St. John Baptist De La Salle (1651-1719)

“Head of a leading Rheims family, he recruited  a group of poor teachers, inspiring them  wih his saintly example to a high sense of social calling, and through them extended the benefits of an education to all classes, particularly the least privileged.He founded a fellowship of Brothers which today  still bears his name and seeks to perpetrate his ideals of brotherhood   and of service to youth.”

-Francis Brown “La Salle Brothers: Malaya and Singapore 1852-1952” 

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•       He was born into an aristocratic family in 1651 during the troubled times which led to the French Revolution (1789).
• ·         Education during his time was open only to the children of the nobility and wealthier bourgeois (middle class).
• ·         Only one in 59 children aged (16-18) were in school  at that time.     JB de La Salle was determined to help change all that.
• ·         Although an aristocrat by birth and ordained as a priest destined for high office in the church, he felt deeply for the children who  were deprived of formal schooling.
• ·         The eldest son of his family, he began to devote all his wealth towards starting schools for poor children .In the process,he faced stern conflict with his siblings who disapproved of his ideas.
• ·         He started the first band of teachers who cared for the “last,the lost and the least”. Ultimately, this move led to the formation of the  teaching fraternity known worldwide today as the Brothers of De La Salle. 
• ·         He revolutionised teaching and the curriculum. 
• ·         To JB de La Salle and to all of us at St Michael’s ,teaching  is a very special profession and it calls for a very special kind of person.

·         Education is not just about  “knowing more” and “having more” ;it is  about BEING MORE.

A Quote from St  JB De La Salle:

“They who instruct many unto justice shall shine like stars for all eternity.”