A bit of history

A bit of history: going out to the peripheries

Going where society would not go…

Creative solutions emerge, inspired

by the Spirit..

Rich people have their own teachers,

and in the main towns, there are schools, either of the State or of the La Salle Brothers.

.

The crucial problem is found in the small villages lost in the French countryside.

Jean-Marie de la Mennais is training a few young men to send them as teachers in the small villages that can afford only one teacher.

« This little brother living in a village, this free man, dead to himself, voluntarily poor, dedicating his whole life to an obscure and tedious work…"

Before the French Revolution, we could see elementary schools almost everywhere…

But they have all disappeared!

"Doing everything for all people, the Brothers of Christian Instruction (the Mennaisian brothers) have arrived here some 60 years ago, establishing Christian schools in the smallest parishes of Brittany, and under the protection of the priests, have tried to educate and evangelize the humblest and most in need portion of Jesus’ fold.”

(Rule of 1876, p. 10)

As a whole, today’s youth present characteristics of idleness and instability.

"The children

are hungry and there is nobody to give them

bread."

Without resources in the municipalities: no classrooms, and impossible to pay the salaries...

To go where the established Church would not go.

Without well-prepared teachers: we can easily find temporary teachers or adventurers ready to sell their small knowledge for a piece of bread… or a cup of wine…

We can even find stranger things: former State prisoners…

One problem is solved but a gap is opened

in the souls :

he cannot go where the others have not been yet.

The experience

of Pordic will not be possible in the hundreds of villages in Brittany.

To follow up the Gospel demands already accepted, to make a more articulated response, nothing is better that a school. Pordic needs a Teacher.

We cannot ask for La Salle Brothers, because their Rule does not allow them to be less than three brothers.

I turned to Fr. Deshayes. He found a teacher and the school will open in the first months of 1818."

"Pordic is a small village of Saint Brieuc. A mission was preached there and we could find many simple and generous people…

The time of the (foreign) missions will be

our second stage.

And even nowadays, history goes on ...

Born to go to the borders/peripheries.