,, ,-J e) #»r***"
LIBRARY
OF THE
University of California.
Class
RUSK1N ON EDUCATION
RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
SOME NEEDED BUT NEGLECTED
ELEMENTS
RESTATED AND REVIEWED
BY
WILLIAM JOLLY
*&" **5N.
LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1907
[All rights reserved]
^m,
PREFACE
OxNE of the most reassuring signs of the
times, in this over -pushing but progressive
age, is the great and growing interest
manifested by all classes in the Educa-
tion of the young. Remarkable, if not in
many respects surprising, as have been the
improvements in this all- important subject
during the century, especially since the
passing of the Education Acts of 1870 and
1872, our views in regard to it still urgently
require enlightenment. Our present system
sadly needs broadening, deepening, and ele-
vating, in both purpose and process, more
than even most experts have yet perceived
or imagined.
Of men to point the way towards desir-
able reform, there is no one whose views
should be more potential for this end than
181642
VI PREFACE
John Ruskin. This is true of his work in
Education as much as in other departments
of his varied activity, in spite of existing
popular and scholastic opinion in regard to
his ideas. This opinion is mainly based on
ignorance of the man and his views ; on
prejudice — both in its common acceptation
and in its literal meaning of pre-judgment,
condemnation without adequate examination ;
on the too ready acceptance of erroneous
criticism, by the mass of the people, even
by the more thoughtful among them ; and,
as he himself has told us, on the narrowing
and intolerant pursuit of less worthy aims
in this mamm on -loving, competitive time,
whose din and dust have drowned and
darkened the brightest and wisest thoughts
of one of the greatest prophets and preachers
of our day.
In connection with Education, in spite
of the facts being far otherwise, Ruskin
has generally been thought to have written
little, and done less, than in many other
better known fields ; and that little is almost
universally considered to be of more extreme
PREFACE Vll
and eccentric type than is usual even with
this unconventional critic and philosopher.
At best, his views are deemed by not a few
of the more enlightened of his students as
" counsels of perfection." They are certainly
all this, in its truest sense, and, if listened
to and acted on, would lead us, more rapidly
than we have yet gone, towards the per-
fection which does not exist in such an
advancing Science and Art as Education, of
whose future developments, however, Ruskin's
suggestions form a bright and encouraging
vision.
The present work is a brief and partial
attempt to prove this position in regard to
Ruskin ; by rendering more accessible and
popular some of his more pregnant views re-
garding certain primary and pressing defects
in our educational practice, than has yet
been possible amid his scattered and multi-
tudinous utterances.
Portions of the wide educational field
traversed by him, I have as yet been pre-
vented by want of time and health from
overtaking — such as, the all -important and
Vlll PREFACE
rising function of Physical Education, now,
happily, more acknowledged ; the wide and
ever-extending range of Intellectual Educa-
tion, on which his views are advanced and
valuable ; and Mr. Ruskin's own practical
attempts at a broader and worthier training
than is yet common, which are both inter-
esting and instructive. For these, I would
at present refer those interested to the in-
valuable Bibliography of his works ; the
index to " Fors Clavigera " ; Collingwood's
" Life and Work of John Ruskin " (Methuen
& Co., 1893); "Studies in Ruskin," by
Edward T. Cook (George Allen, 1890); and
"John Ruskin : his Life and Teaching," by
J. Marshall Mather (third edition, 1890 ;
Frederick Warne & Co.).
This book is the outcome of former
expositions of Ruskin's views and their
relations to those of other educationists,
given by me from time to time : in lectures
delivered to the Glasgow Ruskin Society,
as President, and to the teachers of my
own district, as H.M. Inspector of Schools;
in a series of articles in the weekly journal,
PREFACE IX
Great Thoughts, of which this issue is
mainly a reprint ; and in notes buried in
Educational Blue Books, which are little read
even by the few whose business or studies
lead them there, and are neglected by all
others.
Not the least matter for personal gratifi-
cation is the fact, that its present publication
was arranged for, unsolicited, by Mr. Allen,
whose name is so honourably identified with
the artistic production of the Great Master's
works.
A '« v •;
CONTENTS
PART FIRST
THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION
Ruskin's Relations to Education —
PAGE
I. Ruskin's Views on Education should be better
known ........ 3
II. His Study of Education was Philanthropic . 4
III. His Opinion of Education as it is . . . 7
IV. His Ideas of what Education should be . . 11
PA AT F/*ST
Some General Principles of Education
according to ruskin —
I. Education should be regulated by Natural En-
dowment . . . . . . .12
The Means of discovering it .... 13
II. Education should not be conducted with a view
to mere " Success in Life " . . 15
It should aim at Real Advancement in Living 1 7
III. Education should train to Useful Work . . 20
The kind of work needed .... 23
xi
Xll CONTENTS
HAGE
Its effects on Religion . . . . .24
Its relation to Physical Exercise ... 26
The growth of this idea in Schools . . 28
IV. Education should not be estimated by the mere
Acquisition of Knowledge .... 32
V. The importance of the world of Nature in
Education ....... 36
The out-door class-room .... 41
VI. Our educational standard should not be too high 45
VII. Education should vary with circumstances . 48
VIII. The prevalent estimate of "the Three R's "
is erroneous ...... 50
Ruskin's central position in regard to them . 55
The importance of Ruskin's views . . 58
Our existing Educational Ideal low and de-
fective . . . . . . .61
PART SECOND
THE TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS
I. The Need for cultivating Taste in
Schools 64
The Nature of Taste ..... 66
The chief groups of the /Esthetic Arts . . 67
How much may be essayed in the Cultivation
of Taste 68
The vital importance of Childhood in its
training . . . - . . . .09
CONTENTS
Xlll
The importance of the School-room for this
training ......
Our Schools devoid of Taste in the past .
The Two ways of training Taste in School
Schools should be refined in Architecture and
Decoration ....
The Views of Ancient thinkers .
Esthetic Education in Athens .
The Views of Montaigne and Fenelon
Other Opinions Coincident
PAGE
72
74
75
76
78
80
81
83
II. What has been done towards the
Realisation of these principles 85
The beginning of an /Esthetic Revival . . 86
III. The Means of /Esthetic Cultivation
in Schools 87
1. Scholastic diagrams ..... 87
2. Special aesthetic decorations ... 88
3. Illustrations in school books ... 90
4. Plants and flowers . . . . 91
5. The study of external nature ... 92
A New Crusade in favour of training
through Nature needed . 93
6. Other elements in aesthetic training . . 95
IV. The Moral Effects of /Esthetic
Culture 9 6
What should be done ? . . . . -97
Recent encouraging progress .... 98
XIV CONTENTS
PART THIRD
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS
PAGE
IOI
1 02
IO4
I05
IO6
IO7
IOS
Morality a Constant Element in all
Ruskin's Teaching . . . .100
I. The present conduct of Moral Education un-
satisfactory .....
Ruskin's condemnation of it .
The Need of better Moral Training
II. The Teaching should be Systematic .
III. Moral Training Paramount and First
The Real End of Education is Moral .
Ruskin's Summary of its aims
Intellectual and Moral Education contrasted
by Ruskin . . . . . .109
Herbart's Testimony 1 1 1
IV. The Subject-matter of Systematic Moral teaching 1 12
The Chief Duties to be taught . . . 115
Ruskin's exposition of these . . . .116
V. How to accomplish these Moral aims . .118
VI. Virtues on which Ruskin lays stress . . .119
1. Cleanliness 119
2. Obedience . . . . . .120
3. Kindness to animal life . . . .120
4. Honesty . . . . . . .121
VII. Virtues specially emphasised by Ruskin . .123
1. Intellectual and Social humility . .124
Illustration from his own School Days . 126
CONTENTS
XV
V
\
2. Reverent admiration ....
3. Emulation condemned
No Competition to be allowed
The true purpose of Examinations .
How should Emulation be used ? .
VIII. Education should teach the true meaning of
Wealth ......
Our estimate of Wealth generally wrong
In what true Wealth consists
Education should furnish a child with a Plan
of Life ......
The views of several educationists
Ruskin's views .....
The editor's views ....
IX. The teaching of Social and Political Economy
Its past neglect .....
Ruskin's Political Economy .
William Ellis's work in this educational
field ......
The subject begins to be recognised
X. The Systematic teaching of Moral Duty should
be universal .....
The Means of doing it .
The Influence of such teaching
It is partially recognised by the Education
Department .....
It should be extended and Systematically
taught .......
Text-books for the teaching of the subject
PAGE
127
130
131
133
134
135
136
136
138
138
140
143
145
146
147
147
150
151
152
153
154
155
155
XVI CONTENTS
PAGE
XL Auxiliary aids to Moral Training in school . 157
1. Poetry for Recitation . . . .158
Music Pieces to be Avoided . . -158
Pieces to be Selected . . . .160
2. Pieces for Music 161
Convivial Songs to be Avoided . .162
Love Songs Objectionable . . .163
XII. The Relation of Moral Training to Religious
Instruction 165
The General Teaching of Moral Duty is
surely now near at hand . . .166
OF TM[
RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
PART FIRST
THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF
EDUCATION
Of all our contemporaries, since Emerson and
Carlyle passed away, there is only one who
now fulfils for the nation and for the world
the all-important, -ever-needed function of the
Prophet — John Ruskin. Like the fervid strains
of the great Hebrew and Eastern seers, his
utterances on a wide range of vital subjects
are powerful, eloquent, fearless, enlightened,
formative, and pregnant; condemnatory of
the present, and hopefully prognostic of the
brighter future. Like theirs, too, they are the
flashing fires of a burning enthusiasm for God
and for humanity; brilliant, self-consuming,
and unextinguishable. They demand, and
A
2 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
they deserve, attention ; and though for a
season they are, like all prophetic visions,
disregarded by the careless world, they will
yet, through their form and character, com-
mand and receive recognition. Of their wis-
dom, there exists, and will long continue to
exist, the widest variety of opinion — many,
and these a rapidly growing band, holding
them as a gospel and a life ; more, fearing
them as radical and dangerous ; most, viewing
them as amiable, beautiful, but Utopian dreams,
impossible of realisation ; but all, regarding
their author with growing respect, which is
rapidly rising to admiration, for his single-
eyed sincerity, unsurpassed eloquence, deep
love of his fellow-men, and moral insight and
elevation.
RUSKIN'S RELATIONS TO
EDUCATION
I. — RUSKIN'S VIEWS ON EDUCATION
SHOULD BE BETTER KNOWN.
RUSKIN'S opinions on ^Esthetic and Social
problems have received more exposition and
criticism than on other subjects of which he
has spoken, numerous and interesting though
these have been. Of those less known to
the world, on which he has written largely,
Education certainly stands first. His views on
this all-important theme have received far too
little consideration, certainly much less than
they deserve, from either critics or students, for
the sake alike of their author, their nature, or
the subject itself. Light on the vital questions
connected with a subject so essential to human
happiness and progress, should be welcomed
from all quarters, especially when coming from
a thinker so original, practical, and advanced,
4 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
and — doubt it who may — so wise as John
Ruskin. It is my own deep and growing
sense of the value of his views on Education,
and of the comparative neglect they have
as yet received — due in part, no doubt, to
their being overshadowed by his better-known
writings on other subjects — that suggested
the desirability of making them matter for
general public exposition, in these pages, for
the instruction of the people. I am more
and more convinced, as an educationist, that
they form a remarkably enlightened and far-
reaching contribution towards the better de-
velopment of this still very imperfect national
and universal function, the training of children,
and the education of humanity.
II. — HIS STUDY OF EDUCATION WAS
PHILANTHROPIC.
Ruskin's study of Education was the natural
outcome of his profound interest in sail that
bears on the well-being of mankind. His
labours in this field have had their root in his
philanthropy. In this respect, he resembles
Pestalozzi, the greatest educational reformer
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 5
of modern times, whose enthusiasm in scho-
lastic work sprang from his intense desire to
" ennoble men," as he expressed it. He also
resembles Froebel, the disciple of the great
Swiss, and the founder of the Kindergarten
system, which was conspicuously framed for the
high moral end of enabling man, in Froebel's
own words, " to live a life worthy of his
manhood and his species."
The elevated aims of these two remark-
able men, who were philanthropists first and
educationists second, exactly express those of
Ruskin in origin and motive. Feeling like
them, and like all others who have desired to
raise mankind to higher things — such as philo-
sophers like Plato, religionists like Luther,
scientists like Huxley and Spencer — that, to
elevate mankind effectively, we must begin at
the beginning; to improve the stock, we must
operate on the germ ; to educate the race, we
must train the children : he was compelled to
examine the system by which this training is
carried on — in other words, to study Educa-
tion. Unlike professional educationists, such
as Pestalozzi and Froebel, however, Ruskin
has not studied Education so fully as he has
O RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
done some other subjects ; he has not examined
it as a Science or Art, nor has he formulated
any special system, like these technical experts.
His views on teaching are more general and
philosophical than technical and scholastic, ex-
cept on Art, and partly on Literature. At the
same time, they are remarkably clear, sugges-
tive, far-reaching, and practical ; well-founded
on principle, full of dissatisfaction with things
as they are, prophetic of desirable reform,
and deserving and rewarding careful attention
from all interested in educational advance-
ment.
Ruskin's study of Education has, however,
been more extensive and thorough than most
people would expect, or than even his general
readers would think possible, from the time he
has given to other matters. For example, the
mere index to his educational utterances in
Fors Clavigera alone fills seven pages ; and
he tells us (preface to Deucalion, 1875), that
he proposed writing a life of Xenophon,* for
whom he has the highest admiration, which
should include an analysis of the general prin-
ciples of Education, in ten volumes ; as well
* Done partly in Bibliothcca Pastoritm.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 7
as editing n a body of popular literature of en-
tirely serviceable quality — of the most precious
books needed," "for a common possession of
all our school libraries : " * both of these being
gigantic undertakings, which would be a life-
work for most men.
