Considerations for Christian Teachers

This is a photographic reprint of the original. In these pages, destined for the spiritual welfare of Catholic teachers, one finds the pure spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as applied to the guidance of youth. The traditional principles and practice of Catholic pedagogy, together with the substance of Catholic truth, enrich greatly these meditations of the teacher on his daily work, and make them a kind of Bible of religious instruction. Every page is enlivened, with the rare wisdom of Saint John Baptist de la Salle, and borrows from his experience, insight and sanctity, a marvelous charm and power. Catholic teaching is skilfully disseminated through the entire work, so that, by its use the teacher finds in his quiet, devotional hour at once the matter and the method, the purpose and the spirit, of the labors which await him in the school-room. Compiled from the holiest sources, and saturated with the traditions and the skill of two centuries of world-wide educational practice, this book is well fitted to be a vade-mecum, not alone of the children of Saint De la Salle, but of all Catholic teachers. Our teaching sisterhoods in particular will find it most helpful, replete with true wisdom, and with genuine insight into the nature and mentality of children and youth, so attractive at once, and so difficult to master and direct. Would that many parents could be induced to read this work, and to make it known within the circle of their influence, domestic or personal. It is, indeed, a mirror of the teaching which the Christian Brothers offer to the children of our Catholic people. In it will be found a happy blending of the natural and the supernatural, of religion and knowledge, of the true values of the present life and the infinite joys of the life celestial. The anonymous author, though understood to be one of the most distinguished teachers of this famous community, has abundantly interspersed his pages with a Christian philosophy of teaching, so that it is difficult to separate the religious element from the professional, the solid content of doctrine from the art of the teacher. These "Considerations" deserve the widest recognition and are quite worthy the attention of all Catholic teachers; men and women, religious and secular. Compared with their wordy and feeble counterparts in our modern literature of pedagogy, they are indeed strong meat. They aim at enthroning Jesus Christ securely, first in the hearts of Catholic teachers, and then in the hearts of their countless pupils. In their American guise they cannot fail to exercise a wide and beneficent influence.