PDF – DB Study Guide – March 2012 As we enter into Lent, this issue of the Don Bosco Study Guide will look at Don Bosco’s religiosity and his pivotal understanding of the last things, death, evil, and sin.
It is difficult to confine a study of Don Bosco’s educational system to a few topics. The approach to this subject can be quite varied, from a historical analysis, a research into the historical, cultural, and religious influences which shaped the man and his pedagogy to applications of that pedagogy in many contexts of the world of education in our own time.
Every one of these approaches has their value, but this study will focus upon the study of Don Bosco’s ultimate purpose for his educational system, its desired “point of arrival,” if you will. By looking carefully at those endpoints of his method, it is hoped that a clearer insight might be gained in his overall purpose. The task of this study has been an interesting one uncovering many details with implications for education in today’s contexts. Yet it is curious that these same goals are most often avoided, if not deliberately shunned, in the task of education.