III. — HIS OPINION OF EDUCATION AS IT IS.
What is John Ruskin's opinion of Education
as it is at present carried on ? It is as con-
demnatory as it is of existing Art and social
condition, and as unreservedly and vigorously
expressed. " Modern Education," says he,
in Sesame and Lilies ; "for the most part
signifies giving people the faculty of thinking
wrong on every conceivable subject of impor-
tance to them." " Be assured," he asserts, " we
cannot read. It is simply and sternly impos-
sible for the English public, at this moment, to
understand any thoughtful writing — so inca-
pable of thought has it become in its insanity
of avarice ; " though, lie reassures us, " happily
our disease is, as yet, little worse than this
* Fors Clavigerci) vol. vi., 1876, p. 216.
8 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
incapacity of thought.'' "As a nation," he
says, " we have been going on despising litera-
ture, despising science, despising art, despising
nature, despising compassion, and concentrat-
ing our soul on pence." He declares that the
development of humanity in England has re-
sulted in " physical ugliness, envy, cowardice,
and selfishness," instead of what, " by a con-
ceivably humane, but hitherto unexampled, edu-
cation, might be attempted of physical beauty,
humility, courage, and affection." And he
sums up the whole by deliberately declaring
this : " The more I see of our national faults
or miseries, the more they resolve themselves
into conditions of childish illiterateness and
want of education in the most ordinary habits
of thought. It is, I repeat," he continues, " not
vice, not selfishness, not dulness of brain,
which we have to lament, but an unreachable
schoolboy's recklessness, only differing from
the true schoolboy's in its incapacity of being
helped, because it acknowledges no master." *
This is a serious indictment, a painful im-
peachment of a country which plumes itself on
its educational eminence among the nations,
' Sesame and Lilies^ § 40. £y
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 9
and thinks itself, at the worst, second only to
Germany in its educational system and results.
But Ruskin speaks with deliberation and con-
viction. " Do you think," asks he, " these are
harsh or wild words ? I will prove their truth
to you, clause by clause ;"* and he set himself
expressly, and, from his point of view, success-
fully, to make good his accusations, in Sesame
and Lilies, and elsewhere in his voluminous
works, especially in Fors Clavigera.
This indictment has been abundantly re-
peated by Carlyle, Spencer, Huxley, Lyon
Playfair, Matthew Arnold and other inspectors
of schools, and by many more who are inter-
ested in the well-being of the people — in words
which it would take too long fully to quote. I
give but one example, to show that Ruskin
does not stand alone in his low estimate of
Education as it exists. Here is the testimony,
out of a host, of a fair and unimpassioned
judge, Sir John Lubbock, f of what our average
school education is ; and, in the opinion, he
includes all schools, higher and lower : —
"Our great danger in education is, as it seems
* Sesame and Lilies, § 31.
t Addresses Political and Educational, p. 98.
10 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
to me, the worship of book learning — the con-
fusion of instruction and education. We strain
the memory, instead of cultivating the mind.
The children are wearied by the mechanical
act of writing, and the interminable intricacies
of spelling ; they are oppressed by columns
of dates, by lists of kings and places, which
convey no definite idea to their minds, and
have no near relation to their daily wants and
occupations. We ought to follow exactly the
opposite course, and endeavour to cultivate
their tastes, rather than fill their minds with
dry facts.
" Too often, moreover, the acquirement of
knowledge is placed before them in a form so
irksome and fatiguing that all desire for in-
formation is choked, or even crushed out ; so
that our schools, in fact, become places for
the discouragement of learning, and thus
produce the very opposite effect from that at
which we aim.
" Under the present system, our schools will,
I fear, become more and more places of mere
instruction ; instead of developing intellectual
tastes, they will make all mental effort irk-
some."
GENERAL PRINCIPLES I I
IV. — HIS IDEAS OF WHAT EDUCATION
SHOULD BE.
Ruskin's central conception of Education, it
follows, must surely be something radically
and essentially different in type and form from
what is generally conceived and carried out in
these lands, to give rise to such sweeping con-
demnation of an educational system, with its
mental and moral effects, that has taken so
many years and so many hands to build up,
and has cost so much in pains and pocket.
It is, down to the ground, as diverse from
common conception and practice as it well can
be; and it will be good for us, in the remainder
of this work, to enquire somewhat into the
General Principles which, according to Ruskin
and other great educationists, should form the
foundation of any true educational system, in
theory and practice.
We must, at present, confine ourselves en-
tirely to a few of these general ideas, the
subject being in itself so wide; and, even as
treated by Ruskin, so broad and so detailed,
that it would take volumes even summarily
to traverse the ground.
SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EDU-
CATION ACCORDING TO RUSKIN
THE TRUE BASIS OF EDUCATION.
I. Education should be regulated by Na-
tural Endowment. — Since Education means,
simply and truly, development, the manipu-
lating of existing materials in the human con-
stitution, Ruskin, like all true philosophers, is
emphatic on the need of our practical recognition
of this fact, and of regulating the treatment
of our children according to their constitution
and capabilities. These are fixed at birth,
being the result of natal and pre-natal con-
ditions, and cannot be changed. " You can't
manufacture man," says he, "any more than
you can manufacture gold. You can find
him, and refine him; you dig him out as he
is, nugget-fashion, in the mountain stream;
you bring him home, and you make him
into current coin, or household plate, but
GENERAL PRINCIPLES I 3
not one grain of him can you originally
produce." *
It is, therefore, of the greatest practical
moment to discover these capacities in our
children, and to utilise and develop them as
best we can, varying our treatment and train-
ing so as most wisely to secure healthy de-
velopment, and putting them to the exact work
in life they are best fitted for.
The Means of Discovering it. — fi You have a
certain quantity of a particular sort of intel-
ligence produced for you annually by provi-
dential laws, which you can only make use of
by setting it to its proper work, and which
any attempt to use otherwise involves the dead
loss of so much human energy. Well, then,
supposing we wish to employ it, how is it to
be best discovered and refined ? It is easily
enough discovered. To wish to employ it is
to discover it. All you need is a School of
Trial in every important town, in which those
idle farmers' lads, whom their masters never
can keep out of mischief, and those stupid
tailors' 'prentices, who are always putting the
* A Joy for Ever, § 20. "
I 4 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
sleeves in wrong way upwards, may have a
try at this other trade.
"It will be long before the results of experi-
ments now in progress will give data for the
solution of the most difficult questions con-
nected with the subject, of which the prin-
cipal one is the mode in which the chance of
advancement in life is to be extended to all, and
yet made compatible with contentment in the
pursuit of lower avocations by those whose
abilities do not qualify them for the higher.
But the general principle of Trial Schools lies
at the root of the matter — of schools, that is to
say, in which the knowledge offered and dis-
cipline enforced shall be all a part of a great
essay of the human soul, and in which the one
shall be increased, the other directed, as the
tired heart and brain will best bear, and no
otherwise." *
There is no doubt that this suggestion of
Ruskin's as to the wisdom and need of having
some such testing machinery as he recommends
under the name of " Trial Schools," or, as he
also calls them, " Searching or Discovering
* A Joy for Ever, § 22. 3 '
GENERAL PRINCIPLES I 5
Schools," * should be more thoroughly and
systematically acted upon, than by present
blind and imperfect methods is being done.
It should receive the practical attention of all
educationists and social reformers. As we
all feel, and as Ruskin points out again and
again, there is a painful waste of mental energy,
and loss of existing talent to society, in our
haphazard way of ascertaining the precise
work in life to which each child should be
put, especially the gifted. It is to be feared
that it will never be thoroughly done, or be
in any way possible, till, as Ruskin points
out and recommends, all education shall be
truly national, an organic part, and one of
the chief functions, of our governing institu-
tions, from the lowest to the highest school,
from infant-room to university.
THE OBJECT OF EDUCATION.
II. It should not be conducted with
a View to mere " Success in Life." —
Ruskin holds that our Education is poisoned
* A Joy for Ever, § 28. 3 V
I 6 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
in its essence, in its root and sap; and that
till its central aim is renewed radically and
thoroughly, there can never be any true teach-
ing or educational progress. " This arises be-
cause it is," he says, "governed and conducted
mainly according to the low notion of securing
social advancement, which is the gratification
of vanity." In his abundant correspondence
on Education, he tells us * " he has been
always struck by the precedence which the
idea of a position in life takes above all other
thoughts in the parents' — more especially in
the mothers' — minds. The education befitting
such and such a station in life — this is the
phrase, this the object, always. They never
seek, as far as I can make out, an education
good in itself; even the conception of abstract
Tightness in training rarely seems reached by
the writers. But an education which shall
keep a good coat on my son's back — which
shall enable him to ring with confidence the
visitors' bell at double-belled doors, which
shall result ultimately in the establishment of
a double-belled door to his own house ; in a
* Sesame and Lilies, § 2. "%
GENERAL PRINCIPLES I J
word, which shall lead to 'advancement in
life.' This we pray for on bent knees, and
this is all we pray for."
Education should aim at Real Advance-
ment in Living. — These low aims mean, he
rightly warns us,* "not indeed to be great in
life — 'in life itself,' but in its 'trappings;'
it means only that we are to get more horses,
and more footmen, and more fortune, and
more public honour, and — not more personal
soul."
How true, how sadly true, all this is, we
all know ; though few, very few of us, dare
to say it aloud, still less to denounce it as we
ought, and yet less to take practical action to
prevent its continuance.
At what, therefore, should Education rightly
aim in regard to life ? According to Ruskin,
at real advancement in life, for which end we
must know "what life is." What is real ad-
vancement in life ? Hear Ruskin's answer :
" He only is advancing in life whose heart is
getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose
brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into
Living peace. And the men who have this
* Sesame and Lilies, § 42.
B
I 8 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
life in them are the true lords and kings of
the earth — they and they only." *
The only true Education is "an education
which, in itself, is advancement in life — any
other than that may perhaps be advancement
in death ; and this essential Education might
be more easily got or given than we fancy,
if we set about it in the right way ; while it
is for no price and by no favour to be got, if
we set about it in the wrong." f
In these fiercely wise words, Ruskin gives
eloquent and thrilling utterance to the thoughts
of the greatest thinkers of all time. It is the
truth sounding ever in dull ears — that u the
life is more than meat " or money or minis-
tration to vanity. This is, in another form,
Milton's idea of "a complete and generous
education ; " as " that which fits a man to
perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously,
all the duties of all offices." It is another
utterance of what Herbert Spencer so well
expresses : ° How to live — that is the essen-
tial question for us. The general problem
which comprehends every special problem is
— the right ruling of conduct in all directions,
* Sesame and Lilies, § 42. t Ibid. § 2.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES I 9
under all circumstances. To prepare us for
complete living is the function which education
has to discharge."
That is the true, the only key-note to the
harmonies of life. All others, however spe-
cious, however common, however honoured,
however seductive, are false, " hollow as the
grave," and end only in harshest discord.
But alas, alas, Ruskin only utters the sadder
and the deeper thoughts of all earnest hearts,
when he again says : " I felt, with increas-
ing amazement, the unconquerable apathy in
ourselves no less than in the teachers ; and that,
while the wisdom and Tightness of every act
and art of life could only be consistent with a
right understanding of the ends of life, we were
all plunged as in a languid dream — our hearts
fat, and our eyes heavy, and our ears closed,
lest the inspiration of hand or voice should
reach us — lest we should see with our eyes, and
understand with our hearts, and be healed."*
" This intense apathy in all of us, is the first
great mystery of life ; it stands in the way
of every perception, every virtue. There is
no making ourselves feel enough astonishment
* Sesame and Lilies, § 107.
20 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
at it. That the occupations or pastimes of
life should have no motive is understandable ;
but that life itself should have no motive — that
we neither care to find out what it may lead to,
nor to guard against its being for ever taken
away from us — here is a mystery indeed."*
THE FIRST CONDITION OF EDUCATION.
III. Education should train to Use-
ful Work. — There is nothing that Ruskin
considers more essential in all Education than
to train the child to DO something, to make
Work its central idea. We should provide
practical work during the period of school-
life, in order to train the child to do practical
work in after-life. "Let us, for our lives, do
the work of men while we bear the form of
them. ' The work of men ' — and what is that ?
Well, we may any of us know very quickly,
on the condition of being wholly ready to
do it. But many of us are, for the most
part, thinking not of what we are to do, but
what we are to get." " Whatever our station
in life may be," he counsels " those of us who
* Sesame and Lilies, § ioS.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 2 I
mean to fulfil our duty ought, first, to live
on as little as we can ; and, secondly, to do
all the wholesome work for it we can, and
to spend all we can spare in doing all the
sure good we can ; and sure good is, first, in
feeding people, then in dressing people, and,
lastly, in rightly pleasing people, with arts, or
sciences, or any other object of thought." *
Therefore, " the first condition of Educa-
tion," he says, " the thing you are all crying
out for, is being put to wholesome and useful
work. And it is really the last condition of it
too ; you need very little more ; but, as things
go, there will yet be difficulty in getting that.
As things have hitherto gone, the difficulty has
been to avoid getting the reverse of that." t
Ruskin's radical conception has been very
different from the common one, of making
Education a mere knowledge-grinding process,
and a means of social advancement and per-
sonal aggrandisement.
The most convincing and all-sufficient reason
for making Work the end and aim of Educa-
tion, and the best preparation for life, is, that
* Sesame ami Lilies, §§ 134-5..
t Fors Ciavigera, vol. i., 1S71, p. 215.
