St. John Baptist De La Salle and the Christian Brothers

St. John Baptist De La Salle, founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, educational reformer, and father of modern pedagogy, was born in Rheims, France, April 30, 1651. Although his father hoped that he might select law as his profession, young De La Salle felt himself called to the priesthood. He began his clerical training in 1662 and five years later he was installed as a canon in the Cathedral of Rheims.

When De La Salle completed his classical, literary and philosophical course of studies, he was sent to Paris in 1670 to enter the Seminary of Saint Sulpice. He was ordained to the priesthood in April of 1678. Two years later he received his Doctorate in Theology.

With this background, it is not surprising that De La Salle should become interested in the education of youth. Soon after his ordination, he was asked to direct a teaching sisterhood. Later he helped to establish a free school for boys in Rheims. When he found that the schoolmasters there were becoming discouraged because of lack of guidance, he took them into his own home, fed and clothed them, and undertook to direct and instruct them.

In order better to devote himself to his new work, he resigned his canonry, gave his fortune to the poor and began to live in the community with the men he was directing. Gradually he molded the group, known in the Church today as the Brothers of the Christian Schools.

While De La Salle's main contribution to education is in the establishing of a religious congregation of Brothers whose sole ministry is education, he is the founder of popular education for all. He is credited with having inaugurated instruction in the language of the people (rather than in Latin), the simultaneous method (versus individual instruction), gratuitous (free) schools, and the first training center for teachers.

John Baptist De La Salle, worn out by his arduous labors in the cause of Christian education, died on Good Friday, April 7, 1719. POPE LEO XIII canonized him on May 15, 1900.

St. John Baptist De La Salle lives on today in more than 80 countries where the Christian Brothers and lay persons, dedicated to Lasallian ideals conduct more than 1500 schools. Pope Pius XII, in 1950, recognized De La Salle's contribution to Christian education, by proclaiming him the Patron of All Teachers.

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