As Marcellin would

have us teach
Foundations of a Pedagogy for Marist Educators
Michael Green FMS

This article presents love of young people inspired by God and expressed through family style
relationships as the motivating, instinctive and primary influence for Marist educators in their search
for appropriate pedagogy. This instinct or fundamental attitude leads to a preference for active presence
in the lives of students, ease of relationships, simplicity of method and style, a spirit of innovation and
openness to new ideas of worth, nurturing the craft of teaching, a pervasive belief in the goodness and
possibilities of each student, and an abiding awareness of the presence and action of God.

Is there a Marist pedagogy?

What insights of any relevance would a nineteenth
century priest from the back country of southern
France have to contribute to a discussion of
contemporary pedagogy? What would someone who
struggled with his own education, never mastered the
elegant exactness of the French language, did not
attend university or complete any teacher training, and
was only ever concerned with elementary schools in
small towns and villages, be able to say to us highly
trained, competent people who are faced with teaching
modern day adolescents in a world revolutionised by
technology and fractured by post-modernism?
A great deal.
Some might contest that there is, indeed, a
distinctively Marist pedagogy. They could point to
Marcellin himself:
when he gathered his first
followers around him, he engaged a former Brother of
the Christian Schools to instruct them in the teaching
method of Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, using the manual
La Conduite des coles Chrtiennes. Right from the
start, Marcellin required his Brothers to teach
according to the scheme of someone else. And La
Conduite itself drew heavily from other French
pedagogical traditions. Over the next twenty-three
years, as Marcellin and his Brothers reflected on their
practice and developed their customs, they borrowed
even further from the writings and educational trends
of the day. When these various strands and considered
experience were eventually codified in 1852 in

La Guide des coles (later to appear in English as The

Teachers Guide), they represented a good practical
guide for the conduct of French primary schools by
teaching brothers, but included little that was
apparently original from a pedagogical point of view.

A new approach to teaching

Marcellins originality was not primarily in his
pedagogy. Teaching method, or curriculum, were not
his starting points; it was not about these that he
sought to offer an alternative view. His original
contribution was in the style of relationship he
encouraged between teacher and student. It was a
relationship premised on love and expressed in a style
which Marcellin called family spirit. A particular
pedagogical style did indeed develop from this, since a

distinctive environment for the teaching and learning

process was an obvious consequence of this attitude of
the early Marist teachers towards their students. It
would be a misunderstanding of Marcellins approach,
nonetheless, to go directly to something like La Guide
to look for the elements of Marist pedagogical
practice. These only makes sense when viewed with a
prior appreciation of Marcellins motivation the
love he had for young people and his consequent
passion to form them as good Christians and citizens.
To bring up children well, we must have an ardent love of
Jesus Christ. That is the lesson Jesus wanted to teach us
when he asked Peter three times whether he loved him
before giving him the responsibility of looking after his
Church.
Humility is your hallmark, and ought to be your chosen
virtue. Love is humble and does not swell with pride.
Gentleness should be your constant quality as teachers and
should accompany all your virtues so that you can win the
hearts of the children. Love is gentle, kindly and
compassionate.
You need patience to bear with the shortcomings of your
students. Love is patient and puts up with everything,
never taking offence or becoming embittered.
Prudence and wisdom are indispensable virtues in those
who must guide others and educate children. Love is
neither rash nor hasty, and never fails to act with
considerateness.
You need at all times to be kind, polite, affable in dealing
with the young and with everyone else. Love is not
scornful, it is completely tolerant and becomes inured to
everything.
There is need of a great spirit of disinterestedness, of zeal,
of generosity and of self-denial since you are to spend your
time in the midst of children. Love is generous; it doesnt
seek its own interests.
The [teacher] who truly loves Jesus is, therefore, someone
who is humble, gentle, compassionate, patient, prudent,
generous, firm, zealous and polite all the virtues, and
love which unites them.