2 2 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
it is the source of all true felicity ; it is the
secret of happiness in life. " In all other paths
by which that happiness is pursued, there is
disappointment or destruction ; for ambition
and for passion, there is no rest, no fruition ;
the fairest pleasures of youth perish in a dark-
ness greater than their past light ; and the
loftiest and purest love too often does but
inflame the cloud of life with endless fire of
pain. But, ascending from lowest to highest,
through every scale of human industry, in-
dustry worth ily followed, gives peace.*
But the work should not be MERE doing of
something, simple action for its own sake, but
the doing of something " useful" something
11 serviceable." " I believe," says Ruskin, "an
immense gain in the bodily health and happi-
ness of the upper classes would follow on their
steadily endeavouring, however clumsily, to
make the physical exertion they now neces-
sarily exert in amusements, definitely service-
able. It would be far better, for instance, that
a gentleman should mow his own fields, than
ride over other people's." f \
* Sesame and Lilies, § 128.
t Frondes Agrestes, p. 143.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 2$
With the vehement indignation of the Bap-
tist to the rich man of his day, Ruskin cries
aloud to the rich man of ours : " Build, my
man — build or dig — one of the two ; and then
eat your honestly earned meat, thankfully,
and let other people alone, if you can't help
them." *
The Kz?id of Work needed. — Elsewhere he
explains, " The three first needs of civilised life
are feeding people, dressing people, and lodging
people ; f and the law for every Christian man
and woman is, that they shall be in direct
service towards one of these three needs, as
far as is consistent with their own special occu-
pation ; and if they have no special business,
then wholly in one of these services. And out
of such exertion in plain duty, all other good
will come ; for, in this direct contention with
material evil, you will find out the real nature
of all evil ; you will discern, by the various
kinds of resistance, what is really the fault
and main antagonism to good; also you will
find the most unexpected helps and profound
lessons given ; and truths will come thus down
* Fors Clavigera, vol. iv., 1874, p. 259.
f Sesame and Lilies, § 135.
24 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
to us, which the speculation of all our lives
would never have raised us up to. You will
find nearly every educational problem solved,
as soon as you truly want to do something ;
everybody will become of use in their own
fittest way, and will learn what is the best
for them to know in that use. Competi-
tive examination will then, and not till then,
be wholesome, because it will be daily, and
calm and in practice ; and on these familiar
arts, and minute, but certain and serviceable
knowledges, will be surely edified and sus-
tained the greater arts and splendid theoretical
sciences." *
Its Effects on Religion. — "But more than
this. On such holy and simple practice will
be founded, indeed, at last, an infallible Re-
ligion. The greatest of all mysteries of life,
and the most terrible, is the corruption of
even the sincerest religion, which is not daily
founded on rational, effective, humble, and
helpful action. Helpful action, observe !
"You may see continually girls who have
never been taught to do a single useful thing
thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot
* Sesame and Lilies, § 1 39.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 2$
cook, who cannot cast an account, nor prepare
a medicine ; whose whole life has been passed
either in play or in pride ; you will find girls
like these, when they are earnest-hearted, cast
all their innate passion of religious spirit,
which was meant by God to support them
through the irksomeness of daily toil, into
grievous and vain meditation over the meaning
of the great Book, of which no syllable w r as
ever yet to be understood but through a deed ;
all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of their
womanhood made vain, and the glory of their
pure consciences warped into fruitless agony
concerning questions which the laws of com-
mon serviceable life would have either solved
for them in an instant, or kept out of their
way. Give such a girl any true work that
will make her active in the dawn, and weary
at night, with the consciousness that her fellow
creatures have indeed been the better for her
day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthu-
siasm will transform itself into a majesty of
radiant and beneficent peace.
" So with our youths. We once taught them
to make Latin verses and called them educated ;
now we teach them to leap and to row, to hit a
26 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
ball with a bat, and call them educated. Can
they plough, can they sow, can they plant at the
right time, or build with a steady hand ? Is it
the effort of their lives, to be chaste, knightly,
faithful, holy in thought, lovely in word and
deed ? " * This it is to be truly educated.
The Relation of Work to Physical Exercise.
— So earnest, you see, is this practical philoso-
pher in his advocacy of the work to which our
children and our people should be put being
definitely " serviceable," that even exercises
for physical education should, he holds, not
end only in themselves, as in common gym-
nastics, but should result in something real
and practical. He says it is "my steady
wish that school boys should learn skill in
ploughing and seamanship rather than in
cricket ; and that young ladies should often
be sent to help the cook and housemaid, when
they would rather be playing tennis." f
So determined is Ruskin to do what he can
to make work, " serviceable labour," an essen-
tial part of all education and daily life, and
all acquirement " serviceable knowledge," as he
* Sesame and Lilies , § 140.
t /gdrasi/, for August 1890, p. 304.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 2^
calls it, that he has made it a condition of
entry into St. George's Guild. The candidate
has to swear and subscribe his honest hand
to this law: "I will labour, with such strength
and opportunity as God gives me, for my own
daily bread ; and all that my hand finds to do,
I will do it with my might."
" Any one," he explains in Fors Clavigera*
" may be a companion of St. George, who sin-
cerely do what they can to make themselves
useful, and earn their own daily bread by
their own labour."
We all know that our reformer practises
what he preaches, even when, to the outside
world, he seems most extreme; and we re-
member the unwonted enthusiasm he inspired
in even the dilletante Oxonians, by leading
them for a time to road-making and like
serviceable labours, spade and hammer in
hand, amid the astonishment and laughter
of the British Philistines. He tells us also
how he never painted better than after wash-
ing down with his hands, on his knees, the
wooden stair of a Swiss hotel in which he was
staying !
* Fors Clavigera, vol. vi., 1 876, p. 212.
2 8 ruskin on education
The Growth of this Idea in Schools.
— This demand of Ruskin for Work as the
means and end and test of Education, is daily
receiving increased recognition among educa-
tionists and social reformers ; and it but utters,
in new and eloquent and more thorough shape,
the aims and ideas of all the best educational
philosophers. It is based on the sound prin-
ciple of all true training of a child, that of de-
veloping his faculties by appropriate exercise,
which all educational reformers, as far as they
have been right, have made the basis of their
systems, however varied in form.
It was the central idea in Xenophon's edu-
cation of Cyrus, whose Cyropcedia is one of
Ruskin's greatest educational books ; in Fel-
lenberg's celebrated institution at Hofwyl, in
which education was united with and carried
on through agriculture; in Robert Owen's
Infant schools and philanthropic Communities ;
in Pestalozzi's educational reforms; in Froe-
bel's Kindergarten system, which is organised,
playful work, and in which the intimate union
of u hand work and head work " from the first
has been lately shown by the issue of a re-
markable exposition of the system, in a work
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 29
under that title by the greatest expounder of
Froebel's system, Baroness Bulow.*
It has gained increased impulse in the new
and growing extension of Manual Instruction,
by which pupils are taught to use their hands
as well as their heads in school, and not to be
ashamed of manual labour; and in its most
recent development, through the noteworthy
Swedish movement of Otto Salomon, that of
Sloyd, whose special object is i( the acquire-
ment of manual dexterity, exercise of judg-
ment and technical skill, development of the
physique, gradual training of the pupil, by a
progressive series of work from simple to
skilled workmanship ; " | and in the mixed
but notable modern cry for Technical Edu-
cation.
Though Ruskin's idea and advocacy reach
further and deeper than these, and signify a
more radical change in the matter of labour,
throughout society when reconstituted; yet
these are encouraging proofs that his notions,
however contrary to common practice and
traditional opinion, are sound, philosophical,
* Handwork and Headwork. (Swan Sonnenschein.)
t Cyclopedia of Education, p. 407. {Ibid.)
30 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
and less Utopian than they first seemed. But
the dead wall of prejudice and false pride that
hides the true dignity of labour from the mass
of mankind, both rich and poor, is one still
standing broad, high, shameless, and almost
unbroken.
Charles G. Leland, the " Hans Breitmann "
of the literary world, one of the greatest
advocates of practical education that we have,
is likewise convinced that it is only " by
making hand work a part of every child's
education that we shall destroy the vulgar
prejudice against work as being itself vulgar."
He declares that "this prejudice exists where
we should least expect to find it — not in the
tradition-bound countries of Europe, but in
the United States ; and that there is no
country in the world where manual work is
practically in so little respect, or where there
are so many trying to get above it, as in the
American Republic. While there are a few
superior to this rubbishness, there are still
millions who are practically enslaved by it."
He speaks only simple fact when he further
states that " perhaps half the real suffering in
Europe and America is the result of the effort
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 3 I
to appear genteel ; " and he names one of the
chief causes of this painful pursuit of the false
conception of the true gentleman, when he
says, that " it arises from the fact that work —
hand work — is not yet sufficiently identified
with Education and culture." *
Has Ruskin not reason to be angry ? Are
his burning words too strong in exposing this
social sham, and in seeking to lead us to a
higher and holier conception, not only of the
dignity of labour, but the need, the philosophic
wisdom, the redemption for the race, that lies
in Work ; and in every man, woman, and child
on this round earth hourly taking their hard
and hearty share in it ?
There are signs, though painfully rare and
slow, that the world does partially begin to
realise, and to act on, Carlyle's words, of
which Ruskin's are a perpetual and impas-
sioned commentary : " There is a perennial
nobleness, and even sacredness in work.
There is always hope in a man that actually
and earnestly works ; in idleness alone, there
is perpetual despair."
* Practical Education, by Charles G. Leland. (London,
Whittaker & Co., 1888.)
32 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS.
IV. Education should not be estimated
BY THE MERE ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE. —
One of the chief tendencies of modern opinion
is to estimate Education by means of exami-
nations; and this tendency is one that is
yearly growing. This is a natural conse-
quence of the increased desire to make our
teaching more thorough, and it is a reaction
against the partial and imperfect teaching of
the past. But it is attended with many evils
— educational, moral, and social; the chief of
which is, that it makes mere acquirement, the
acquisition of knowledge, the chief end of all
education. Instead of this, it is a minor aim,
and should be made a means to what is higher
— the training of faculty, ability to execute, in
the intellectual field, and still better, in the
moral world ; to give power to live a higher
and happier life for one's self and for otherc
On this subordination of mere knowledge,
and the dignifying of the moral elements in
Education, Ruskin is most emphatic.
" In the education either of the lower or
upper classes," he says, " it matters not the
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 3 3
least how much or how little they know, pro-
vided they know just what will fit them to do
their work and to be happy in it." "A man
is not educated," he continues, " in any sense
whatsoever, because he can read Latin or
write English, or can behave himself in a
drawing-room ; but he is only educated, if he
is happy, busy, beneficent, and effective in
the world: millions of peasants are, therefore,
at this moment, better educated than most of
those who call themselves gentlemen ; and the
means taken to educate the lower classes in
any other sense may very often be productive
of a precisely opposite result."*
These are radical but glorious sentiments,
that cannot be too much preached in this
Philistine age and country, in which mere
acquisition, whether of pelf in the pocket or
knowledge in the head, is made the test of
educational efficiency and rank in society, and
not least among the learned classes.
Other enlightened educationists and friends
of humanity, believers in true manhood as
something different from its market value in
the world, have spoken with like vigour and
* Stones of Venice, iii., App. vii. , p. 232.
34 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
indignation against the worship of mere know-
ledge, which, in our time, is almost as fatal
to true character and happiness as the worship
of wealth. The matter was expressed pithily
by the Lancashire workman to his apprentice,
when he said, "Tha wants to know ta mich ;
tha do exactly what a tell tha, and tha'll
do reet." *
Never was the rebellion against this tyranny
of knowledge in Education better advocated
than by Edward Thring, late head-master of
Uppingham Public School, an advanced and
enlightened educationist of the Ruskin type,
who put this and many more of Ruskin's radical
positions with epigrammatic point, in spite of
his being the chief of an English higher-rank
school. He pleaded with teachers to " banish
the idolatry of knowledge, to realise that call-
ing out thought and strengthening mind are
an entirely different and higher process from
the putting in of knowledge and the heaping
up of facts." He bade them " choose deliber-
ately a large amount of ignorance, and fling-
omniscience into the common sewer, if ever
they mean to be skilled workmen, masters of
* Cyclopedia of Education, p. 202.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 3 5
mind, lords of thought, and to teach others to
be skilled workmen." * " The knowledge-hack
and knowledge-omnibus business," he scath-
ingly continues, " may minister to animated
steam engines and to intellectual navvies, but
it can never teach life or train souls." f "A
teacher is not," he says, " a parrot-master, is
not a truck-loader at a goods station ; but he
is one who sows the seeds of life and fosters
them." J
These are sentiments surely expressed quite
to Ruskin's heart. They should be made to
resound throughout the country, and re-echo
in every schoolroom in the land. Happily for
teachers, and still more for children, a strong
blow to this worship of knowledge and its
yard measure of examinations has lately been
struck by the virtual abolition of "payment by
results " in our Education Codes. It remains
to be seen how teachers and examiners will
take advantage of the new freedom, by culti-
vating intelligence more than memory, ability
more than acquirement, and character more
than all.
* Rawnsley, Life of Thring^ p. 30.
t Ibid. p. 34. X Ibid. pp. 35, 142.
$6 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
NATURE IN EDUCATION.
V. The Importance of the World of
Nature in Education. — Ruskin's name is
synonymous with the advocacy of Beauty as
an essential element in all culture ; he is,
beyond question, the greatest apostle of
^Esthetic training as necessary for human
development and felicity the modern world
has yet seen. He holds that " all educa-
tion to beauty is first " — first in importance
and first in time — " in the beauty of gentle
human faces round a child ; secondly, in the
fields." "Without these," he holds, "no one
can be educated humanly. He may be made
a calculating machine — a walking dictionary
— a painter of dead bodies — a twanger or
scratcher on keys or catgut— a discoverer of
new forms of worms in mud. But a properly
so-called human being — never." He advocates,
with reiterated, fervid, and poetic eloquence,
the importance, the vital need, of training
children through intercourse with Nature.
Not Wordsworth himself has more than he
pleaded for, insisted on, proved, and illus-
trated the absolute necessity of this open-air
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 37
element for human training, happiness, health,
and progress.
The education of every child should include
" heavenly realities ; " — and " see first," he ex-
claims with ethical and lyrical fervour — "see
first that its realities are heavenly, in the fields
— in grass, water, beasts, flowers and sky ! "
Speaking of this training through Nature, he
says that there is no part of the subject of
Education that he feels more or can press
more upon us.* Natural scenes he calls
" the pleasant places which God made at
once for the schoolroom and the playground
of our children ; " t and he declares that
u a quiet glade of forest, or the nook of a
lake shore, are worth all the schoolrooms
in Christendom." J
Speaking of the education of girls, after advo-
cating Literature and Art as necessary thereto,
he continues : " There is one more help which
a girl cannot do without — one which, alone, has
sometimes done more than all other influences
besides — the help of wild and fair nature."
