(ANS – Rome) – The second year of preparation for the Bicentenary of Don Bosco's birth and Strenna 2013 are dedicated to Salesian pedagogy which has always been based on the famous Preventive System. A short video produced by Missioni Don Bosco presents this latter in a simple and pleasing way; how it came about and how it is applied.

Asked any number of times to write something about his approach to education, Don Bosco used always joke about it: it was not easy to put a lifetime's experience down in writing. The handful of pages on the Preventive System are a condensed form of pedagogical wisdom which is the result of the education he received and then offered to hundreds of boys; small rules and indications which then became pedagogical criteria.

A hundred and fifty years later the Preventive System keeps intact the style, relevance and systematic approach of a method that Don Bosco did not invent by sitting down at his desk: his desk was Turin's streets, young workers, the prison cells he visited, and the fields around Valdocco.

Missioni Don Bosco's video is called “Don Bosco: only love can educate. Don Bosco's Preventive System”. The video, already distributed, is also available through webTV on sdb.org in English and German.

Published 22/02/2013