Marcellin seems to have drawn from two rich Pauline

texts (1 Cor.13:1-9; Col.3:12-17) to present a practical
yet rich approach to the teaching of young people.
Like the Founder, modern day Marist educators are
challenged first to love their students and be willing to
relate with them as their older brothers and sisters.
Only with that disposition can they search out and
judge the best and most appropriate pedagogical
approaches.
Love of students expressed through family-style
relationships is not a phrase to augment decorativelyframed school mission statements as a platitudinous
caveat or something to quote solemnly in dust-covered
staff handbooks. It is fundamental. Whatever skills a
teacher may bring to a lesson, whatever knowledge
and ability to communicate or engage students,
without love it was not the kind of education Marcellin
envisaged. Love defined Marcellins approach to
young people and the schools he established for them.
Anything else he had to offer about teaching and
learning needs to be seen in this context. It was a
novel approach in its day. Developed at a time when

village school-houses were more often as not cruel and

brutal places for students, it had a freshness and
attractiveness that quickly won the minds and hearts of
the students.
Napoleon had wanted a military
precision about French primary education, but
Marcellin presented the family rather than the army as
the model of the good school:
The spirit in our schools should be a family spirit. Now,
in a good home its is a feeling of respect, love and mutual
trust which prevails, and not fear of punishments. Anger,
brutality and harshness are evil attitudes which destroy the
fruits of the good principles imparted to the young person;
and just as the cockle chokes the good grain, so does cruel
or unjust treatment stifle all fine sentiments which
instruction and good example have enkindled in the heart
of the young person.

So, what was love of young people for Marcellin?

The key is in his understanding of the place of
relationship. First, you must love them, he said.
But before you can love students, you must know them.
One of Charles Schultzs more famous Peanuts
cartoons has Charlie Brown stating: I love mankind.
Its people I cant stand. For Marcellin, love of
students was not a cerebral assent to their goodness.
It was, rather, something that expressed itself by
physical immersion in their lives: real relationships
with real people.
If we are to do these things, we must be teachers. We
must live in the midst of young people, and we must have
them with us over a long period.

From Marcellins starting point, a distinctive

pedagogical style did emerge, one which continues to
influence the approaches and instincts of
contemporary Marist educators. Although he and
those who have followed him have adopted many
teaching approaches, as appropriate from their own
times and places, they have given them a particular
edge and flavour. Sometimes this has been in contrast
to the method that they ostensibly adopted. For
example, even though the first Marists taught officially
according to the de la Salle manual, early
commentators observed that they departed from
significant aspects of it. In practice, for instance, they
paid scant regard to the first quality of the
schoolmaster required by de la Salle that of
seriousness and remove from the pupils. In the
same breadth as writing about family spirit,
Champagnat urged his first Brothers to engender
keenness and happiness in the learning of their
students.
Keenness is hardly surprising; but
happiness? And since he told the Brothers that their
pupils would be copies of their teachers, he
encouraged them to model the same qualities of
keenness and happiness.

Seven foundations for a Marist pedagogy

This edge or particular style can be described in a

number of ways. The following seven characteristics
of Marist pedagogical style represent one way of
expressing the foundational qualities or instincts with
which Marist educators approach the teaching and
learning process, and their choice of pedagogy.
First, the twin qualities of presence and good
example underpin any authentically Marist approach.
The physical presence and accompaniment by a
teacher with students are indispensable, even if not the
most efficient or economical way of conducting a
school. For Marcellin, this instinct made the choice
between the two chief pedagogical approaches of his
day a straightforward one: he rejected most aspects of
the officially-sanctioned mthode mutuelle because it
distanced the teacher from a personal relationship with
the teacher. The mthode simultane, although it
required more staff, allowed a teacher direct contact,
and therefore personal influence. Ever the pragmatist
on the lookout for good ideas, Marcellin did include
several elements of la mthode mutuelle in which he
saw some benefit, but not at the expense of personal
contact.
The debate between these two methods is not one faced
by todays teachers; it belongs to another period of
history and another culture. What remains relevant to
the modern day Marist educator is the underlying
instinct, for it is this same instinct that can be brought
to judge contemporary questions of pedagogy. How,
for example, should the enormous advances in
information technology be incorporated into the
modern Marist school? What is of benefit and use in
this revolution, and what about it threatens the
personal contact between teacher and student?
A second foundational quality of Marist pedagogy is
the ease of relationship between the teacher and the
student. It is an ease, however, never confused with
absence of respect. Whereas a certain informality of
relationship may characterise interactions inside and
outside the classroom, Marcellin warns:
To educate young people, the teacher must have a claim on
their respect and obedience. The claims that young people
recognise and respect best are good example, professional
skill, compassion, and the brotherly [and sisterly] feelings
displayed towards them.