Then he quotes, as an example to be followed
* Sesame and Lilies, § 84.
t Ibid. § 85. % A Joy for Ever, § 105.
38 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
in Britain, De Quincey's account of Joan of
Arc's education, in the forests of Domremy in
France ; where, De Quincey says, her education
was "mean according to the present standard,"
but " ineffably grand according to a purer
philosophic standard," — a standard Ruskin
has never ceased to raise in the eyes of his
countrymen.
Crying aloud, as with apocalyptic voice in
the existing wilderness of human error in
regard to the education of our children, for
whom love should impel us to do our best,
he says : —
u Oh ye women of England ! from the Prin-
cess of Wales to the simplest of you. . . . You
cannot baptize your children rightly in those
inch-deep fonts of yours, unless you baptize
them also in the sweet waters which the great
Lawgiver strikes forth for ever from the rocks
of your native land — waters which a Pagan
would have worshipped in their purity, and
you worship only with pollution. You cannot
lead your children to these narrow axe-hewn
church altars of yours, while the dark azure
altars in heaven — the mountains that sustain
your island throne — mountains on which a
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 39
Pagan would have seen the powers of heaven
rest in every wreathed cloud — remain for you
without inscription ; altars built, not to but by
an Unknown God." *
In this advocacy of Nature, and if possible
Wild Nature, of which we have such magnifi-
cent and beautiful examples in our own land,
easily and cheaply accessible, Ruskin is only
emphasising what Pestalozzi and Froebel have
already uttered and acted on. I have pur-
posely tried to draw a parallel between this
great man, our own master, and these best
exponents of modern wise advance in educa-
tional science and practice ; to show that, even
where the outside world are not slow to con-
sider Ruskin extreme and impracticable, his
ideas carry with them the seal of the wisest
thinkers on the very subjects which the world
ignorantly misunderstands and therefore con-
demns. Speaking of the time that he spent
amid the wonderful scenery of Switzerland
with Pestalozzi, who made intercourse with
Nature in the training of his pupils an inte-
gral and regular part of his teaching, Froebel
records, in his Autobiography, a great and
* Sesame and Lilies, § 85.
4-0 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
valuable work, happily now accessible to Eng-
lish readers,* these interesting experiences
bearing on the part Nature ought to play in
all education : —
" Closely akin to the games in their morally
strengthening aspect, were the walks, especi-
ally those of the general walking parties, more
particularly when conducted by Pestalozzi him-
self. These walks were by no means always
meant to be opportunities for drawing close to
Nature ; but Nature herself, though unsought,
always drew the walkers close to herself. Every
contact with her elevates, strengthens, purifies.
It is from this cause that Nature, like noble,
great-souled men, wins us to her ; and when-
ever school or teaching duties gave me respite,
my life at this time was always passed amidst
natural scenes and in communion with Nature.
From the tops of the high mountains near by,
I used to rejoice in the clear and still sunset,
in the pine-forests, the glaciers, the mountain
meadows, all bathed in rosy light. Such an
evening walk came, indeed, to be an almost
irresistible necessity to me after each actively
* Translation by Messrs. Charles and Moore, 1886. (Swan,
Sonnenschcin, & Co.)
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 4 I
spent day. As I wandered on the sunlit, far-
stretching hills ; or along the still shore of the
lake, clear as crystal, smooth as a mirror; or
in the shady groves, under the tall forest trees:
my spirit grew full with ideas of the truly
God-like nature and priceless value of a man's
soul, and I gladdened myself with the con-
sideration of mankind as the beloved children
of God."
And Froebel has made Nature a necessary
part of his 1 system : for as Baroness Biilow,
the greatest expounder of Froebel's educa-
tional philosophy and practice, says : " With-
out Nature, the life of the fields and forests, of
the animal and vegetable universe, the human
being must be without the most essential and
natural elements of its development." *
THE OUT-DOOR CLASS-ROOM.
These sentiments, which seem an echo of
Wordsworth and Ruskin, are the independent,
sober, unimpassioned statement of the practical
convictions and conclusions of a philosophic
* Child and Child Nature, p. 116.
42 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
German, reflecting on the great problems of
human development, and its educational pro-
cess through the daily work of our school-
rooms ; and we shall only be wise in our
practice when we make them part and parcel
of the training of all our children, whether
they are immured in our crowded cities or sur-
rounded by natural beauty in the country. It
ought to be made an important portion of the
weekly work of every school, to take the
children out into the country, under the guid-
ance of their several teachers, to breathe its
balm, grow strong in its healthy breezes, see
and enjoy its beauties, learn to observe accu-
rately and intelligently its varied phenomena,
and receive there a glorious training of sense
and soul, head and heart, possible only beneath
the blue vault of heaven.
All this to be done under as careful guidance
and earnest pursuit of intellectual and moral
aims as in the schoolroom itself. In truth, the
country should — and will, some wiser day —
become an outer, uncovered classroom ; a
Divine museum, utilised by our teachers ; the
windows of heaven in the sky that illuminate
it, opening windows of heaven in the soul,
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 43
through which the imprisoned spirits of our
weary children may gain celestial glimpses of
beauty and grandeur, of higher and happier
possibilities, and from which our dull and
narrow scholastic systems still entirely shut
them out.
And this is not Utopia. It has been the
blessed experience of many teachers and
scholars, and will, some day — God speed it ! —
become universal; and when that day comes,
no compulsory clause will be required in our
Codes for that part of the work. It was done
in Switzerland ; and it is done wherever a
true Kindergarten is fully carried out. It
has been done by many good schoolmasters,
who, rising above scholastic routine, have led
their pupils out to the fields, and found there
together joys that cannot be uttered.
While I was a teacher myself, I attempted
to carry this into practice ; and others of my
friends have done the same, with unspeakable
advantage to themselves and their children.
One good teacher in one of the Govan Board
Schools, Mr. John Main, an enthusiastic
scientist, with broader notions than common
of what Education means, has taken his pupils
44 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
out to Nature for the last fifteen years; and
he is still a young man.
Two years ago, his class, the Fourth Stan-
dard, made three rambles round Glasgow, and
a senior class under him made nine. The num-
bers ranged from twenty to fifty at a time;
and under his guidance, they have visited most
places of interest and beauty round the city.
In longer journeys, they carry their own pro-
visions, which are washed down with milk from
a neighbouring farm, water from the running
brook, happy feelings, and healthy appetites.
If this happy practice were at all common —
and there is no reason why it should not be
universal, except the apathy or ignorance of
our teachers — "not a bird should fly un-
noticed," as Edward Thring, of Uppingham,
who advocated such education, says ; " not a
song should sound, not a wing be moved, with-
out appealing to seeing eyes and hearing ears."
If such were general, " the names of Edward
and Robert Dick," he continues, " then would
not shine like stars, because of the daylight ;
and tens of thousands, using happy eyes,
would find delight in common things." *
* Rawnsley, Life of Thring, p. 18.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 4$
OVERPRESSURE.
VI. Our Educational Standard should
not be too high. — There are few things on
which Ruskin is so persistent and strenuous
as in recommending that the faculties of our
children ought not to be strained in the educa-
tion we give them ; and that the training and
instruction they receive should be specially
and intimately adapted to their capacities of
mind and body, and to the circumstances in
which they live. His counsels in this are
peculiarly needed in these days of proved
Overpressure and its painful deterioration of
individual and national life. There exists a
reprehensible ambition, in both parents and
teachers, to drive the children beyond their
powers, for present paltry gain of fame, or
place, or social position, to future certain
detriment, and ultimate loss or failure. These
are facts that cannot be gainsaid; and it is
well that they are receiving more weight and
attention from all parties concerned — from
physicians, physiologists, educationists, Par-
liament, and thoughtful persons generally.
Ruskin was long as a voice crying in the
46 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
wilderness on this point, and is still greatly
in advance of public opinion in regard to it.
Some of his utterances are of the bluntest,
but out-and-out wise, and it behoves us as
a nation to give them more earnest heed.
Among many appeals equally plain and pithy,
here is one going straight to the mark ; and
more need not be said :
" Nor should the natural torpor of whole-
some dulness be disturbed by provocations, or
plagued by punishments. The wise proverb
ought in every schoolmaster's mind to be
deeply set — 'You cannot make a silk purse
of a sow's ear ; ' expanded with the further
scholium that the flap of it will not be the
least disguised by giving it a diamond earring.
If, in a woman, beauty without discretion be as
a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, much more
in man, woman or child, knowledge without
discretion — the knowledge which a fool receives
only to puff up his stomach, and sparkle in his
cock's-comb. As I said, in matters moral,
most men are not intended to be any better
than sheep and robins ; so, in matters intellec-
tual, most men are not intended to be wiser
than their cocks and bulls, — duly scientific of
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 47
their yard and pasture, peacefully nescient
of all beyond. To be proud and strong,
each in his place and work, is permitted and
ordained to the simplest ; but ultra — ne sutor,
ne fossor.
" The entire body of teaching throughout the
series of Fors Clavigera is one steady asser-
tion of the necessity, that educated persons
should share their thoughts with the unedu-
cated, and take also a certain part in their
labours. But there is not a sentence imply-
ing that the education of all should be alike,
or that there is to be no distinction of master
from servant, or of scholar from clown. That
education should be open to all, is as certain
as that the sky should be ; but, as certainly,
it should be enforced on none, and benevolent
nature left to lead her children, whether men
or beasts, to take or leave at their plea-
sure. Bring horse and man to the water,
and let them drink if, and when, they will :
the child who desires education will be
bettered by it ; the child who dislikes it, only
disgraced." *
* Fors Clavigera, vol. viii., pp. 257-S-9.
48 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
VII. Education should vary with Cir-
cumstances. — A logical outcome of the posi-
tion thus maintained by Ruskin is another on
which he is equally pungent and pressing —
the wisdom and need of adapting the edu-
cation given to the varying circumstances of
the children to be educated. This is radically
sound, and is being more and more acted on
in Public Schools under the Education Depart-
ment; but its importance is as yet but dimly
perceived, and little practised. The traditions
of Popular Education, among both our ad-
ministrators and teachers, have mostly been
against it, and a colourless uniformity has
been too much the aim and the result of the
methods adopted — a result as far as Nature,
against which such a doctrine rebels, has
allowed. In combating it, Ruskin waxes
more indignant than usual, as in the passage
quoted below. This is taken from the in-
valuable summary of the principles of the
Education he has advocated for half a cen-
tury, given in the concluding volume (vol. viii.)
of For s Clavigera, pp. 254-5 — a summary that
should be read, learnt, and inwardly digested
by the nation, and especially by its leaders
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 49
in both educational and general affairs.
Listen to Ruskin : —
" I start with the general principle, that
every school is to be fitted for the children
in its neighbourhood who are likely to grow
up and live in its neighbourhood. The idea
of a general education which is to fit every-
body to be Emperor of Russia, and provoke
a boy, whatever he is, to want to be some-
thing better, and wherever he was born, to
think it a disgrace to die, is the most entirely
and directly diabolical of all the countless
stupidities into which the British nation has
been of late betrayed by its avarice and ir-
religion. There are, indeed, certain elements
of education which are alike necessary to the
inhabitants of every spot of earth. Cleanliness,
obedience, the first laws of music, mechanics,
and geometry, the primary facts of geography
and astronomy, and the outlines of history,
should evidently be taught alike to poor and
rich, to sailor and shepherd, to labourer and
shop-boy. But for the rest, the efficiency of
any school will be found to increase exactly
in the ratio of its direct adaptation to the
circumstances of the children it receives ; and
n
5<D RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
the quantity of knowledge to be attained in a
given time being equal, its value will depend
on the possibilities of its instant application.
You need not teach botany to the sons of fisher-
men, architecture to shepherds, or painting to
colliers; still less the elegances of grammar to
children, who, throughout the probable course
of their total lives, will have, or ought to have,
little to say, and nothing to write."
THE THREE R'S.
VIII. The Prevalent Estimate of their
value is erroneous. — On no subject, not even
excluding his views on Interest in money
matters, are Ruskin's ideas on Education more
antagonistic to prevalent traditional opinion
and general practice than those on " the three
R's," Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. In
one word, if certain elements which are higher
and better are not taught and trained in our
schools, he would not have these subjects,
which had so long been reckoned essentials,
taught at all! On this matter, he uses no
dubiety of speech or practice whatever; he
speaks quite straight.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 5 I
He says, " I do not choose to teach," in his
own schools of St. George, " (as usually under-
stood), the three R's; first, because, as I do
choose to teach the elements of music, astro-
nomy, botany, and zoology, not only the
masters and mistresses capable of teaching
these should not waste their time on the
three R's ; but the children themselves would
have no time to spare, nor should they have."
He would have these taught at home by
their parents, or by the children to each
other.
He goes on to say : " Secondly, I do not
care that St. George's children, as a rule,
should learn either reading or writing, because
there are very few people in this world who
get any good by either. Broadly and practi-
cally, whatever foolish people read does them
harm ; and whatever they write does other
people harm; and nothing can ever prevent
this, for a fool attracts folly as decayed meat
attracts flies, and distils and assimilates it, no
matter out of what book."
He tells how he " wrote privately, with some
indignation, to the Companion of St. George
who had ventured to promise to teach them."
5 2 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
Her reply that " Inspectors of Schools now
required the three R's imperatively/' evoked
the remonstrance " with indignation at high
pressure, that ten millions of Inspectors of
Schools collected on Cader Idris should not
make him teach in his schools, come to
them who liked, a single thing he did not
choose to ! " *
These, at first sight, seem not only extra-
ordinary sentiments, but they appear to out-
rage common-sense, in regard to subjects that
are thought to be the necessary instruments
for all education, as generally understood.
But Ruskin knows well where he stands in
this, as in other subjects on which he runs
counter to received opinion, and can give the
fullest reasons for the faith that is in him.
What, then, are the grounds of his aston-
ishing position in this matter ?
The gist of them may be stated in one
sentence : It is far better that the three R's
should not be taught to our children, if certain
other subjects which are infinitely more im-
portant are omitted.
