The Salesian Preventive System is the educational method of the Salesians, built upon the pedagogical experience of Saint John Bosco with poor children in 19th-century Turin. It is based on three pillars namely—reason, religion, and lovingkindness which is opposed to school punishment, or what Don Bosco refers to as the repressive system of education. Don Bosco is the principal historical representative of this method of formation of the young. He was preceded in its development by such luminaries as Philip Neri and Francis de Sales.
Don Bosco wrote only one essay explaining his pedagogical method, The Preventive System in the Education of the Young (1877).[1] This was included in the first Salesian Constitutions.