PETALING JAYA: Many Malaysians are proud students and alumni of schools that are bound together by a common heritage.
Whether one is a student at St John’s Institution KL, or studied at St Xavier’s Institution in Penang, all are unified under the familiar motto “Signum fidei”, or “sign of faith”.
The De La Salle Brothers have had a major impact on the local education scene, with hundreds of thousands of students of all races and religions having left their schools as wiser, educated individuals.
Many prominent members of society, including sultans, politicians, celebrities and business tycoons, have memorised the La Salle anthem of Hail Alma Mater.
But every story has a beginning. And this applies to the De La Salle Brothers as well.
Who were they? Or rather, who is the man whose name continues to live on as part of the legacy of the brotherhood of educators?
To understand the story of the man behind the brotherhood, one must go back in time to the Kingdom of France in 1651.
The wealthy family of a vineyard owner would welcome the birth of their first child, a boy who would be christened Jean-Baptiste de La Salle.
During his youth, he received a good religious education but at the age of 21, he had to take the responsibility of caring for his siblings after both parents died.
But he persevered with his religious studies and was ordained as a priest in 1678. Two years later, he earned his doctorate in theology.
During this time, he began his lifelong work to expand education opportunities by assisting a religious congregation dedicated to providing education to girls.
For context, education opportunities in feudal France were largely restricted to the nobility and members of the clergy. The average peasant would be lucky if they managed to learn how to count or to read by the time they reached adulthood.
De La Salle was appalled by this state of affairs and believed that education was important in helping people lead better and more productive lives.
He started small, helping teachers in his hometown of Reims by feeding and advising them, eventually providing them with housing in his own home.
But his generosity angered his relatives, who promptly sued him for it. He lost his family home in the lawsuit, and decided to dedicate himself to his passion by resigning his canonry and giving away his wealth.
De La Salle would thus establish the religious institute that would become known as the De La Salle Brothers, formally called the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools.
He would go on to be a pioneer of education in France, being responsible for teacher training programmes and improving the overall state of education.
His works would not go unnoticed and in 1900, he was canonised by Pope Leo XIII, and was declared the patron saint of teachers in 1950.
Today, the legacy of De La Salle lives on in the brotherhood, which operates over 1,000 schools, attended by hundreds of thousands of students across 80 countries.
Malaysia is one of the many countries where the De La Salle Brothers have left their mark.
The first De La Salle Brothers to arrive here came to Penang in 1852 to establish their first school, St Xavier’s Institution.
Since then, 32 La Salle schools have been established in Peninsular Malaysia and a dozen associated schools in Sabah and Sarawak.
The De La Salle Brotherhood may have been founded centuries ago, but its legacy lives on.
As long as the gates of these revered institutions remain open to all who wish to learn, this will remain so for the foreseeable future.