latin Language, Humanities, rhetoric and conscience cases, because only in this way he could see secure the fate of the poor class and carry out the reform of the Christian society.

 

What is the proper thing created by Calasanz?

"The free tuition school for the poor, that is to say, a school that would accept all in need of isntruction, not as the rional teachers that accepted very few; a school that would start instructing the children from the early years and that would initiate them in the teaching of reading and writing, different from the Jesuit Fathers of the Roman College. There was not a school where teachers of a holy life and good preparation would teach, a school that would be in accordance with the new time, that was contemplating the rising and incresing, day by day, the number of the poor and working classes, of poor workers, of employed young men; a school that would know how to grasp the spirit of the new epoch created by the fast diffussion of the printing. There was not, after all, a school truly popular, regarding the concrete exigencies of the poor, and that it would be able to give them, not only a momentaneous help, but also a definitive remedy, in the spiritual and intellectual field, as well as in the social" (Santha p. 51-52)

 

Let us give some meaningful aspects of the Calasanzian intuitions.

It puts into action a revolution. The revolution for Calasanz was not less important than any other revolution: that every man might have the right to a religious and cultural education; that in this field, should not be privileges; that, by any means, nobody could be rejected to be educated. This project is a new, authentic revolution. The school is the laboratory of the future of the country. What is done today with the children, tomorrow will be the country.

The primacy of an intutition. It is a just thing to recognize it in Calasanz. Even if he were not an extraordinary personality in other fields, he should be conisdered among the extraordinary men in the pedagogical field, especially in the practical pedagogy, although he never wrote any treatise.

He becomes a "father of the poor" because of what he did, he defended, the options he took, for the defense of his ideals, for what he created. He defended the poor he met in his life and those who would follow. He defended the right they had to build a better future and put by their side the means that would help them. He did not only attend the necessities of the moment; he foresaw the future ones and fought for giving the poor the means for overcoming their poverty and starting a more decent life.

He works for the social good. He did not limit his activity to the only spiritual aspect. He thought about the total person, as a whole; even more, he thought about the social society and for it he fought. To defend the education is to defend the social welfare. He defended the poor, because they had much to say about the social understanding and reconciliation. He defended the poor because he knew how much they could contribute to the development of peoples. Only the ignorance, the poverty, the obscurantism, the carelessness, the lack of respect for the rights of others, can generate hates, oppositions, and revolts. The power should not be that of the guns, but, in any case, rather the power of science and knowledge.

He gives Christian meaning to a human activity. He taught to live in a Christian way any simple human activity as the teaching is. The human thing is already in itself a reality of the Kingdom. There is not a baptism of the human activity as if it would be less worthy of. There is a deep commitment with the human thing, because in its deepest or in its most intimate reality, it builds the man, and to build the man, is to make advance the Kingdom.

He redeems the teaching activity. At that time, this activity was not only left on one side, but it was even discredited. While in the theoretical field great pedagogues wrote and built sublime theories, the practice, especially with the small and poor children, was seen on a very different way. Calasanz is the one who redeemed the teaching ministry: to teach, is not a "vile and despiable job", but "a ministry of angels".

He defends man. The life of Calasanz was dedicated to that. He defended man, he committed himself with him from his early years, he went in favor of all the poor, he fought in redeeming them from the evil, ignorance and sin; he was several hundred years before the realizations of the States.

Calasanz is worthy of an eternal remenbrance; it it worthy even more the coherent following with what he did and the way how he did it.

 

© Curia Generalizia dei Padri Scolopi