Feast day: April 7
St. John Baptist de la Salle
Wealthy French canon who gave up rank and fortune to found the Brothers of the Christian Schools and reinvent education for poor children.
John Baptist de la Salle was born in 1651 to a wealthy family at Reims in France, became a priest and a canon of the cathedral, and seemed set for a comfortable and distinguished churchman's life. But he was drawn, almost against his own inclination at first, into the work of educating poor boys, for whom there was then little or no schooling — and once he saw the need, he gave it everything.
To do the work he had to overturn his own world. He took the rough, untrained schoolmasters into his own home to form them, then resigned his prestigious canonry and gave away his entire fortune to the poor during a famine, choosing to share the insecurity of those he served. From this grew the Brothers of the Christian Schools — a community of laymen, not priests, vowed to the free education of the poor.
He was a true pioneer of education. He gathered children into classes taught together rather than one by one, taught them in their own French language instead of Latin, insisted the schools be free and open to all, and — perhaps most far-reaching of all — founded some of the first colleges for the training of teachers, earning him the title 'father of modern pedagogy.'
He met fierce opposition, financial ruin, and defections that nearly destroyed the young institute, bearing it all with patience and trust. He died on Good Friday in 1719. Canonized in 1900 and named the patron saint of teachers, he is remembered as the man who, more than almost any other, made schooling the right of poor children and not the privilege of the rich.
He pioneered teaching in the local language instead of Latin, grouping students into grade levels, and training teachers — your school still runs on his ideas.
“To touch the hearts of your students is the greatest miracle you can perform.”
— St. John Baptist de la Salle
Image: Unknown authorUnknown author (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/08444a.htm
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