THE PREVENTIVE SYSTEM APPLIED TO YOUNG
PEOPLE AT RISK
CRITICAL EDITION: P. BRAIDO - TRANSLATION & NOTES: P. LAWS
INTRODUCTION
Don Bosco was in
Don Bosco was also seeking an opportunity to open a house in
We have another treatment by Bosco of his system, of a more general nature. The
interest in the present one derives from its specific application to the
correction of young offenders.
It also illustrates Don Bosco's capacity for sober but
accurate social analysis.
TEXT
The Preventive System In The
Education Of The Young
There
are two systems used in the moral and civic education of youth: repressive and
preventive. One and the other are applicable in society generally, and in
houses of education. We will give a brief general outline of the preventive
system as it applies in society generally, then how it can be used in places of
detention, in colleges, in hostels, and in boarding schools
The Preventive and Repressive Systems In Society at Large
The
preventive system consists in making known the laws and the penalties they
establish. Then the authorities must be vigilant to discover and punish
offenders. This is the system used in the army and in general among adults. But
young people who are uninstructed, unreflective, urged
on by companions or recklessness, often blindly permit themselves to be dragged
into wrongdoing for the sole reason that they are left to themselves.
Whilst
the law should look out for offenders, a great deal of effort should also be
put into diminishing their numbers.
Which Young People Can be Said
To be At Risk
I
believe that one can identify the following, not as bad, but as being in danger
of becoming so.
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1: Those who go from cities or other regions in the
State to other cities and regions in search of work. Generally, they have
little money with them, and in a short time, it is spent. If they don't find
work soon, they run into the real danger of getting involved in theft, and of
beginning a way of life that will lead them to ruin. |
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2: Those who have lost their parents, and have no
one to care for them and so are left to become vagabonds and to associate
with criminal elements; while instead, a friendly hand, a loving voice would
have been able to direct them to the path of honourable
living and honest citizenship. |
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3: Those who have parents who cannot, or will not
take care of their children, such that they throw them out of the house, or
abandon them completely. Unfortunately, there are a lot of such unnatural
parents. |
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4: Vagabonds who fall into the hands of the police,
but who are not yet Law-breakers. If these were received into a hostel where
they could be taught, prepared for work, they would certainly be snatched
away from the prisons and restored to society. |
What Should Be Done
Experience
has taught that one can provide efficaciously for these four categories of
children:
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1: With recreation centres
opening on Sundays and holidays. With pleasant recreation, with music, with
physical education, with (the opportunity) to run, jump, declaim, put on
plays, they would readily be gathered together. Then add to that evening
classes, Sunday school with religious instruction, and one is giving to these
poor sons of the people adequate and indispensable moral nourishment. |
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2: When they are so gathered, one must enquire to
discover who is unemployed and take steps to find them work and oversee their
work during the week. |
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3: Beyond that, one comes into contact with those
who are poor and abandoned, and who lack the wherewithal to feed and clothe
themselves, or to find a place to sleep at night. There is only one way of
providing for them: with hostels and safe places which have arts and crafts,
and also by means of agricultural schools. |
Government Intervention
The
Government, without taking on the minutiae of administration, without
interfering with the principle of legitimate (public) charity, could cooperate in
the following ways:
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1: Provide centres for
activities on festive days; help equip the schools and the centres with the necessary equipment. |
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2: Provide locales for hostels,
equip them with the necessary tools for the arts and trades to which the
young people received in them could be put. |
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3: The government would allow freedom in the
enrolment of students, but would pay a daily or monthly subsidy for those,
who having found themselves in the conditions described above, would be
admitted. Their condition would be verified either through government
certification, or through the normal activity of the Police Department, which
very frequently comes across children who are precisely in this condition. |
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4: This daily subsidy would be limited to one-third
of what it would cost to maintain a youth in a state reformatory. Taking as
norm the correctional prisons of the Generala
in |
In this
way the government would help, but leave freedom to the participation of the
private charity of citizens.
Results
On the
basis of thirty-five years' experience, it is possible to establish that:
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1: Many boys coming out of the prisons can readily
be directed towards a trade with which to earn their bread honestly, |
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2: Many who, being in great danger of going out of
control, had begun to make a nuisance of themselves to honest citizens, and
were already causing a deal of trouble to the public authorities, were
plucked out of danger, and were put on the road to becoming honest citizens. |
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3: One can see from our records that not less than
100,000 youths have been cared for, taken in, educated with this system, so
that some learned music, others liberal arts, some an art or craft, and have
become good-living workmen, shop assistants, owners of shops, teachers,
hardworking clerks, and many have gained honourable
rank in the army. Many, endowed by nature with a good intelligence, were able
to take up university courses, graduating in Letters, Mathematics, Medicine,
Law; or becoming engineers, notaries, pharmacists and suchlike. |
