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Marist education |
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Champagnat Education
As baptised Christians we recognise the call to holiness and wholeness that lies at the heart of our vocation. As human beings we are called to the fulness of life through living our lives according to the values of Jesus Christ as expressed in the Gospels. As teachers in a Catholic school we accept that our role is to make Jesus Christ known and loved. Those three statements underpin all that we say and do and are as teachers in a Marist school. The Gospels present a multitude of ways in which we can imitate Jesus Christ, a wealth of values which we can make our own. Our personal response to the Gospel call to holiness and wholeness depends on another large range of factors including our kind of personality: the Four on the Enneagram will respond differently to the Gospel call to someone who is a Nine on the Enneagram. Your Myers-Briggs profile will help determine the values of Jesus which appeal to you. Your family and your education are powerful factors in the kinds of choices you make about Gospel values. And what are the values of the Gospel. My reading of the Gospel is shaped by my personality, my family, my Marist brotherhood, my reading and study and reflection over forty or fifty years. I would choose to highlight the values of forgiveness, justice, service, fidelity, love, and relationship to the Father in prayer. I could base my Gospel values on the image of the Prodigal Father, the Good Shepherd, the Good Samaritan, Jesus as Vine, living water, brother, the one who said “Allow the little children to come to me”. The list goes on and the combinations are endless. From time to time in the Church there arise men and women, gifted by the Holy Spirit with a particular charism, called to address particular needs like nursing or social welfare, teaching, preaching, active apostolates or contemplative lives. Benedict (d.c.550) founded an Order which gave its time and attention to community life, communal praying of the Liturgy, prayerful reflection on the Scriptures, “preferring nothing to Christ”; they are involved in a variety of works including agriculture, hospitality, education, scholarship, and parochial ministry. Whatever they work, they hold to Benedict’s exhortation: “That in all things God should be glorified.” Obedience, in its sense of listening, is the hallmark of the Benedictine charism, the Benedictine way of living the Gopsel call to know Jesus Christ. Francis of Assisi went to Rome in 1209 with a few Gospel statements which were to form the basis of the Franciscan way of life. His followers devoted themselves contemplative prayer, working as day-labourers and preaching, calling all to conversion by word and example. Poverty and simplicity are the hallmarks of theFranciscan charism, the way the followers of Francis understand the Gospel call. Ignatius of Loyola (d 1556) began an Order of priests who were called to an active ministry for “the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine and the propagation of the faith.” Great authority was vested in their Superior General, their recitaion of the liturgical hours was private rather than communal, they took a special vow to go wherever they were sent. Their spirituality was based on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius and emphasised an inward movement of sensitivity to one’s relationship with God manifested in the soul through consolation and desolation. Their apostolate involves a commitment to retreats and spiritual direction, poreaching hearing confessions, as well as improving the physical situation of those in need, establishing orphanages, women’s refuges, other works of social assistance. Their reading of the Gospel centres on absolute - even blind - obedience to the Father’s will, a commitment to the service of the faith and the promotion of justice.” Mary MacKillop was called by the Spirit to address the educational and social needs of children in country areas of Australia. Her Sisters’ way of living the Gospel is characterised by solidarity with the marginalised, having dust on their feet, living amongst the people and a fierce independence. Marcellin Champagnat was also called to address a particular need at a particular time in history and in a particular way. His personal experience of life and his particular upbringing by his family led him to realise that his mission was to “make Jesus Christ known and loved” through the education of poor children in rural France in a society suffering the ravages that followed the French Revolution. He put it this way: “Every time I see a child, I long to teach him his catechism, to make him realise how much Jesus Christ has loved him.” It was this attitude that led him to found our Institute for the Christian education of the young, especially those most in need. (Constitutions of the Marist Brothers 1986 Art.2) He felt himself called to form religious for the Christian education of little country children whom no one bothered about. He saw the mission of the Brother as helping children and young people become good Christians and good citizens. Being a man of faith , he believed that it was prayer above all that influenced the children to become gentle of heart. Good example and constant presence are other elements of Marist pedagogy, which Father Champagnat summarised thus: “To bring up children properly, you must love them.” Father Champagnat was alive with a zeal born of the Gospels and knew how to respond effectively to specific situations. As Marist [educators], animated by the same zeal, we continue the charism of the Founder by responding to the expectations and needs of today’s young people. (Constitutions of the Marist Brothers 1986 Art.81)