What are these more important subjects in
* Fors Clavigcra, vol. viii., p. 232.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 53
Ruskin's eyes ? They are these, as briefly
summarised by himself: —
" Every parish school should have a garden,
playground, and cultivable land round it, or
belonging to it, spacious enough to employ
the scholars in fine weather, mostly out of
doors.
"Attached to the building, a children's
library, in which the scholars who care to
read may learn that art as deftly as they
like, by themselves, helping each other with-
out troubling the master. A sufficient labora-
tory always, in which shall be specimens of
all common elements of natural substances,
and where simple chemical, optical, and pneu-
matic experiments may be shown ; and, accord-
ing to the size and importance of the school,
attached workshops, many or few, — but always
a carpenter's, and, first of those added in the
better schools, a potter's."*
Shortly stated, Ruskin holds that certain
practical, intellectual, and moral elements —
those of the hand, head, and heart — are in-
expressibly more important to personal and
national happiness and well-being than any
* Fors Clavigera, vol. viii. , p. 239.
54 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
amount of dexterity in the three R's. These
should therefore be taught and trained, whether
the so-called essentials are taught or not ; and
where these higher, more vital elements are
neglected, it would be better that the lesser
should be omitted. He gives full reasons
for these positions, which would detain us
here too long. He does not, mark you,
object to the three R's in themselves, but
seeks to put them into the inferior place
they ought to occupy as compared with other
subjects which have hitherto been generally
neglected.
In teaching the three R's, when they are
taught, Ruskin would also have much less
time devoted to them; and he advocates cer-
tain reforms in their treatment in our schools.
Arithmetic, in particular, he would give com-
paratively little attention to — certainly not a
tithe of what is now given to it — truly con-
sidering that our children are kept at this
subject as if they were all to become shop-
keepers. Among other scholastic technicalities
with which young people are annoyed, he
inveighs strongly against Grammar as gener-
ally treated, saying that he is " at total issue
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 5 5
with most preceptors as to the use of grammar
to anybody." The whole of his observations
on these portions of our common school cur-
riculum are unusually wise and suggestive,
and they deserve the earnest attention of
all teachers, and makers of Codes and text-
books for the guidance of teachers, however
diverse his views are from general doctrine
and practice.
His central attitude on the relation between
the three R's and the higher matters which he
would make the staple work of our schools in
their place, is thus finely put by him in his
Crown of Wild Olive (§ 144), in words that
should be graven on the hearts of all our
teachers, and printed in golden capitals at the
head of all our Codes : —
" Education does not mean teaching people
to know what they do not know — it means
teaching them to behave as they do not be-
have. It is not teaching the youth of England
the shapes of letters and the tricks of numbers,
and then leaving them to turn their arithmetic
to roguery and their literature to lust. It is,
on the contrary, training them into the per-
fect exercise and kingly continence of their
56 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
bodies and souls, by kindness, by watching,
by warning, by precept, and by praise — but,
above all, by example."
It is well — nay, all important — that we
should hear such vigorous and well-grounded
protests against our prevalent idolatry of the
mere instruments of knowledge, which have
too long usurped the place of the truly
essential elements of education, as here stated
by this master of English, and pioneer of
educational reform.
His condemnation of the three R's may
indeed be too sweeping ; but it is rightly
founded on principle ; and the excess in his re-
commendations is due mainly to his righteous
indignation at the time of so many generations
of children being wasted over their excessive
acquisition, and at the exclusion of more vital
elements in the true culture of our people.
It is not the first time that like vigorous
protest has been entered against this slavery
to traditional opinion. A good many years
ago, the late Professor Hodgson, of Edin-
burgh, for example, published an appeal against
The Over-estimate of the Three R's in our
common school work ; and other criticisms
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 57
in the same direction, almost as pungent as
Ruskin's, might be quoted, but these would
take us too far.
What a remarkable and generally unknown
commentary all this is on the history of our
National Education, as conducted and subsi-
dised by Parliamentary enactment, in the
English Education Code of 1870, and the
Scotch of 1872 ! In these, the three R's,
thus despised and relegated to a very sub-
ordinate place as educational elements by
Rusk in and others, were made the total of
the education sanctioned and paid for in our
elementary State-aided schools ; as the only
ones needed and allowed, by our wise rulers
and Code makers, for the children of the land,
who were to become the future citizens of the
country, and the parents of the generations to
come; and as the only means by which they
were prepared for the momentous functions
of personal, domestic, and political life, on
which the welfare and progress of the nation
are founded.
The subjects Ruskin recommends as the
basis and staple of the training he would
displace these over-estimated elementary
58 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
instruments by, he explains in full detail in
various places ; but these matters are beside
our purpose here, which is simply to expound
the general principles advocated by this great
master of Educational and Social Science.
THE IMPORTANCE OF RUSKIN'S VIEWS.
But, however beautiful and attractive these
refreshing and unconventional opinions of
our eloquent and pungent critic of Education
are, space prevents further enlargement. As
already remarked, Ruskin's utterances on the
subject cover the most of the field, and his
observations are not only comprehensive, but,
for a philosophical, non-professional observer,
remarkably detailed. It would be well for the
country to know more of this great thinker's
views and suggestions on these all-important
and ever-pressing themes ; so wise, so fresh,
so needed, and so securely vitalising do I con-
sider his ideas, so well calculated to rouse us
from a false ideal, and point the way to higher
and happier and healthier things, in what we
are all vitally interested, the educating and
training of our children. Indeed, had I time,
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 59
I should try to do for Ruskin what I did fifteen
years ago for George Combe,* — that is, present,
in systematic form, his scattered observations
on educational principles and practice ; and
for the same reason, in the case of both of
these otherwise dissimilar men, who, in the
matter of Education, are wisely and happily in
unison — viz., the light their conceptions are
calculated to throw on the difficult problems
involved, and the wise guidance they are
able to give in moulding future teaching.
Whoever will devote himself to what some
day will no doubt be done — to the great
but delightful task of gathering, collating,
and classifying Ruskin's utterances on Edu-
cation — will not only do honour to himself and
his master, but provide, for general and acces-
sible use, a work of highest value, to regulate
and elevate the Education of the future.
It is well for us, it would be well for the
world, and it would be wise for those who
have the administration of educational affairs,
in all countries, to realise the central concep-
tion that runs through all Ruskin's utterances
: In Education, its Principles and Practice as developed
by George Combe. (Macmillan & Co., 1879.)
60 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
on Education, whether of criticism or sugges-
tion, by virtue of which they differ so widely
from the common practice of the day. This
conception is, that the chief aim and end of all
human teaching, in home and school, should
be ethical — a training not primarily for the
possession of any accomplishments or for
social success, but for the performance of
Duty, for doing, in the healthiest, happiest,
and completest way, the daily work of life.
Herein lies its specialty : it is this that con-
stitutes it a needed Gospel in Education ; a
message required never more than now, in these
money-worshipping, position-loving, property-
pursuing, yet momentous and hopeful times.
We require, as a people, to realise that
" Education, briefly," as Ruskin once more
summarises it, " is the leading human souls
to what is best, and making what is best
out of them ; and that these two objects
are always attainable together, and by the
same means ; that the training which makes
men Jiappiest in tliemsclves also makes them
most serviceable to others." *
* Slones of Venice^ iii., A pp. vii. (p. 226 of the 1887
edition). The whole passage is very fine.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 6 I
OUR EXISTING EDUCATIONAL IDEAL LOW
AND DEFECTIVE.
Mere knowledge, acquirements, accomplish-
ments, however great or brilliant, are as dust
to diamonds compared with this. Yet our
schools are esteemed, organised, and regulated
mostly on opposite notions.
So consistent, so earnest and thorough-
going, however, is Ruskin, that he repeatedly
and unreservedly declares that he " would
never wish to see a child taught to read at all,
unless the other conditions of its education
were alike gentle and judicious;"* so deadly
and so venomous, he holds, is mere knowledge,
encyclopaedic though it be, that is not regu-
lated by higher principle. And who among
us would dare to say otherwise ? Yet, though
we profess to agree with him in words, as
a people, we deny it in deeds ; we have never
made provision in our codes and time-tables
for systematic teaching and training in morals,
as we have done for other and less important
matters.
As Edward Thring once more indignantly
* Best ioo Books, p. 8.
62 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
and rightly declares, — " In England, we are
cutting our children in half; we are, in our
systems of education, so leaving out of count
that love, and truth, and temperance, and joy,
and sorrow, and love of God, and endurance of
pain are things teachable, that we are, in our
search for intellect, allowing national character
to suffer loss in the training." * " The idolatry
of knowledge must perish," he continues, in
prophetic strain, "or education cannot begin.
Noble character, this is what our teachers
must strive for in their pupils." f
We require to change our ideal of Education.
In all our straining after better teaching, in
all improvements in our Education Codes, we
shall never succeed in our aim, however much
we do, however much we spend, unless we
make the higher elements in it foremost and
all pervading; unless we act on the true type
of the educated man, sketched by Ruskin,
as one who "has understanding of his own
uses and duties in the world, and who has
so trained himself, or been so trained, as to
turn, to the best and most courteous account,
* Rawnsley, Life of Thring % p. 26.
t Ibid. p. 27.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES 63
whatever faculties or knowledge he has ; "
and unless, amid our over-grown luxury and
selfish refinement, we also perceive, and act
on the perception, that the ideal of human
education, as of human life, is " a union of
Spartan simplicity of manners with Athenian
sensibility and imagination."*
* A Joy for Ever, Addenda, § 147.
PART SECOND
THE TRAINING OF TASTE IN
SCHOOLS
Of neglected elements in our Education,
there has none been more forgotten than
the ^Esthetic. We have improved in many
points in our recent educational advances,
but have, till but yesterday, totally over-
looked the training of Taste in our chil-
dren, as an important and necessary part
of a full course of human development.
We are, as a people, creditably intellectual,
fairly moral, earnestly if not superstitious^
religious, and eminently and prosaically prac-
tical ; but aesthetic or refined, little or not
at all. And what is worse, we pride our-
selves on its want, deeming devotion to
things of taste weakness, and proving the
point by calling it French polish or Italian
dilettantism.
* 4
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 65
This is matter for the deepest regret ; it is
a national loss, in character and happiness,
that should command the earnest attention of
all interested in national progress. There
are growing signs of improvement in this
respect, but as yet only among the few;
and some of these have advocated the subject
in a way that has tickled popular humour,
roused ridicule, and caused revolt instead of
advance in this despised but vital direction —
a grave neglect being hidden and perpetuated
by confounding the weak ^extravagances of
sun-flower aesthetes with true culture, and by
ignorantly reckoning instruction in Art as a
means only for promoting, as Ruskin says,
" habits of mind which, in their more modern
developments in Europe, have certainly not
been advantageous to nations or indicative of
worthiness in them."*
* A Joy for Ever. Supplementary papers, "Education
in Art," § 154.
THE NEED FOR CULTIVATING TASTE
IN SCHOOLS
I. — THE NATURE OF TASTE.
In this work, the word Taste is used as a
short and convenient synonym for aesthetic
pleasure — delight in the Beautiful in all its
forms.
Taste it is difficult or impossible scientifically
to define — at least, to give it complete and
exhaustive expression. It is piquantly and
practically put by Ruskin in words sufficient
for all useful purposes, as " the instantaneous
preference of the noble thing to the ignoble : " *
a phrase which embodies its central idea and
aim. This conception has been expanded
into an endless variety of formulae. It has
been designated " sympathetic admiration of
* A Joy for Ever. Supplementary papers, "Education
in Art, 5 ' § 154.
66
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 6*]
the Beautiful and Sublime ; " by Veron, as u a
lively natural sensibility to the impressions
of the eye and ear;" and as "delight in the
Ideal."
It is not our purpose now to analyse this
feeling, more or less possessed by all human
beings, but to consider the best means of
cultivating this love for the Beautiful.
THE CHIEF GROUPS OF THE .ESTHETIC
ARTS.
This delightful emotion manifests itself in
two chief directions, according to its medium
of expression through the eye and through
the ear. These two representative organs
divide ^Esthetics and the Arts they create
into two main groups : —
The Arts of the Eye : Painting, Sculp-
ture, Architecture.
The Arts of the Ear : Music, Dancing,
Poetry.
Here we shall chiefly, if not wholly, confine
ourselves in this extensive field to the arts of
the eye, those of Painting (in which is included
Drawing), Sculpture, and Architecture.
6S RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
HOW MUCH MAY BE ESSAYED IN THE
CULTIVATION OF TASTE.
It will be our endeavour to inquire how the
general culture of our people can best be
achieved through the feeling for the Beautiful
as perceived by the eye, under the conviction,
as expressed by Ruskin, that true taste is "a
necessary accompaniment of high worthiness
in nations or men." * In considering this, it
is well not to expect too much, but at once to
see and acknowledge, with Ruskin, that " it is
not to be acquired by seeking it as our chief
object, since the first question, alike for man
and for multitude, is not at all what they are to
like, but what they are to do ; and fortunately
so, since true taste, so far as it depends on
original instinct, is not equally communicable
to all men ; and, so far as it depends on
extended comparison, is unattainable by men
employed in narrow fields of life. We shall
not succeed," he continues, " in making a
peasant's opinion good evidence on the merits
of the Elgin and Lycian marbles ; nor is it
* A Joy for Ever. Supplementary papers, "Education
in Art," § 154.
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 69
necessary to dictate to him in his garden the
preference of gilly-flower or of rose ; yet we
may make Art a means of giving him helpful
and happy pleasure, and of gaining for him " —
what Ruskin ever rightly insists on as the
end of all true education, public or private,
scholastic or personal — " serviceable know-
ledge ; " * as we found in early chapters in
this series.
THE VITAL IMPORTANCE OF CHILDHOOD
IN ITS TRAINING.
