St. Joseph Calasanctius

Calasanctius was born in Peralta de la Sal, Aragon, in what is now Spain (1557). His parents, Don Pedro Calasanz and Doña Maria Gaston, gave him, the youngest of eight children, a good education at home and then at the school of Peralta.

Calasanctius was the founder of the first free public school in modern Europe. It was a revolutionary initiative, a radical break with the class privileges that kept the masses marginalized and in poverty. In the history of education, Joseph Calasanctius is the great educator of the poor, offering education free of charge to all classes of society, without discrimination.

In an era when no one else was interested in public education, Calasanctius managed to set up schools with a highly complex structure. He was concerned with physical education and hygiene. He addressed the subject in various documents and requested school directors to monitor children’s health.

Calasanctius taught his students to read both in Latin and in the vernacular. While maintaining the study of Latin, he was a strong defender of vernacular languages, and had textbooks, including those used for teaching Latin, written in the vernacular. In that respect he was more advanced than his contemporaries.
Calasanctius placed great emphasis on the teaching of mathematics.

Training in mathematics and science was considered very important in his Pious schools, both for pupils and teachers. But Calasanctius’ main concern was undoubtedly the moral and Christian education of his students. As both priest and educator, he considered education to be the best way of changing society. All his writing is imbued with his Christian ideals, and the constitutions and regulations of the Pious schools were based on the same spirit. Calasanctius created an ideal image of a Christian teacher and used it to train the teachers who worked with him.
Source: wikipedia.org