The great educator, religion being integral to his curriculum in a way that we are just not used to anymore in the West, although S. John’s Salesian Fathers are still very involved in the education of young people around the world.
Here’s a short quotation from the end of his life about S. John’s determination about a properly Christian and Catholic education for children and young people:
“All my life, I have struggled against the error of bringing up young Christians as pagans; with this object I have undertaken double publication; that of some of the profane classics most used in the schools, revised and corrected, and of Christian classics. Among the latter I selected those written in concise, elegant style, with pure, holy doctrine, which corrects and weakens the naturalism freely permeating the first. To restore Christian authors to their place, to make pagan authors as harmless as possible, are the ends I have had in view in all the works I have undertaken.”
M. S. Pine, The Venerable John Bosco: the Apostle of youth and his work, Salesian Press, Philadelphia, 1916, p. 76 [link]
He despaired that his best attempts had been at driving this programme of his through had been foiled. In our times, it is far more difficult to obtain a truly Christian education, except perhaps in the circumstances of home education.
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 