Where did all of this start? The French revolution had left education in France in a shambles, especially in country areas and especially amongst the poorer classes. Champagnat’s own formal education was non-existent. By the age of eleven he had not learnt to read well or to write at all. He had grown up speaking the local pâtois, so he could not read formal French, let alone write it. He was encouraged to go to the local school master, but his experience there that day was so disastrous that he refused to return and he set about what looked like his future career as a farmer. That one bad day at school left such a marked impression on him that he was determined that no child should ever suffer such treatment in the name of education, and he became in time an excellent teacher himself able to pass on a very wise pedagogy to his Brothers and so to Marist educators down the years. His own experience of teaching was gained while he was seminarian at home on holidays he would gather the local children and teach them their catechism, but in such an interesting way that they flocked to hear him. The same thing happened when he was curate at La Valla: the children and the adults were only too delighted to come to Father Champagnat to be taught. While his primary concern was the teaching of the catechism, he became increasingly concerned about the poverty of ignorance that these children were suffering, and nowherer was this brought home to him more clearly than in the episode with the Montagne boy, 28 October 1816. It was this that spurred him into action, and within ten weeks he had installed the first two young men as Marist Brothers in a little house in La Valla - and he had to teach them to read and write. But what was the particular style that Champagnat brought to education that we are able to refer to as Marist education? He himself was no theorist, but his early followers werer able to gather a whole lot of material together after his death and in 1853 publish Le Guide d’Ecole, published in English in 1931 as The Teacher’s Guide. The 1853 text tells us that the function of the religious educator should be that of father, magistrate, apostle and soldier; and that the attributes of the religious educator should be a supernatural affection for the pupils and a moral authority strong enough to affect the minds of the puipils and to maintain good order. In addition to these qualities the educator would be possessed of good sense, firmness, affability, piety and professional skill. What followed was basically a way of educating primary school children in the rural area of France in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. In the light of the Second Vatican Council, 1962-5, religious orders were required to return to their founding charism and sources and bring their constitutions and documents into line the world of the late Twentieth Century. We did that with our Constitutions and published them in 1986. Over the last couple of years we have done the same with the Teacher’s Guide and it has been published within the last few months. What I want to say about Marist education from here on is very much dependent on this new document, which is entitled “In the Footsteps of Marcellin Champagnat. A Vision for Marist Education Today”. The document depends for its material on both a reading of our earliest sources and a sound understanding of the modern world that we live in. We are able to present the heart of the Marist vision of education as follows: “Among the young, especially the most neglected, we are sowers of the Good News with a distinctive Marist style.” And so we come to the core of today’s reflections. We live in a world today where there are endless possibilities but also great risks and dangers; there are tensions which we did not know fifty years ago: traditional values have been undermined, secularism rules and technology has exploded around us. We live in a world where there is a rapidly increasing gap between the haves and the have nots, between the rich and the poor. We live in a world where young people are as unchurched as they were in the hamlets and villages of rural France in the early Nineteenth Century, the world of Marcellin Champagnat. But it is a world of great hope: there is a wonderful awareness of human rights, including the rights of children; and the efforts of peacemakers are nothing less than brave and determined. There is a strong move to liberate the poor and the marginalised; and there is a move towards solidarity especially amongst our youth. And yet we see out youth discouraged and disoriented, struggling to cope with learning difficulties, personal disabilities, lack of acceptance by their peers, and experiencing crises of belief. These are young people yearning for spiritual direction and sustenance. For us as teachers, there is a corresponding yearning to touch the children in their needs and respond to them where they are at, to help them discover their potential and to provide the spiritual sustenance they so deeply long for. We feel ourselves called to bring to our students what they desperately need - the compassion and mercy of God. And it is within our very ministry that we are called to address these profound issues. If you and I do not make a difference to our pupils, then no one will. We, then are the sowers of hope, the sowers of the Good News, and we do it in a way which is distinctly Marist. We hear the call that prompted Marcellin Champagnat to say: “I cannot see a child without wanting to teach him catechism, to make him realise how much God loves him.” In our approach to the children we seek to blend together faith, culture and life, transforming the personal life of each individual child whom we encounter. In doing this, we find creative ways
Our work as educators is not just a career; it is a vocation. You and I are called to achieve our own holiness or wholeness through our response to the call God makes of us to be teachers in a Catholic school, and currently in a Marist school. And as teachers in a Marist school, we are called upon to act in a distinctively Marist approach to the Gospel, as do teachers or followers of Benedict, Francis, Ignatius and Mary MacKillop. Following Champagnat, we believe that to bring up children properly we must love them and love them all equally. And from that principle flow the special characteristics which are particulalry Marist: presence, simplicity, family spirit, love of work and following the way of Mary. And it is these characterisics that I want to speak about now.
