281. Foundations of the Institute.—The Institute of the Brethren was founded in 1684, but it was not sanctioned by pontifical authority and royal power till forty years later, in 1724.
We shall not recite at full length the vicissitudes of the first years of the Institute. We simply state that La Salle inaugurated his work by offering hospitality in his own house to several poor teachers. In 1679 he opened at Reims a school for boys. In 1684 he imposed on his disciples vows of stability and obedience, and prescribed their costume. In 1688 he went to Paris in order to found schools there, and it was here in particular, as he himself says, that “he saw himself persecuted by the men from whom he expected help.” In spite of all these difficulties his enterprise prospered, and when he died, in 1720, the Institute of the Brethren already counted a large number of establishments for primary instruction.
282. The Idea of Normal Schools.—We know how the teaching force was then recruited. In Paris, if we may believe Pourchot, the chief precentor, Claude Joly, was obliged to employ, for the direction of schools, old-clothes-men, innkeepers, cooks, masons, wig-makers, puppet-players—the list might be continued. In 1682 Marie Moreau, a teacher, was sent by Bossuet to keep the school at Ferté-Gaucher. The rector of the place, in his capacity as tutor (écolâtre), wishing to ascertain her competence, subjected her to an examination, of which the following is an account:—
“1. He asked her if she could read, and she replied that she read passably well, but not well enough to teach.
“2. He gave her a pen to mend, and she declared that she could not do it.
“3. He handed her a Latin book and requested her to read it, but she was prevented from making the attempt by sister Remy, who had just prevented her from exhibiting her writing.”[160]
Ignorance, and often moral unfitness, was the general character of the teachers of that period. They often entered upon their duties without the least preparation. La Salle had too great an anxiety for the good condition of his schools to accept improvised teachers. So in 1685 he opened at Reims, under the name of Seminary for Schoolmasters, a real normal school, in which teachers were to be trained for the rural districts. Only Démia had preceded him in this work. Later he founded an establishment of the same kind in Paris, and—a thing worthy of note—he annexed to this normal school a primary school, in which the teaching was done by the students in training under the direction of an experienced teacher.
In the third part of his Conduct of Schools La Salle has drawn up the rules for what he calls the training of new masters. Here are the faults that he notices in young teachers:—
1. An itching to talk; 2. too great activity, which degenerates into petulance; 3. indifference; 4. preoccupation and embarrassment; 5. harshness; 6. spite; 7. partiality; 8. slowness and negligence; 9. pusillanimity and lack of force; 10. despondency and fretfulness; 11. familiarity and trifling; 12. distractions and loss of time; 13. fickleness; 14. giddiness; 15. exclusiveness; 16. lack of attention to the different characters and dispositions of children.
283. The Idea of Gratuitous and Obligatory Instruction.—The Institute of the Brethren of the Christian Schools, say the statutes of the order in so many words, is a society whose members make a profession to conduct schools gratuitously. “La Salle thought only of the children of artisans and of the poor, who, he said, being occupied during the whole day in earning their own livelihood and that of their families, could not give their children the instruction they need, and a respectable and Christian education.” In 1694, the founder of the Institute and his first twelve disciples went and kneeled at the foot of the altar, and pledged themselves to “conduct collectively and through organized effort schools of gratuitous instruction, even when, in order to do this, they might be obliged to ask alms and to live on bread alone.”