Marist Education
The theme of Chapters 11-12 is escalating opposition to Jesus: misunderstanding from John the Baptist, indifference from the towns of Galilee, open hostility from the Pharisees. In the middle of this section, Jesus pauses to pray to God, thanking him for the one group of people that have understood and accepted him: “I give you thanks, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to the childlike” (11.25). Sometimes, it is the people who are not wise and learned by the world’s standards who are the closest to understanding God.
The Marist Project has always had a special focus on young people who do not easily succeed in school. Marcellin Champagnat struggled to learn to read as a child. He failed his first year of seminary, and ultimately only graduated from seminary by the skin of his teeth. He very likely had what would be today called an undiagnosed learning difference. Part of his inspiration for founding a teaching congregation was to found schools that would help children who, like him, struggled to learn to read and write. In 1829, under Marcellin’s direction, the brothers adopted a new method for teaching reading in their school that was more phonics-based than the traditional method. Throughout the nineteenth century, Marist primary schools in France were known to be excellent in teaching literacy.
This focus on those with special academic needs continues in modern Marist institutions. As an example, the Marcellin Program in Marist High School Chicago provides students with learning differences a college-prep education through individualized instruction and smaller class sizes. The program seeks to continue Marcellin Champagnat’s work making Jesus Christ known and loved through the Christian education of young people, especially the least favored.
