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Simon Smith Kuznets
Simon Smith Kuznets (/kʊzˈnɛts/, /ˈkʌznɛts/; Russian: Семё́н Абра́мович Кузне́ц; IPA: [sʲɪˈmʲɵn ɐbˈraməvʲɪtɕ kʊzʲˈnʲets]; April 30, 1901 – July 8, 1985) was a Russian American economist at Harvard University who won the 1971 Nobel Memorial
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Important personalitiesBack

Saint Jean-Baptiste de La Salle30.4.1651

Wikipedia (21 Mar 2013, 08:33)
Saint Jean-Baptiste de La Salle or John Baptist de La Salle (30 April 1651 – 7 April 1719) was a priest, educational reformer, and founder of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. He is a saint of the Roman Catholic church and the patron saint of teachers.

He dedicated much of his life to the education of poor children in France; in doing so, he started many lasting educational practices. He is considered the founder of the first Catholic schools.


Life and work

Jean Baptiste de la Salle was born to a wealthy family in Rheims, France on April 30, 1651. He was the eldest child of Louis de la Salle and Nicolle de Moet de Brouillet. La Salle received the tonsure at age eleven and was named canon of Rheims Cathedral when he was fifteen. He was sent to the College des Bons Enfants, where he pursued the higher studies and, on July 10, 1669, he took the degree of Master of Arts. When de la Salle had completed his classical, literary, and philosophical courses, he was sent to Paris to enter the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice on October 18, 1670. His mother died on July 19, 1671, and on April 9, 1672, his father died. This circumstance obliged him to leave Saint-Sulpice on April 19, 1672. He was now twenty-one, the head of the family, and as such had the responsibility of educating his four brothers and two sisters. He completed his theological studies and was ordained to the priesthood at the age of 26 on April 9, 1678. Two years later he received a Doctorate in Theology.

De la Salle was a man of refined manners, a cultured mind, and great practical ability, in whom personal prosperity was balanced with kindness and affability. In physical appearance he was of commanding presence, somewhat above the medium height. He had large, penetrating blue eyes and a broad forehead.


Sisters of the Child Jesus

De La Salle became involved in education little by little, without ever consciously setting out to do so. The Sisters of the Child Jesus was a new order whose work was the care and education of poor girls. The young priest had helped them in becoming established, and then served as their chaplain and confessor. It was through his work with the sisters that in 1679, he met Adrian Nyel. What began as a charitable effort to help Adrian Nyel establish a school for the poor in De La Salle's home town gradually became his life's work. With De La Salle's help, a school was soon opened. Shortly thereafter, another wealthy woman in Reims told Nyel that she also would endow a school, but only if Monsieur La Salle would help.


Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools

De La Salle knew that the teachers in Reims were struggling, lacking leadership, purpose, and training, and he found himself taking increasingly deliberate steps to help this small group of men with their work. First, in 1680, he invited them to take their meals in his home, as much to teach them table manners as to inspire and instruct them in their work. This crossing of social boundaries was one that his relatives found difficult to bear. In 1681, De La Salle realized that he would have to take a further step – he brought the teachers into his own home to live with him. De La Salle's relatives were deeply disturbed, his social class was scandalized. When, a year later, his family home was lost at auction because of a family lawsuit, De La Salle rented a house into which he and the handful of teachers moved.

He thereby began a new religious institute, the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, also known as the De La Salle Brothers (in the U.K., Ireland, Malta, Australasia, and Asia) or, most commonly in the United States, the Christian Brothers. (They are sometimes confused with a different congregation of the same name founded by Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice in Ireland, who are known in the U.S. as the Irish Christian Brothers.)

He lived in times not unlike our own, where society is characterized by great disparity between the rich and the poor. Jean Baptiste de la Salle believed that education gave hope and opportunity for people to lead better lives of dignity and freedom.

At that time, most children had little hope for the future. Moved by the plight of the poor who seemed so "far from salvation" either in this world or the next, he determined to put his own talents and advanced education at the service of the children "often left to themselves and badly brought up". To be more effective, he abandoned his family home, moved in with the teachers, renounced his position as Canon and his wealth (worth approximately $500,000 today), and so formed a new community of lay religious teachers. The De La Salle Brothers were the first Roman Catholic religious teaching religious institute that did not include any priests.

His enterprise met opposition from the ecclesiastical authorities who resisted the creation of a new form of religious life, a community of consecrated laymen to conduct free schools "together and by association". The educational establishment resented his innovative methods and his insistence on gratuity for all, regardless of whether they could afford to pay. Nevertheless, De La Salle and his Brothers succeeded in creating a network of quality schools throughout France that featured instruction in the vernacular, students grouped according to ability and achievement, integration of religious instruction with secular subjects, well-prepared teachers with a sense of vocation and mission, and the involvement of parents.

De La Salle was a pioneer in programs for training lay teachers. In 1685, he founded what is generally considered the first normal school — that is, a school whose purpose is to train teachers — in Rheims, France. He was a pedagogical thinker of note and is among the founders of a distinctively modern pedagogy. His educational innovations include Sunday courses for working young men, one of the first institutions in France for the care of delinquents, technical schools, and secondary schools for modern languages, arts, and sciences. Worn out by austerities and exhausting labors, he died at Saint Yon near Rouen early in 1719 on Good Friday, only three weeks before his 68th birthday.

De La Salle's work quickly spread through France and, after his death, continued to spread across the globe. He was canonized by Pope Leo XIII on May 24, 1900, and was inserted in the Roman Catholic calendar of saints in 1904. Because of his life and inspirational writings, he was proclaimed as the Patron Saint of Teachers on May 15, 1950, by Pope Pius XII. Since 1970, his feast is celebrated in the Catholic Church calendar on April 7; however, at La Sallian institutions, and in communities that follow a pre-1970 (but post-1904) calendar, his feast is on May 15.

Currently, about 6,000 Brothers and 75,000 lay and religious colleagues worldwide serve as teachers, counselors, and guides to 900,000 students in over 1,000 educational institutions in 84 countries.

There is a street named after La Salle in Bangkok, Thailand: Soi Sukhumvit 105. It got this name due to a La Salle school on this street. In addition to the street in Thailand, there are two streets in the Philippines. One is the La Salle Avenue in Bacolod City, Philippines, where the University of St. La Salle is located. The other is La Salle Street in Mandaluyong City where there is also a La Salle school. There is also in St. Louis, Missouri, USA: De La Salle Avenue, named after the saint due to its proximity to another Christian Brothers School. There is also a street, La Salle Road, in Hong Kong named after La Salle due to the two La Salle schools on the same street.There is also a street, La Salle, Road in Towson, Maryland near Calvert Hall Also, he has schools named after him, De La Salle High School, in Concord, California and De La Salle High School, in Revesby, New South Wales, Australia. He is one of the six patrons at Good Samaritan Catholic College


   
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