Jean-Baptiste de La Salle was a French priest, educational reformer, and founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools.
Background
Jean-Baptiste de La Salle was born on April 30, 1651, in Reims, to a wealthy family. He was the oldest child of Louis de La Salle and Nicolle de Moet de Brouillet. His parents were very involved in the moral and intellectual development of their child.
Education
After due preparation, Jean-Baptiste was sent to the College des Bons Enfants, where he pursed higher studies. On July 10, 1669, he received a Master of Arts degree.
Career
His father hoped that Jean-Baptiste would maintain the family tradition and undertake the profession of law, but young de La Salle insisted that he was called to serve the Church, and accordingly, he received the tonsure on March, 11, 1662, and was solemnly installed as a canon.
He was ordained to the priesthood at the age of 27. Two years later, he received a doctorate in theology. He would later leave his position as canon priest and found a religious community devoted to teaching, distributing his fortune to the poor during a harsh winter.
During his work as a priest, he increasingly became involved with helping the common people. One way in which this desire to help the common man manifested itself was his involvement with a group of poor and relatively uneducated men, who wished to help with the teaching of poor boys. This involvement began when, in March of 1679, he met Adrien Nyel, a committed educator of the poor who provided them with many services. This man quickly convinced La Salle to help him with his mission. His involvement increased until he eventually became the leader of the project. De La Salle was impressed by the deplorable conditions in which these impoverished people lived.
De La Salle became involved in education little by little, without ever consciously setting out to do so. What began as a charitable effort to help Nyel organize a group of marginally competent teachers in La Salle's hometown gradually became his life's work.
He renounced both his wealth and his position of canon at the local church. He thought that not having these material possessions would make him better able to connect with his students. He soon abandoned his family home and moved in with the teachers. This educational venture led to the founding, in 1680, of a new order, the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, also known as the De La Salle Christian Brothers, and, especially in the United States, the Christian Brothers. His new order met with a great deal of resistance from local authorities, as well as from other, more established educational institutions. The Catholic Church initially rejected the creation of a new order, and other schools resented the methods that he used: new forms of teaching, and free education for all.
De la Salle also created a new boarding college at Saint-Yon, wherein he inaugurated the system of modern secondary instruction. Saint-Yon became the type of all such colleges, and that of Passy, Paris, became the modern exemplar of similar institutions in France and elsewhere.
Another educational innovation of de La Salles' was the transformation of the concept of Sunday school to the Christian Academy for adults in the parish of Saint-Sulpice, which he founded in 1699. It had a different character, the first of its kind in the history of education. The program of this academy included not only the ordinary branches taught in the other Sunday schools, but it added geometry, architecture, and drawing.
The last years of de La Salle were spent in close retirement at Saint-Yon. There he revised his educational rules before giving them to Brother Barthélemy, the first superior general of the Christian Brothers. During the last days of his life he showed the same spirit of sacrifice that had marked his earlier years.
Jean-Baptiste de La Salle died on April 7, 1719.
Views
Quotations:
Teachers who are not actively involved in the learning process themselves, force their students to drink from stagnant water.
Learning without piety produces a proud device; piety without learning produces a useless one.
Hold prayer in high esteem. It is the foundation of all the virtues, and the source of all grace needed to sanctify ourselves and to discharge the duties of our employment.