“Being with” or Salesian Assistance in the Digital Age

Abstract

St. John Bosco demonstrated his teaching method most clearly in a letter from Rome in 1884, in which he established the loving presence of the educator as the foundation of Salesian pedagogy. In the long and varied pedagogical practice of the Salesians, the so-called assistance played an essential role in the visibility of a specific educational model. In a modern society of individualism, assistance is often understood as control. In this context, the emphasis on freedom of conscience makes it particularly difficult to find a presence that wants to share and transmit Christianity. In this article, we highlight the difficulties that such an understanding poses for the entire field of education today. Especially in the age of digitalization, when young people are increasingly chained to their electronic devices and less and less capable of having genuine relationships, this loving presence of which Don Bosco writes is all the more necessary. Using the concrete example of a Salesian educational institution, we show that such a pedagogical orientation is not only an option, but that assistance with the traits of Christianity in practice can be effectively used to work with young people even in the digital age.

Keywords

• assistance
• Salesian education
• St. John Bosco
• digital
• religious education
• Letter from Rome