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 INSTITUTE

57

INSTITUTE

present time numlier twelve. He delegates authority to the visitors, to whom he confides the government of districts, and to directors, whom he places in charge of individual houses. With the exception of that of superior general, all the offices are temporary and re- newable. The general chapters are convoked at least every ten years. Thirty-two have been held since the foundation of the congregation. The vitality of an institute depends on the training of its members. God alone is the author of vocations. He alone can attract a soul to a life of self-denial such as that of the Brothers. The mortification this life enjoins is not rigorous, but renouncement of self-will and of the frivolities of the world should gradually become com- plete. The usual age for admission to the novitiate of the society is from sixteen to eighteen years. Doubt- less there are later vocations that are excellent, and there are earlier ones that develop the most lieautiful virtues. If the aspirant presents himself at the age of thirteen or foiu'tecn, he is placed in the preparatory or junior novitiate. During two or three years he devotes himself to study, is carefully trained to the habits of piety, and instructed how to overcome liim- self, so as one day to become a fervent religious.

The novitiate proper is for yoimg men who have passed through the junior novitiate, and for postu- lants who have come directly from the world. During a whole year they have no other occupation than that of studying the rules of the institute and applying themselves to observe them faithfully. At the end of their first year of probation, the young Brothers enter the scholasticate, where they spend more or less time according to the nature of the duties to be assigned to them. As a rule, each of the districts of the institute has its three departments of training: the junior novi- tiate, the senior novitiate, and the scholasticate. In community, subjects complete their professional training and apply themselves to acquire the virtues of their state. At eighteen years of age, they take annual vows; at twenty-three, triennial vows; and when fully twenty-eight years of age, they may be admitted to per- petual profession. Finally, some years later, they may be called for some months to the exercises of a second novitiate. Methods of Teaching. — In enjoining on his disciples to en- deavour above all to develop the spirit of religion in the souls of their pupils, the founder only followed the traditions of other teaching bodies — the Benedictines, Jesuits, Orator- ians,etc. , and what was practisedeven by the teachers of the petites (coles. His originality lay elsewhere. Two pedagogic inno- vations of St. John Baptist de La Salle met with approval from the beginning: ( 1 ) the employment of the "simultaneous method"; (2) the emoloyment of the vernacular language in teaching reading. They
 * ire set forth in the "Conduite des 6coles", in which

the founder condensed the experience he had acquired during an apostolate of forty years. This work re- mained in manuscript during the life of its author, and was printed for the first time at ,wignon in 1720.

BR<JTHEn P.\TRICK

Who took a prominent part in the de- velopment of the Institute in the United States

Brother Philippe

Superior (ieneral of the Brothers of the

Christian Schools— lS;3S-74

(1) By the use of the simultaneous method a large number of children of the same intellectual develop- ment could thenceforward be taught together. It is true that for ages this method had been employed in the universities, but in the common schools the individual method was ad- hered to. Practic- able enough when the number of pupils was very limited, the indi- vidual method gave rise, in classes that were numer- ous, to loss of time and disorder. Mon- itors became nec- essary, and these had often neither learning nor au- thority. With limitations that re- stricted its efficacy, St. Peter Fourier had indeed recom- mended the simul- taneous method in the schools of the Congregation de Notre-Dame, but it never extended further. To St. John Baptist de La Salle belongs the honour of liaving transformed the pedagogy of the ele- mentary school. He required all liis teachers to give the same lesson to all the pupils of a class, to question them constantly, to maintain discipline, and have silence ob- served. A consequence of this new method of teaching was the dividing up of the children into distinct classes according to their attaiimients, and later on, the for- mation of sections in classes in which the children were too numerous or too unequal in mental development. Thanks to these means, the progress of the children and their moral transformation commanded the ad- miration even of liis most prejudiced adversaries.

(2) A second innovation of the holy founder was to teach the pupils to read the vernacular language, which they understood, before putting into their hands a Latin book, which they did not understand. It may be observed that this was a very simple matter, but simple as it was, hardly any educator, except the masters of the schools of Portr-Royal in 1643, had be- thought himself of it; besides, the experiments of the Port-Royal masters, like their schools, were short- lived, and exercised no influence on general pedagogy. In addition to these two great principles, the Brof hers of the Christian Schools have introduced other im- provements in teaching. They likewise availed themselves of what is rational in the progress of mod- ern methods of teaching, which their courses of ped- agogy, published in France, Belgium, and Austria, abundantly prove.

The Eighteenth Century. — ki the death of its founder, the Brothers of the Christian Schools luim- bered 27 houses and 274 Brothers, educating !K100 pupils. Seventy-three years later, at the time of the French Revolution, the statistics showed 12:> houses, 920 Brothers, and .36,000 pupils (statistics of 1790). During this period, it had been governed by five supe- riors general: Brother Barthelemy (1717-20); Brother Timoth^e (1720-51); Brother Claude (17.'>l-ri7); Brother Florence (1767-77); and Brother Agathon (1777-9S, when he died). Under the administration of Brother Timoth^e successful negotiations resulted in the legal recognition of the institute by Louis XV, who granted it letters patent, 24 September, 1724; and in virtue of the Bidl of approbation of Benedict XIII, 26 January, 1 725, it was admitted among the congrega-