Presence: Our commitment to Presence calls us to take time and we make time for the children, above and beyond the normal demands of professional contact. We establish relationships with both individuals and groups founded on love, creating an atmosphere in which learning is enjoyable and conducive to personal growth. We immerse ourselves in the lives of the young, knowing their world, meeting them in their own space and culture. In the school ministry we extend our presence through free time, leisure, sports, cultural activities, and whatever other means present themselves, including wasting time with our students. Our presence is neither oppressive nor laissez-faire. We are prudent, firm, respectful and vigilant; we are willing with advice, focussed on their personal growth, but not dominating. We are attentive and welcoming, listening and willing to engage them in dialogue. We aim to earn their trust and encourage their openness. Our relationships are never possessive, but may in time develop into mature friendships that last for many years. The Gospel Jesus was one who immersed himself in the lives of the people of his time and place: he dined with them, he walked among them, he shared their lives, he was at home with a wide range of society from the outcast prostitutes and tax collectors to the well heeled pharisees. And of course his public acceptance of children was quite uncommon in his time: “Allow the little children to come to me” is a cry which has echoed down the centuries, a call which is still being heard by teachers everywhere around the world.
Simplicity: This is very distinctive Marist value. The 1852 Rules of the Brothers proclaimed the virtues of humility, simplicity and modesty as specifically Marist virtues having been handed on to us by Marcelling Champagnat (Last Will and Testament). The 1986 Constitutions expresses the implications of those virtues for today: “They give a quality of authenticity to our relationships with people we meet. We willingly put our lives and our talents at the service of the Church and the world, doing good quietly.” (Art 5) The new Education Document says: “Our simplicity expresses itself primarily through contacts with young people that are genuine and straightforward [fair dinkum], undertaken without pretence or duplicity. This attitude derives from being honest before ourselves and our God.” Being aware of our own limitations and potential we are more likely to be understanding of young people, respecting their dignity and freedom. In our teaching and our organisational structures we incline to simple way of doing things; likewise in our mode of expression we avoid anything that is showy or superficial. In our own lifestyles we adopt simplicity as a precious value and offer it to our young people as away of doing things. In a world distracted by the superficial we help them to value themselves and others for who they are and not for their possessions and fame. Again, the Jesus of the Gospels was one who stood honestly not just before his Father, but also before the people. He had no time for those who trumpeted their good works before all; his favour fell upon the widow who gave her penny to the treasury and the publican who stood at the back of the temple and was embarrassed to be there. He spoke to the people in terms that they could understand - the mustard seed, the lost sheep, the vine and the sparrows.
Family Spirit Father Champagnat’s great wish was that we should relate to each other and to our young people as members of a loving family instinctively do. In his Last Will and Testament he said: “May the same spirit and the same love keep you united as one family.” Hence we aim to build community among all those associated with our various institutions and apostolates, including those who work alongside us, the young and their families. Each person should feel at home with us; a warmth of welcome, acceptance and belonging should pervade our places of work, where everyone has a sense of being valued and believed in regardless of their role or social standing. Our way of relating is to be a brother or sister to them. In the Life we read (p530): “The spirit of the Brothers’ school ought to be the family spirit. Now in a good, well run family, sentiments of respect, love and mutual trust predominate and not fear of punishments. Anger, brutality and harshness are attitudes calculated to destroy the fruits of the good principles imparted to the child.” As in a good family we share life with its successes and failures; we set clear standards of honesty, mutual respect and tolerance; we show them we believe in their goodness, not confusing their persons with their actions when they make mistakes. we are ready to trust, forgive and reconcile. Assembly line production attitudes have no place in our schools; results orientation is not the way we do things. We give preferential attention to those whose need are the greatest, those who are most deprived and those who are going through hard times. Leaders adopt the same values: partnership and shared responsibility are to be the preferred way of doing things. Jesus himself chose to live his public life with a group of men and women who were his apostles and disciples; while he was their teacher he nonetheless shared their bread and fish and wine and while he could not call any home his own, he was at home with this group of men and women with whom he chose to share all he had.