If we are to train the individual and the
nation to derive pleasure from what is beauti-
ful or artistic, it would at once seem to be
evident that we should take steps to create
this pleasure, this finer perception, at the most
susceptible period of life, before the child's
taste has been blunted or vitiated by the sight
of the ugly and degraded. This period is,
of course, that of childhood and youth, the
time of his general education, when his whole
being, under a wise system of training, should
be subjected systematically to a harmonious
* A Joy for Ever. " Education in Art," § 154.
yO RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
development of its varied faculties, so as to
produce an educated man, one who is, as
Ruskin wisely describes him, " happy, busy,
beneficent and effective in the world ; " the
true aim of all education being again, according
to him, " the leading of human souls to what is
best, and making what is best out of them." *
If it is an all-important first duty of a state
to see that every child born therein shall be
educated in the traditional elements of instruc-
tion, in " the three R's " of all knowledge, and
like accepted subjects ; it is equally its duty to
see that every child shall be trained to have an
"instantaneous preference of the noble thing
to the ignoble," to have a love for the Beauti-
ful and the Good.
Surely, while the child's susceptibilities are
most plastic, while he is receiving impressions
for good or evil that are indelible and life-long,
it would be our wisdom, as it certainly is our
duty, to surround him with what is lovely, to
saturate his eye and ear and soul with the
Beautiful, so that his pleasure in it becomes,
as far as possible, instantaneous and delight-
ful, so that he will turn with pain, if not
* Stones of Venice, iii., App. vii.
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS J I
loathing, from all that is ugly and degrading.
In undertaking this part of his education,
we ought firmly to believe with Ruskin
that " in the make and nature of every
man, however rude or simple, there are some
powers for better things ; some tardy imagi-
nation, torpid capacity of emotion, tottering
steps of thought, there are, even at the
worst ; and in most cases, it is all our own
fault that they are tardy and torpid. But
they cannot be strengthened unless we are
content to take them in their feebleness, and
unless we prize and honour them in their
imperfection above the best and most perfect
manual skill."
If we were wise, we should also act on the
conviction, however Utopian or extravagant it
may appear to many men, as uttered by the
same authority, that " all education to beauty
is first — in the beauty of gentle human faces
round a child ; secondly, in the fields — fields
meaning grass, water, beasts, flowers, and
sky. Without these, no man can be educated
humanly."
"The whole period of youth is one essen-
tially of formation, edification, instruction. I
72
RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
use these words with their weight in them ;
intaking of stores, establishment in vital habits,
hopes, faiths. There is not an hour of it
but is trembling with destinies, not a moment
of which, once passed, the appointed work
can ever be done again, or the neglected
blow struck on the cold iron. Take your
vase of Venice glass out of the furnace and
strew chaff over it in its transparent heat,
and recover that to its clearness and rubied
glory when the north wind has blown upon it ;
but do not think to strew chaff over the child
fresh from God's presence and to bring the
heavenly colours back to him, at least in this
world."
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SCHOOL-ROOM
FOR THIS TRAINING.
But the homes of the mass of our children,
especially in our great cities, are too often
sordid and unlovely, and not seldom vile.
Their parents are, as a whole, ignorant or
careless ; and even with all their affection for
their offspring, which is as genuine and as
deep as in more favoured circles, they are
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS J ^
unable to provide the means of training to
beauty or culture of any kind. It therefore
becomes a national duty to supply the train-
ing thus lacking to these children in their
homes, and in the stony streets, by seeing
that it is furnished elsewhere, under the best
conditions — in the schoolrooms into which we
gather them for their education. It is there
only that the training of the intellectual and
moral faculties of most of our children can
be carried on ; and on account of the mean
surroundings of their dwellings, it is there
alone that we can achieve in any degree the
training of their aesthetic faculties, their gradual
perception and love of the Beautiful. Hence
the importance of our schools in this branch
of culture, for there alone exist the means of
higher culture to them.
Ruskin, perceiving this, would surround all
our little ones with beauty in their schools,
which, he truly says, are "the first and most
important kind of public buildings " into which
we ought to "introduce some great changes
in the way of decoration." He laments the
general state of our schoolrooms as they have
been in the past.
OP the
IVERSf
74 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
OUR SCHOOLS DEVOID OF TASTE IN
THE PAST.
" Hitherto," he says,* " it has either been so
difficult to give all the education we wanted to
our children, that we have been obliged to do
it, if at all, with cheap furniture and bare walls;
or else we have considered that cheap furni-
ture and bare walls are a proper part of the
means of education ; and supposed that boys
learned best when they sat on hard forms, and
had nothing but blank plaster about and above
them whereupon to employ their spare atten-
tion ; also, that it was as well they should be
accustomed to rough and ugly conditions of
things, partly by way of preparing them for
the hardships of life, and partly that there
might be the least possible damage done to
floors and forms, in the event of their be-
coming, during the master's absence, the fields
or instruments of battle.
"I believe," he continues, "the notion of
fixing the attention by keeping the room empty
is a wholly mistaken one. I think it is just
in the emptiest room that the mind wanders
* A Joy for Ever, § 104.
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 75
most ; for it gets restless, like a bird, for want
of a perch, and casts about for any possible
means of getting out and away.
"And even if it be fixed by an effort on
the business in hand, that business becomes
itself repulsive, more than it need be, by the
vileness of its associations ; and many a study
appears dull or painful to a boy when it is
pursued on a blotted deal desk, under a wall
with nothing on it but scratches and pegs,
which would have been pursued pleasantly
enough in a curtained corner of his father's
library, or at the lattice window of his cottage.
Nay, my own belief is, that the best study of
all is the most beautiful." *
THE TWO WAYS OF TRAINING TASTE
IN SCHOOL.
This training of the Taste of our children
in school may be carried on in two ways —
passively and actively — by the passive and
insensible influence of the scholars' surround-
ings in the school ; and by the active and
determinate education of their Taste, through
* A Joy for Ever, § 105.
y6 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
various means undertaken by the teacher for
that end. Here we shall be obliged to con-
fine ourselves almost entirely to the insensible
training of taste in and by our schools.
SCHOOLS SHOULD BE REFINED IN ARCHI-
TECTURE AND DECORATION.
For this purpose, Ruskin would surround
the whole school-life of our children with
beautiful things. Our schools should all be,
according to him, of " refined architectural
decoration," nay, they should be "noble"
and " castellated " ; and he looks forward to
the day, after we become wiser, happier, and
better educated, when such "noble groups"
will arise all over England. This much for
their external appearance.
Their interior he would have artistically
adorned ; and for the decoration of the walls
of the class-rooms, he specially recommends
" historical painting." He complains, and
rightly, that "we have hitherto been in the
habit of conveying all our historical knowledge,
such as it is, by the ear only, never by the
eye; all our notions of things being ostensibly
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS J J
derived from verbal description, not from sight."
He has " no doubt, that as we gradually grow
wiser, we shall discover at last that the eye is
a nobler organ than the ear ; and that through
the eye we must, in reality, obtain, or put into
form, nearly all the useful information we have
about this world." *
" The use of decorative paintings on the
school walls would be, in myriads of ways,
to animate their history for them, and to put
the living aspect of past things before their
eyes as faithfully as intelligent invention can ;
so that the master shall have nothing to do
but once to point to the schoolroom walls, and
for ever afterwards, the meaning of any word
would be fixed in a boy's mind in the best
possible way. Is it a question of classical
dress — what a tunic was like, or a chlamys,
or a peplus ? At this day, you have to point
to some vile wood-cut in the middle of a
dictionary page, representing the thing hung
upon a stick ; but then, you would point to a
hundred figures, wearing the actual dress, in
its fiery colours, in all actions of various
stateliness or strength ; you would understand
* A Joy for Ever, § 106.
78 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
at once how it fell round the people's limbs as
they stood, how it drifted from their shoulders
as they went, how it veiled their faces as they
wept, how it covered their heads in the day
of battle."*
THE VIEWS OF ANCIENT THINKERS.
In all this, extravagant and costly as it may
seem to some, Ruskin is but expressing, in his
own inimitable way, the thoughts of some of
the best thinkers in all time, regarding the
higher culture of our children — from the long
departed ages of the wise and cultured Egyp-
tians, whose temples and cities by the Nile
were a series of picture-galleries, down to the
present day, when our blind eyes are gradu-
ally opening to the importance of this neglected
part of education. We are now only begin-
ning — and very slowly beginning — to realise
this in the nineteenth century after Christ, five
thousand years after the Egyptians saw and
acted on it ; what the Greeks realised and acted
on four centuries before Christ, especially in
the age of Perikles.
* A Joy for Ever, § 107.
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 79
"We ought," says Plato, "to seek out
artists who, by the power of genius, can trace
out the nature of the fair and graceful, that
our young men, dwelling, as it were, in a
healthful region, may drink in good from every
quarter whence any emanation from noble
works may strike upon their eye or their
ear, like a gale wafting health from salubrious
lands ; and win them imperceptibly from their
earliest years into resemblance, love, and har-
mony with the true beauty of reason. Because
he that has been duly nurtured therein will
have the keenest eye for defects, whether in
the failures of art, or in the misgrowths of
nature ; and feeling a most just disdain for
them, will commend beautiful objects, and
gladly receive them into his soul, and feed
upon them, and grow to be noble and good ;
whereas he will rightly censure and hate all
repulsive objects, even in his cJiildhood, before
he is able to be reasoned with ; and when
reason comes, he will welcome her most cor-
dially who can recognise her by the instinct
of relationship, and because he has been thus
nurtured." *
Com pay re's History of Pedagogy.
80 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
/ESTHETIC EDUCATION IN ATHENS.
And this was greatly — nay, wonderfully — a
reality in the life and training of Athenian
youth.
"The Athenian of the age ofPerikles," says
Augustus Wilkins, in his admirable little work
on National Education in Greece ', "was living
in an atmosphere of unequalled genius and
culture. He took his way past the temples,
where the friezes of Phidias seemed to breathe
and struggle, under the shadow of the colon-
nades reared by the craft of Iktinus or Kalik-
rates, and glowing with the hues of Polyg-
notus, to the agora, the forum, the market-
place, where, like his Aryan forefathers by
the shores of the Caspian, or his Teutonic
cousins in the forests of Germany, he was to
take his part as a free man in fixing the
fortunes of his country."
11 What could books do more for a man who
was receiving an education such as this ? It
was what the student gazed on, what he heard,
what he caught by the magic of sympathy,
not what he read, which was the education
furnished by Athens. Not by her discipline,
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 8 I
like Sparta and Rome, but by the unfailing
charm of her gracious influence did Athens
train her children."
THE VIEWS OF MONTAIGNE AND FENELON.
"Were it left to my ordering," exclaims
Montaigne, after indignantly and as wrath-
fully as it was possible for his gentleness,
condemning the seventies of the school-life
of his time, "were it left to my ordering,
I should paint the school with the pictures
of Joy and Gladness, Flora and the Graces,
as the philosopher Speusippus did his school,
that where their profit is, they might there
have pleasure too. Such viands as are proper
and wholesome for children," he continues
in figure, " should be seasoned with sugar,
and such as are dangerous to them, with
gall."*
Fenelon also expresses delightfully true and
advanced thoughts in regard to the importance
of the element of the Beautiful and the attrac-
tive in early education. He condemns the
wearisome and gloomy class-rooms of his
Essays, Book I., chap. 25.
82 • RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
time, in 1680, when he was thirty years of
age, where the teachers were ever talking
to children of words and things of which
they understood nothing. " There was no
liberty, no enjoyment, but always lessons,
silence, uncomfortable postures, correction,
and threats." '
In the education of his time, and it is too
true of our own, " all the pleasure was put
on one side, and all that was disagreeable on
the other; the disagreeable was all put into
the study, and all the pleasure was found in
the diversions." For study, as for moral dis-
cipline, according to Fenelon, pleasure must
do all.
" Into a reservoir so little and so precious
as a child's mind, only exquisite things should
be poured," as he finely expresses it. In his
endeavour to avoid the repulsive in education,
however, he is apt, perhaps, to go too far in his
righteous rebellion against the evil methods
of his time ; as, when he asks that the books
of the pupils shall be " beautifully bound with
gilt edges and fine pictures ; " * and yet we
have abundantly realised this last, in exquisite
* Compayre's History of Pedagogy, pp. 170-3.
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 83
illustrations in the everyday reading-books of
our own time ! We have only to go further,
and recognise ^Esthetic Culture as equally bind-
ing on us in other directions in the training
of our children.
OTHER OPINIONS COINCIDENT.
Time would fail us to cite other advocacy of
this training, such as the wise rhetoric of the
great educational innovator, Rousseau ; the
eloquent pleadings of Richter; the philosophic
educational utterances of Froebel, in whose
Kindergarten system ^Esthetic development,
by active and passive training, forms a pro-
minent, attractive, and most effective feature
from the first — being indeed the most detailed
and best graduated ^Esthetic course for schools
yet devised.
I would only conclude the citation of these
eminent authorities in favour of this neglected
element in our education, by referring to the
opinion of two thinkers of our own day.
That dry, hard-headed philosopher, John
Stuart Mill, in his rectorial address at St.
Andrews, urged ^Esthetic training as " needful
84 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
to the completeness of the human being,"
and as " deserving to be regarded in a more
serious light than is the custom of these
countries."
John Stuart Blackie, whose educational
labours deserve more recognition than they
have received, says in one of his most recent
volumes : " Specially, let the schoolmaster take
a leaf from the wisdom of the ancient Egyp-
tians, who learned much from picture-writing
long before letters were invented or books
were in general circulation. Let him take
care that the walls of the schoolroom be hung
round with speaking portraits of all the great
and good heroes and heroines of national and
general history, as also with striking presenta-
tions of the picturesque scenes, famous cities,
and historic sites, that mark the dramatic
movements of human progress ; for these will
remain through life, and compass their bearer
with a rich array of monitory witnesses, long-
after whole volumes of dim record and long-
columns of unfructifying dates shall have
passed into oblivion." *
* On ' ; The Philosophy of Education," in Essays on Social
Subjects, 1890.
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 8 5
II. — WHAT HAS BEEN DONE TOWARDS THE
REALISATION OF THESE PRINCIPLES?
In view of these philosophical principles of
the science of Education, by which ^Esthetic
training is proved to be a necessary and im-
portant element in the full development of
humanity, thus expounded and recommended
by the more enlightened thinkers, it becomes
an interesting and natural inquiry — What has
been done to carry these principles into prac-
tice in our schools ? The simple answer is
that, until recently, little or nothing has been
attempted in this direction. This neglect is
due in largest measure to the general back-
ward condition of Education up till the present
century, and the want of sufficient enlighten-
ment on the subject among those concerned
with the conduct of Education ; and also, as
suggested already by Ruskin, to the difficulty
of securing even the bare elements of the
three R's in Common schools, and the devo-
tion to certain traditional subjects, notably -
the dead languages, in our Higher Grade
schools.