A classroom marked by these qualities would be one

conducive to a way of teaching and learning that is
free and open, but industrious and purposeful.
Third, Marist educators have an instinctive preference
for simplicity. At the level of instruction, the best
Marist teacher like all good teachers is someone
who can instruct in simple ways, bringing the students
along in ways they can easily follow. At the level of
personal style and relationship, it is represents an
absence of duplicity, of game-playing, of cynicism or
sarcasm as methods of control or incentive.

An eagerness to search continually for new and more

effective methods is a fourth characteristic of a Marist
educators approach. Take all the means that an
industrious zeal can think of, urged Marcellin. For
him, it meant an active search and considered
evaluation of all educational developments and
opinions to which he had access. For example, he
required the adoption of a new method for the teaching
of reading, and this against the wishes of the older and
more experienced Brothers who preferred their
established ways and were suspicious of new ideas.
This identification of current best practice, this
seeking out of new ideas that best suit the times and
the students, means a basic disposition towards
innovation and an openness to change. Thus the
features of Marist pedagogy may not be identified so
much as Marist per se, as much as cutting edge and
innovative.
Each of the preceding four characteristics leads easily
to the fifth: a recognition of the importance of the craft
of teaching. In an age where teacher education and
university style preparation has favour over teacher
training it is well to recall the emphasis that
Marcellin Champagnat placed on the skills that he
wanted his first teachers to have. A great deal of value
was placed by Marcellin on the ability of a teacher to
master the skills of the classroom practitioner. Year
after year, he would require his Brothers to return to
lHermitage during the summer to improve their
skills, learning from each other and demonstrating
their abilities in what might today be called rigorous
peer appraisal. It was not sufficient to know the
theory: he wanted his teachers to demonstrate their
competence in the classroom. He had no time for
indiscipline, either personal or institutional. A calm
and tranquil school was a sign to Marcellin that
purposeful endeavour was in progress. In their search
for good pedagogy, contemporary Marist educators
also are suspicious of worthy ideas that neglect
practical ways to put them into action. Skills and
techniques that can be used to enthuse, to retain
attention and include the whole class, to question, to
use humour, to make learning interesting and relevant,
to use resources, to inspire learning and achievement,
and to attend to the needs of all are all as important as
they theories that lie behind them.
Recalling her own girlhood experience of Father
Champagnat as a teacher of catechism, one woman
remembered particularly how he made us feel very
proud of ourselves. A sixth foundational quality of
Marist pedagogy is an attitude towards the young that
believes in them, and fosters their self-esteem and selfconfidence. It is founded on a belief in their inherent
worth as Gods sons and daughters, and the possibility
of their growth and ability to learn. For Marcellin, all
young people, even the most needy and demanding of
students indeed these most especially were
called to goodness, and all capable of attaining it. The
confidence and trust he placed in his first teenaged
Brothers illiterate, unrefined, peasant lads

attests to this most powerfully. How unlikely were they

as choices to be the founding members of a
congregation of teaching religious!
It is not
surprising, therefore, that the use of rewards and
encouragement were so strongly recommended by
Marcellin as normal classroom practice.
Finally, Marist pedagogical practice is founded on an
abiding awareness of the presence of God. Much of
the foregoing discussion reflects a Marial disposition
simplicity, compassion, openness, confidence and
optimism and this seventh quality even more so.
To be effective as a teacher, according to Marcellin, a
person first of all had to be acting out of a love of
Jesus. Such would be the fruit of that persons own
awareness of the loving presence of God in his or her
life. Second, he urged his teachers to pray for their
students and with their students. Classroom and
school prayer, especially that done joyfully through
hymn-singing, were not tack-on extras for Marcellin,
nor religious window dressing. He had a profound
faith in the efficacy of prayer. The importance he
placed on singing, part of the daily schedule of all
classes, may at first glance be somewhat surprising.
But is there a more telling sign of the happiness of the
heart? And Champagnat was an astute judge of the
human heart.

Conclusion
So we might imagine Marcellins telling us as we
consider our approach to our classroom practice: Seek
out the very best methods and look for the most
insightful research into the teaching/learning process,
and put these to the best use you can. But first you

must love each of your students. And if you love them,

you will believe in their goodness and the possibility
that each of them can learn. Therefore, you will hold
out high expectations for each of them, and do so with
confidence and firmness. But you must be also gentle
and patient with them; you must try to walk in their
shoes and see with their eyes. You must respect them
and spend time with them: they are Gods precious
gift entrusted to you, even the most trying of them.
Only with this starting point, can you begin to teach
them.

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