Love of Work One of Marcellin Champagnat’s most distinctive characteristics was sheer hard work as well as total confidence in God. His love of hard physical work was legendary [stories]. But work was never, never a substitute for his complete confidence in God. We are invited to follow his example in being generous of heart and with our time, being constant in our efforts and persevering in spite of difficulties - in our daily work and in our own ongoing formation. In school terms this means careful preparation of lessons and educational activities, thorough correction of assignments, planning and evaluating our programmes, and giving extra time to those in need. We encourage young people to be conscious of the dignity of work, to believe that work can be a powerful means of self-fulfilment, giving purpose and meaning to life and of contributing to the general economic, social and cultural well-being of our society. We acknowledge the tragic reality of unemployment and provide what assistance we can to help young people maintain their dignity and self-esteem. By our own example we hope to help young people develop strong character and resilient will, a balanced moral conscience and solid values on which to base their lives. We help them make good use of their time and talents, to develop a sense of teamwork and of being socially cooperative and sensitive. Jesus was at the beck and call of the people he served. There is a well known episode in the Gospel where Jesus cures Peter’s mother-in-law and the locals keep bringing people to him to be cured. Early next morning he steals away for some quiet time with his Father. Even there he cannot escape: his disciples come to get him - they “pursued” him and told him: “Everyone is looking for you.” he replies: “Let’s go to the next town and preach to them there. For that is why I came.”
In the Way of Mary We regard Mary as the model of Marist educators. Mary as woman, as lay person and as Jesus’ first follower, she inspires both our personal faith and our pedagogical approach. She, like us, had to make a journey in faith, to discover her role in this world and in the scheme of life. She did it with the same struggle and confusion that we do, and with the same journey of faith. She knew the hardships of travel and dispossession and alienation, of embarrassment at her predicament (as single mother and as mother of a rather unconventional son). She was a woman with dust on her feet. She marvelled at God’s greatness; she was disturbed in her journey and in what was asked of her. She reflected on her situation and what God wanted of her. She responded with a generous and whole-hearted Yes, even though she did not have all the information she might have wanted. From the Annunciation to Calvary she walked in darkness but with a confidence in God which has been the admiration and inspiration of Christians for two thousand years. She as mother had the role of educating her son, assisting him to find his own way and purpose in life. She did this with Joseph within a family context which provided the unity and love that is necessary for all growth. As her son came into adolescence she gave him the space he needed to discover and establish his own identity. The loss in the temple provoked misunderstanding, but Mary and Joseph gave the boy their trust and continued to foster his maturity in wisdom, age and grace. Mary invites us in her Magnificat to walk her way of trust and discovery, of solidarity with the poor and the underprivileged; at Cana she invites us to do whatever he tells us; right through her life she continued to say “Let it be done to me as you will”, and she models our response to God in our own lives. Not that she is a passive woman: she took initiatives, she questioned, she reflected, she made choices and decisions. And at Pentecost she joins with the infant Church to discover how to walk the way of God in this world. For us, as for Marcellin Champagnat, Mary is both our model and our Good Mother. In our teaching we encourage our students to love and honour Mary, to follow her tenderness and her maternal strength and her constancy in faith. We believe in Marcellin Champagnat’s approach to Mary” “All to Jesus through Mary.” Mary herself is a model of the true disciple: we find her response to God in every episode where she appears. At the Annunciation she says Yes to God’s will; at the Visitation she spells out in her Magnificat a plan of life which we can well take up as our own - “My soul glorifies the Lord. He who is might has done great things for me. He has put down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” At Calvary she becomes the mother of the Beloved Disciple - who stands for each of us. And after the Ascension she joins the infant Church and with them she struggles to find the best way of keeping Jesus alive in their world. That is why Mary is an ideal model for us as Marist educators. Those five points underpin the Marist understanding of and approach to education. But how are these values lived out in reality, in practice? A Marist school is a centre of learning, of life and of evangelisation; it is a community, and especially a community of faith in which hope and love are communicated. Marist schools are places where faith, culture and life are harmonised. They are places where we strive to make Jesus Christ known and loved. There are many different kinds of Marist schools. You only