St. Jean-Baptiste De La Salle played an important and influential role in the development of education for the world. Through his life's work, La Salle managed to change the education system in France and the rest of the world, while others continued his traditions after his death. Through La Salle's constant efforts for equality in education and equality in social systems, La Salle managed to leave a permanent and lasting mark on the world. La Salle grew up in an upper-class family in the city of Reims, France. Born as the eldest of seven children, he was confronted with the challenge of leadership at a very young age. However, leadership took on a whole new meaning after La Salle endured the tragedy of the deaths of both his parents. Now both the spiritual and physical head of the family, La Salle was forced from a young age to learn how to provide, educate, and lead. Yet La Salle's new role as head of the household did not stop him from pursuing his dreams of his own education. Most notably, La Salle became interested in the Catholic Church, and after many years of school, he began teaching at the Seminary. An educated and experienced seminarian, La Salle became aware of a frightening trend to which he himself had been subjected: education, particularly Catholic, was exclusively available to the wealthy and upper classes. It was a problem La Salle would spend most of his life fighting. La Salle's efforts to combat educational inequality began with the establishment of a school for working-class and poor children. He gathered other men and trained them in his way of teaching. La Salle was not content, however, to simply be a teaching companion with these men, so, after distributing his possessions, he abandoned...... middle of paper ......e the circumstances which surrounded him for the better, and influenced not only the course of a nation, but also the course of the world. God calls each of us as he called La Salle. In our calling, we are not asked to rebuild the world's education system, nor to be canonized by the Catholic Church, but we are called to make changes in the name of God. We have all been given the blessing of education and the opportunity to use it for the betterment of society. We are called to use this knowledge to determine what is right and what is wrong around us. We are called to promote good in what is right and to combat evil in what is wrong. We are called to love one another as brothers and sisters. And we are called to give not to the highest among us, but to the lowest among us, just as Saint John Baptist de La Salle did..