86 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
THE BEGINNING OF AN /ESTHETIC
REVIVAL.
Indeed, in Britain, it was not till the passing
of the English Education Act of 1870, and
the Scotch Act of 1872, that our educational
authorities took any steps to provide for the
training of Taste in Common Schools, by
means of architecture, furnishing, or otherwise.
At that time, the new public interest roused
in National Education, and the enlightened
policy of some of the more prominent School
Boards, created what may be justly charac-
terised as a new era, not only in general
school provision and work, but markedry in
improved aesthetic conditions, in the premises
erected for the education of the mass of the
people — an advance far ahead of what has
yet been done in the Higher Schools for the
wealthy. School Boards in general, and some
Boards in particular, provided and furnished
buildings architecturally palatial as compared
with their predecessors, and internally, well
furnished and sometimes tastefully adorned.
The Boards of most of the larger cities
have shown praiseworthy examples in this
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS Sy
particular. At the same time, it cannot be
said that anywhere has the importance of
^Esthetic Education, by passive adornment
and active training, been sufficiently recog-
nised as a determinate and practical part of
the daily work of our schools.
Ill- ^PtE-J^fcEANS— Oi^^S^HET4C C U LT I V A-
TION IN SCHOOLS.
To come to the practical side of the subject :
How are the managers and teachers in our
Common Schools to provide for the ^Esthetic
Education of our children ? There is no lack
of means of a good kind, provided there
exists the desire — the way is easy if the will
is there. Happily, every year witnesses an
increase of beautiful materials at surprisingly
low prices.
I. Scholastic Diagrams. — The maps, dia-
grams^ofa wide variety, representations of
the animal and vegetable world, pictures of
scenery, cabinets of objects, are abundant and
good, and easily within the reach of all who
88 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
wish for them; and many schools are well
supplied with these. I should deprecate, in
this connection, the exhibition, on the walls,
of physiological charts, with sections of the
human frame and its organs, which, however
useful for teaching purposes, are unpleasant,
often painfully ugly, and certainly not con-
ducive to taste or refined feeling. These yet
disfigure the walls of many schools, neither
managers nor teachers seemingly noticing their
incongruity and offence ; this very blindness
being an additional proof that we have not
awakened to the means and aims of education
on its ^Esthetic side.
2. Special ^Esthetic Decorations. — But
for the cultivation of Taste in schools, much
more is required than the exhibition of such
objects and diagrams, which, however pleas-
ing in colour and arrangement, are primarily
educational, and not artistic, in their aim.
We ought to provide other things directly
intended for ^Esthetic purposes, for the cultiva-
tion of the feeling for the Beautiful — in good
drawings, engravings, photographs, pictures,
both plain and coloured ; portraits of the great
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 89
and good of the earth ; historical scenes by
eminent artists ; busts of all kinds, of which
an ever - increasing variety is being cheaply
provided, including the best of classical
antiquity and of modern art ; architectural
designs, and photos of the most beautiful
buildings in the world, many of which are
now produced large, beautiful, and effective;
and, among other good reproductions, some of
the pretty coloured pictures from the Christ-
mas numbers of the illustrated journals, espe-
cially those of beautiful children, the very
sight of which it is a pleasure to see in our
schools, where they often appear. In all these
lines, materials are abundant and good, and
yearly increase in number and improve in char-
acter, both with and without colour. Several
societies exist for the purpose of providing
artistic materials for school decoration, the
yearly issues of which should be better known
and more utilised by school managers and
friends of Education generally." 55 '
* Two of these may be mentioned : " The Art for Schools
Association," 29 Queen Square, Bloomsbury, London, from
which catalogues of their beautiful reproductions can be
had ; and "The Fitzroy Picture Society," 20 Fitzroy Street,
London, W.
90 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
3. Illustrations in School Books. — In
this connection, there is one medium by which
much may be done for the cultivation of the
taste of the individual pupils — that of artistic
illustration of school books, especially for the
teaching of reading, geography, and history.
In no department of educational furnishings
has such marked advance been made as here,
especially in Reading books and Geographical
Readers, many of which are brightened with
beautiful engravings ; especially by firms, like
Blackie and Nelson, which utilise for school
purposes the exquisite engravings they pro-
duce for artistic books of a costly kind — many
of them being simply charming. This is a
field that should be specially cultivated by all
interested in Education, including publishers.
It is one that might effect an improvement in
Taste above even wall decoration, as these
beautiful presentations are ever before the
pupils' eyes, both at home and in school, and
might, and no doubt do, influence the parents
as well as the children. Much more should
be done, however, by teachers, to increase the
effect of these illustrations, and cultivate the
taste of the young through their means; by
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 9 I
directing their attention to their beauty, and
pointing out to, and, still better, drawing from,
their scholars the artistic elements in these fine
engravings, the use of which is yearly becoming
more common for educational purposes.
4. Plants and Flowers. — Another and
delightful means of aesthetic influence is the
presence of plants and flowers in the school-
room. These are being increasingly pro-
vided both by teachers and Boards, and many
schools are really well adorned by their sweet
influence. Every school in the land could and
should be so brightened and ornamented ; for
our wild plants, especially ferns, are as effective
for this purpose as the cultivated, and being
hardy, are more useful than these. Rich folk
in both town and country might do much to
make our schools beautiful with flowers, by
sending plants there, to be kept for a time, and
replaced when required ; but few of the well-
to-do have yet realised this blessed function,
this kindly and beautiful service to their less
fortunate brethren.
The care of these living creatures, in
watering, dusting, ventilating, and tending
92 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
them, should, as far as possible, be entrusted
to the pupils themselves, who really, when
interested by proper teaching in these tender
and beautiful creations, take great pleasure in
doing these educative offices, and to whom it
should be made an honour, by wise teachers,
to have these entrusted to them. I am happy
to say that many schools are thus well pro-
vided with plants, which are carefully tended,
and look healthy and blooming — diffusing
both beauty and fragrance around them. All
depends on the teachers ; and though much
less is done in this way than might be — and
it is painfully small as yet — it is pleasant to
note a gradual love and appreciation of these
exquisite things.
5. The Study qf External Nature. —
The care of plants inside the school at once
suggests the wisdom and pleasure of seeking
for them outside, by the cultivation of a love
and study of Nature as an integral part of
the regular work of the school. On no
point connected with educational reform is
Ruskin more eloquent and emphatic than on
this. I have already referred to it in some
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 93
measure, and I would again, with all the
earnestness in my power, plead for Nature
being made an essential element in all our
education, in every school in the land. Nothing
has been more neglected ; in nothing have
our educational authorities, on whom the con-
duct of National Education falls, been more
blind and backward than in their failure to
recognise the importance of outside Nature as
a means of health, instruction, training, and
higher culture for our children. In most other
directions, we have made advances ; in many,
great if not remarkable progress. In this we
may be said to have made none whatever.
Here, beyond all question, we have shown
reprehensible callousness and blindness to the
best interests of the children, in this wonderful
and delectable field of human development.
A NEW CRUSADE IN FAVOUR OF TRAINING
THROUGH NATURE NEEDED.
This affords only an additional and urgent
reason why educational reformers should take
the matter up, and institute an active and
94 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
strenuous crusade, to rouse the attention of
the country, and especially of the managers
of our educational machinery, to the neglect
of Nature in our teaching; and the urgent
need of taking our children out of doors,
away to the country, for educational ends.
It ought not to be left to philanthropic
agencies to give our city children a " fresh-
air fortnight;" it should be done by our School
Boards, as part of their curriculum — to be
carried out once a week at least, under the
guidance of their teachers — as it will be some
happier day. In the department of aesthetic
culture, its effects would be remarkable and
delightful. In respect to exercise and health,
the cultivation of observation and intelligence,
and the study of realities as higher than
books, to which we are too much in bondage,
and in countless other admirable directions,
its value and importance are paramount.
It is impossible for any one to speak too
strongly in favour of this new and glorious
avenue for a higher and broader culture than
we yet understand. We need the reminder.
We ought as a people to take practical action
in the matter; and it is with this direct aim,
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 95
that I here press the subject on all those to
whom it should be a labour of love to do it,
to help in this way to initiate a broader and
sweeter culture for our children, and happier
and healthier school life.
6. Other Elements in ^Esthetic Training.
— The other means and elements of ^Esthetic
Education, I can only barely mention. As
urged by me in 1874, the Education of Taste
is a very broad subject, inasmuch as it should
be an element in the culture of every faculty.
The active education of Taste includes the
teaching of form and colour, drawing, and
painting, and the principles that guide them;
the aesthetic training of the senses and other
physical powers ; the culture of conduct, per-
son, dress, bearing, manner, and speech ; of
the intellect, the imagination, the feelings,
and the moral faculties; and much more —
all which ought to be systematically given in
our schools.*
* Report of Committee of Council on Education in Scot-
land for 1874.
g6 ruskin on education
IV. — THE MORAL EFFECTS OF .ESTHETIC
CULTURE.
The effect of this ^Esthetic training, among
other things, on Morals is much greater than
may by many be supposed — certainly much
greater than we have yet understood, as proved
by its neglect. We must rise to the concep-
tion advocated six centuries ago in Greece,
and embodied in all Plato's teaching. With
him, true Art was the best means for the culti-
vation of Moral character; the soul rising to
the Good through the Beautiful, the words
koXos teal ayaOos — the Beautiful and the Good
— being constantly associated in the teaching
of the old philosophers, a union which we are
to-day too apt to despise or to deny, certainly
too much to neglect. Our own Ruskin once
more puts this union with his accustomed force
and felicity :
" How can we sufficiently estimate the effect
on the mind of a noble youth, ar~a~time
when the world opens to him, of having faith-
ful and touching representations put before
him of the acts and presences of great men
— how many a resolution, which would alter
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 97
and exalt the whole course of his after-
life, might be formed ; when, in some dreamy
twilight, he met, through his own tears, the
fixed eyes of those shadows of the great
dead, unescapable and calm, piercing to his
soul ; or fancied that their lips moved in dread
reproof or soundless exhortation ? And if
but for one out of many, this were true — if
yet, in a few, you could be sure that such
influence had indeed changed their thoughts
and destinies, and turned the eager and reck-
less youth, who would have cast away his
energies on the racehorse or the gambling-
table, to that noble life-race, that holy life-
hazard, which should win all glory to himself
and all good to his country — would not that,
to some purpose, be ' political economy of
art ' ? " *
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?
Do not, however, let us attempt or expect
too much in any efforts we may undertake in
this national training of Taste. All real and
solid development is necessarily slow, and in
* A Joy for Ever, § 108.
98 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
no department slower than here. But there
is one thing at which we may steadily and
successfully aim — to produce a definite con-
viction in the more enlightened members
of the community, that ^Esthetic Education
should be as much an integral daily element
of Public Education as any of the lower sub-
jects now recognised. It is assuredly and
sadly true, as John Stuart Mill said, that M it
deserves to be regarded in a more serious
light than is the custom of these countries."
Beyond all doubt or cavil, ^Esthetic training
in all our schools, elementary and advanced, •
as much for the rich as for the poor, is, as
it has been truly characterised, "the void in
modern education." And when that void is
filled up, the school will raise national taste and
^Esthetic culture more generally, speedily, and
effectually than any other agency that exists
in the land.
Note. — We are moving ! In May last an influential depu-
tation from the Committee of the Manchester Art Museum
waited upon Mr. Acland, the virtual Minister of Education,
contending, among other things, that visits to museums,
historical buildings, and botanical gardens, under efficient
teachers, formed a valuable branch of education, and asking
that time thus spent should be reckoned as if spent in school ;
TRAINING OF TASTE IN SCHOOLS 99
several important School Boards expressing themselves in
favour of the request. Mr. Acland, in reply, spoke of the
need of making school bright and attractive, and of teaching
children to appreciate beautiful things. He would like to see
school walls filled with reproductions of friezes and pictures,
, which would be an education in form and colour ; he heartily
held the idea of William Morris, that, no more than education,
than liberty itself, should art be for the few ; and he pledged
himself to carry out the wishes of the deputation in the New
Code. (See Journal of Education for June 1894, p. 324.)
PART THIRD
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS
MORALITY A CONSTANT ELEMENT IN ALL
RUSKIN'S TEACHING.
No social reformer of our time has surpassed
Ruskin in the wisdom, constancy, and earnest-
ness of his pleading for the Moral element in
all culture, in all national, domestic, and social
life. Indeed, he has insisted on its presence
and activity in spheres and subjects which
are popularly, and by many philosophically,
supposed to have, if any, only a distant
connection with Morals — as in Art, Painting,
and Architecture. It is the most distinctive
feature of his Social and ^Esthetic philosophy,
that he advocates Morality as a constant and
essential principle in #// artistic and national life;
and here also he has done eminent and important
service to a much neglected part of National
Education, its Moral and Religious side.
IOO
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 01
I. — THE PRESENT CONDUCT OF MORAL
EDUCATION UNSATISFACTORY.
This Moral and Religious portion of Educa-
tion is popularly supposed to be more carefully
provided for than any other in our scholastic
system, receiving, it is thought, special atten-
tion from the teachers, and being under the
fostering care of the clergy. One chief function
of the churches ought certainly to be to see to
its efficient and punctual teaching. Yet it is
the simple truth to say, that no part of our
educational work is less systematically and
less effectively carried out than this same
Moral and Religious training, which is sup-
posed to be its best feature. This is a sad and
serious fact, which it behoves all educationists
and all earnest men to look more seriously
into. If its neglect is a fact, it is time, it is
more than time, that it should be remedied.
This condition of things needs more abundant
emphasis than it has received, to draw public
attention to its neglect.
All important as Moral Education is acknow-
ledged by all to be, it is in the want of syste-
matic teaching that it has been, and still is,
102 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
defective : even arithmetic, spelling, and writ-
ing having surpassed it in both systematic
treatment and efficient results.