have to look at the Australian scene to see the variety: city schools and country schools, day schools and boarding schools, well heeled schools and struggling schools, schools with huge ethnic mixes, schools for the severely disadvantaged, primary and secondary schools, schools belonging to the Order, the parish or the government, schools run by lay principals where there is only one Brother: the variety is great. But we all have the same goals and we form a single community of educators: teachers lay and Brothers, non-teaching staff, parents and students, working together to develop an environment where Gospel values and Marist values are held in the highest esteem. We help young people to learn how to learn, to be creative, to live together and to grow as persons. We help our students to acquire learning, to learn how to effectively and to the best of their ability, to develop their intelligence through knowledge of self, of others and of God, and so to grow in values. We invite them to strive to improve and to give their best. We aim to provide an education that is socially and culturally relevant, so we develop programmes, content and methods that represent the best educational and pedagogical thinking available to us. We aim to meet the hopes of students and parents in terms of subject choices, career possibilities and qualifications. We give special attention to the weak and vulnerable students. We employ teaching methods which prefer active to passive learning. We encourage work experience where practicable. We encourage participation and creativity in the learning process and so encourage the student’s self-confidence. We encourage them to work and research together, to communicate effectively with others and to accept responsibility. We help them to make informed decisions, to acquire skills to help them continue to learn throughout their lives, to develop a critical judgement, to appreciate the spiritual aspirations of humanity. We aim to provide a holistic education including environmental awareness, physical and health education, sports activities which promote character formation, teamwork, recognition of personal limits, coping with both failure and success in a mature fashion. We make full and wise use of the modern means of communication - the print media, television, films, information technology. We teach our students to be aware of the potential of the media for both good and ill. We provide the facilities and resources demanded by the pace of economic, technical, scientific and cultural change; but we are also prudent in the demands we put on parents and careful that we do not exclude those in poorer circumstances. The Marist tradition of discipline encourages a calm and orderly environment in which students can study well, and we aim to prevent problems before they occur. Where correction is required we respect the young person’s dignity: corporal punishment, humiliation and excessive severity are to be rejected. We appeal instead to their personal and collective sense of responsibility. We establish throughout our schools structures of pastoral care and guidance programmes - to come to know our students better, provide individual attention, promote their personal development and social skills. We provide counsellors and professional help where required. Our schools are open to students irrespective of religious beliefs as long as their families accept our approach to education. Respectful of personal freedom, we provide a spiritual and moral formation for all, especially in the Gospel values of forgiveness, justice, service, fidelity, love, and relationship to the Father in prayer (that is my list, but I have no doubt that it is consonant with Marist emphases). Our schools are centres of evangelisation. Our religious education programmes are comprehensive and faithful to the Church’s guidelines. In Religious Education classes we concentrate on the students as well as the content. We create a religious environment in our schools: images, daily prayer, sacred spaces. Beyond the classroom we provide additional opportunities for students to experience and develop their faith: retreats, prayer groups, other spiritual experiences; special liturgies at special times throughout the year; apostolic movements (Remar, St VdeP); campus ministry; involvement in the local church; involvement in the local community; involvement with exstudents. We educate in and for solidarity, and we encourage openness to the material, cultural and spiritual needs of our society. We avoid being elitist; we adapt the curriculum to the needs of our students; we try to become agents of change where families and students are suffering exploitation; and we try to identify students who are at risk. We are called to exercise professional and pastoral leadership in our role as educators and participate in in-service to improve our professional competence. Our school administrators are challenged to be people of vision. We play an active role in Catholic education in our country. We take seriously the Church’s invitation to us and our students, on behalf of Jesus Christ, to become a new creation, people of imagination, of commitment and of love. We are prophets of hope in a world crying out for moral leadership. And you will notice that we do not include as an essential part of a Marist style of education knowledge of the story of Champagnat!
Br Tony Butler November 1998_ |