. We have, in this vital and attractive field,
no systematic teaching of the general principles
of conduct ; no rousing of the moral nature to
strenuous activity by inspiring lessons 'on the
virtues, and on the lives of the best men and
women who have exhibited them ; nothing done
adequately or systematically in this direction
at all commensurate with its importance, or
comparable with what has been attempted and
achieved in the three R's, in mathematics,
classics, and other subjects of mere intellectual
training.
ruskin's condemnation of it.
The scorn with which Ruskin characterises
our Moral and Religious instruction as hither-
to given in church and school, is reiterated
and often scathing, being uttered at times with
volcanic outbursts of sarcasm that need not
now detain us. All earnest men who feel
the importance of Religion and Morals can-
not but be thankful that he has exposed its
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS IO3
unsystematic treatment and want of thorough-
ness. Here is his estimate of our present edu-
cational system in relation to its neglect of the
Moral element ; and of the wonderful possibili-
ties of a thorough system of combined Moral and
Intellectual training, in which, as he graphically
puts it, it should be our aim " to give to every
line of action its unquestioned principle."
"The laws of virtue and honour are," he
urges, " to be taught compulsorily to all men ;
whereas our present forms of education refuse
to teach them any ; and allow the teaching, by
the persons interested in their promulgation, of
the laws of cruelty and lying, until we find
these British islands gradually filling with a
breed of men who cheat without shame, and
kill without remorse.
" It is beyond the scope of the most san-
guine thought to conceive how much misery
and crime would be effaced from the world by
persistence, even for a few years, in a system
of education directed to raise the fittest into
positions of influence, to give to every scale
of intellect its natural sphere, and to every line
of action its unquestioned principle."*
; " Fors Clavigera, vol. viii., p. 259.
104 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
THE NEED OF BETTER MORAL TRAINING.
Hear Ruskin's courageous exposure of the
neglect of Moral Education as compared with
the care bestowed on society tinsel. It is
a specimen of his indictment, in other re-
spects, of onr Moral Education. " You bring
up your girls as if they were meant for side-
board ornaments, and then complain of their
frivolity. Appeal to the grand instincts of
virtue in them ; teach them that courage
and truth are the pillars of their being. Do
you think that they would not answer that
appeal, brave and true as they are even
now, when you know that there is hardly
a girls' school in this Christian kingdom
where the children's courage or sincerity
would be thought of half so much importance
as their way of coming in at a door; and
when the whole system of society, as respects
the mode of establishing them in life, is one
rotten plague of cowardice and imposture —
cowardice, in not daring to let them live or
love except as their neighbours choose; and
imposture, in bringing, for the purposes of our
own pride, the full glow of the world's worst
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS 105
vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very period when
the whole happiness of her future existence de-
pends upon her remaining undazzled ? " *
II. — THE TEACHING SHOULD BE SYSTEMATIC.
Even with "Religious Knowledge" well
taught in our schools, and better taught than
it is, Moral teaching and training should be
systematically given. That is the position
that ought to be pressed home on the atten-
tion of all earnest men and women interested,
as so many increasingly are, in the moral, social,
and religious improvement of the people.
This subject treats of our duties to ourselves
and others, their nature, and the principles that
regulate their performance. A very large part
of error in conduct arises from simple igno-
rance of the right actions to be done in certain
circumstances, and of their results to ourselves
and others. We require to know the laws of
our constitution and our relations to others,
to be able to perform the actions that are in
accordance with these. Such truths are in no
degree antagonistic to religion, nor are they
to be substituted for it. Rightly viewed and
* Sesame and Lilies, § So.
106 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
rightly taught, they are its best assistance,
materials for its becoming wiser, purer, and
nobler. They tell us how to perform the
duties incumbent on us, which should be
performed religiously and piously.
III. — ^ORAt TRAINING PARAMOUNT AND
TRST.
With Ruskin, the moral aim of Education
is vital, central, and all-embracing — " it is the
leading of human souls to what is best, and
making what is best out of them," — an ad-
mirable, unsurpassed statement at once of its
purpose and its material.
What should be the aim of Education in his
eyes ? Listen to him : —
"The cry for the education of the lower
classes, which is heard every day more widely
and more loudly, is a wise and a sacred cry,
provided it be extended into one for the edu-
cation of all classes, with definite respect to
the work each man has to do, and the sub-
stance of which he is made. But it is a
foolish and vain cry, if it be understood,
as in the plurality of cases it is meant to
be, for the expression of mere craving after
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS 10/
knowledge, irrespective of the simple purposes
of the life that now is, and the blessings of
that which is to come."*
THE REAL END OF EDUCATION IS MORAL.
The real object and end of all Education was
never better put than by this clear-sighted
educational reformer, in a passage which cannot
be sufficiently conned and considered by the
country ; all the more to be noted, now that
Education has roused public attention, and
commanded so much practical interest, action,
and money for its extension and improvement.
"Education does not mean," he wisely ex-
plains, " teaching people to know what they
do not know " — it is not mere instruction,
the pouring in of knowledge, however inter-
esting or practically important ; it is some-
thing much more valuable, more essential to
happiness and progress — " it means teaching
them to behave as they do not behave. It
is not teaching the youth of England the
shapes of letters and the tricks of numbers " ;
— it is not teaching them the three R's, so
long,- and too long, reckoned the all-in-all
f Stones of Venice, vol. iii., App. vii.
108 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
of Popular Education — " and then leaving
them to turn their arithmetic to roguery and
their literature to lust," — as far as steps have
been taken by us to provide against their abuse.
" It is," he continues, " training them into the
perfect exercise and kingly continence of their
bodies and souls — by kindness, by watching,
by warning, by precept and by praise — but,
above all, by example." *
RUSKIN'S SUMMARY OF ITS AIMS.
He cannot enough emphasise the importance
of its Moral elements. " The final results of
the education I want you to give your chil-
dren will be, in a few words, this : They will
know what it is to see the sky. They will
know what it is to breathe it. And they will
know, best of all, what it is to behave under
it, as in the presence of a Father who is in
heaven."f These words should be carved in
letters of gold on the frieze and the pediment
of every school in the land, and on the walls of
the meeting-room of every School Board in the
kingdom.
* Crown of Wild Olive, § 144.
t Fors Clavi^ercL vol. i., 1S71.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS 109
INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL EDUCATION
CONTRASTED BY RUSKIN.
"The first," he says, "as indeed the last,
nobility of Education is in rule over our
thoughts." Again : " Knowledge is not Edu-
cation, and can neither make us happy nor
rich." Again, in characterising our present
Education as devoted too much to intellec-
tual and sordid, worldly aims, he says :
"You miss the first letter of your lives,
and begin with A for apple-pie, instead of
L for love ; and the rest of the writing is,
some little, some big, some turned the wrong
way; and the sum of it all to your per-
plexity." f
Sir Walter Scott once wrote : " We shall
never learn to respect our real calling and
destiny till we have taught ourselves to con-
sider everything as moonshine compared with
the education of the heart." This is finely
echoed by Ruskin :
" In a little while," he truly predicts, " the
* Fors Clayigera, vol. iii., p. 25.
t Ibid., vol. iii., p. 285.
I IO RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
general interest in Education will assuredly dis-
cover that healthy habits, and not mechanical
chanting of the church catechism, are the staple
of it ; and then, not in my model colony only, ,
but as best it can be managed — in un-modelled
place or way — girls will be taught to cook, boys
to plough, and both to behave ; and that with
the heart, which is the first piece of all the body
to be instructed."*
Again : " All Education must be moral, first ;
intellectual, secondarily. Intellectual before —
much more without — Moral Education is, in
completeness, impossible, and, in accomplish-
ment, a calamity." f
Once more, he explains, as already quoted :
" I take Wordsworth's single line :
We live by admiration, hope, and love,
for my literal guide in all Education. My
final object with every child will be, to teach it
what to admire, what to hope for, and what to
love." t
* Fors Clavigera, vol. v., 48.
t Ibid., vol. vi., p. 225.
X Ibid., vol. v., 50, p. 30.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I I I
herbart's testimony.
In thus emphasising the importance of the
systematic teaching of the principles of conduct,
Ruskin is in accord with the best educationists
of all time ; and a glorious anthology of their
utterances on the subject could be presented.
Let the great German educationist, Herbart,
speak for the rest, and concentrate their uni-
versal opinions in one passage :
" The one and the whole work of Educa-
tion may be summed up in the concept —
Morality. Morality is usually acknowledged
as the highest aim of humanity, and conse-
quently of Education." The highest aim of
Education with him is in one word, ''character-
building."
" Since Morality has its place singly and
only in the individual's will, founded on
right insight, it follows of itself, first and
foremost, that the work of Moral Education
is not by any means to develop a certain
external mode of action, but rather insight,
together with corresponding volition, in the
mind of the pupil.
I I 2 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
"That the idea of the right and good, in all
their clearness and purity, may become the
essential objects of the will, that the innermost
intrinsic contents of the character, the very
heart of the personality, shall determine itself
according to these ideas, putting back all
arbitrary impulses — this and nothing less is
the aim of moral culture." *
IV. — THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF SYSTEMATIC
MORAL TEACHING.
In urging the teaching of Moral Duty in
schools, it is not meant that we are to teach
Moral Philosophy. The subject is not to be
* Herbart's "Science of Education," p. in. Surely it
is most refreshing and reassuring to find the same noble
thoughts echoed by a Vice-President of the Privy Council,
the practical head of the Education Department, in his
place in Parliament. This was done by Mr. Acland, in
his recent memorable speech in introducing the Educational
Budget — an epoch-making utterance in such circumstances.
After declaring that Mr. Lowe's views on Education were
" far too mechanical and inflexible," he said : "Our object
is to consider not merely what the children know when they
leave, but what they are, and what they are to do ; bearing
in mind that the great object is not merely knowledge, but
character"
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I I 3
treated technically in form or matter. It
makes no inquiry into the nature of the
Moral Sense, into theories of the sanction of
virtue, and like subjects. It is earnestly and
eminently practical, and it is to be as practi-
cally taught as writing or arithmetic. As in
these subjects, the chief end of our instruction
is to show how to do certain tilings, and to
exercise in their right performance; so it is
in Morals, which is truly the Science of
Action — the teaching is to end in action, in
doing what has been pointed out, and in cor-
recting errors made in doing it.
The range of subject-matter is wide, varied,
and important. For example, amongst general
truths : It should aim at making children
realise the existence of permanent good,
yielding truest joy, available to them at all
times, beyond mere physical pleasures, which
are too exclusively appealed to. It should
try to make them feel and follow the joys
of right moral action, the sweet delights of
doing: good. It should seek to show the child
that the end of existence here is not so-called
" success in life," " getting on in the world";
that this is good and to be valued and pursued,
H
114 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
but only as an incidental, not as a final end ;
and that the true purpose of life lies in the
right development of his nature, in the forma-
tion of a high, truthful, broad, loving, manly
character.
It should teach the child the truth regard-
ing much in action that is misapprehended and
misrepresented in common thought and speech:
as that " self-denial" is not really self-denial,
but rather the choice of a greater good, the
renouncing of a lower gratification for a higher,
truer, and more lasting joy; and that such
words originate in an over-prizing of the
physical. It should point out to him that
very many of the so-called " ills of life " are
self-originated, have their origin in the over-
valuing of what is not truly valuable, in the
following as certain of what is contingent, the
reckoning as permanent of what is evanescent
or changeable. Such truths can be simply
taught and made plain and clear even to
children.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I I 5
THE CHIEF DUTIES TO BE TAUGHT.
Then the various duties of life should be
taken up separately, as far as they belong to
the life of childhood and boyhood. These re-
quire explanation and enforcement ; and they
form a wide and attractive field.
Amongst duties to ourselves : there are, the
regulation of the appetite, cleanliness, temper-
ance, exercise, and the other virtues belong-
ing to physical morality ; frankness, firmness,
self-service, self- equipoise, courage, energy,
presence of mind, perseverance, modesty,
contempt of false opinion, resource, manli-
ness, and such like — with their opposite ills
and pains.
Amongst duties to others : there are, kind-
ness to animals and to all, forbearance,
forgiveness, gentleness, generosity, conscien-
tiousness, reverence, courtesy, honour, truth,
heroism, and the like — with their opposite ills
and pains. The list is inexhaustible.
The very mention of such a course of in-
struction and influence is inspiring, and carries
with it its own recommendation. The subjects
I I 6 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
are quite within the grasp of children, and
rightly treated, have a natural attraction for
the young; and they can be made as fasci-
nating as stories of adventure.
ruskin's exposition of these.
The general elements of the Moral Educa-
tion which Ruskin wishes to see carried on in
all our schools, he thus summarises : —
" Man's use and function are, to be the
witness of the glory of God, and to advance
that glory, by his reasonable obedience and
resultant happiness. People speak in this
working age, when they speak from their
hearts, as though houses and lands, and food
and raiment, were alone useful, and as if
sight, thought, and admiration were all pro-
fitless. . . .*
" Men's business in this world falls mainly
into three divisions : —
"(i) To know themselves, and the exist-
ing state of things with which they have
to do.
* Modem Paiii/c'r.^ vol. ii.. chap, i., §§ 4, 5.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I I 7
" (2) To be happy in themselves and the
existing state of things, so far as neither are
marred or mendable.
" (3) To mend themselves and the existing
state of things, so far as either are marred or
mendable."*
In Fors Clavigera, he thus puts the general
elements of moral training : —
" Moral Education begins in making the
creature to be educated clean and obedient.
This must be done thoroughly and at all cost,
and with any kind of compulsion rendered
necessary by the nature of the animal, be it
dog, child, or man. Moral Education consists
in making the creature practically serviceable
to other creatures, according to the nature and
extent of its own capacities ; taking care that it
be healthily developed in such service. Moral
Education is summed when the creature has
been made to do its work with delight and
thoroughly.
>» X.
* Modern Painters, vol. iii., chap, iv., § 2.
t Fors Clavigera, vol. vi., p. 225.
I I 8 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
V. — HOW TO ACCOMPLISH THESE MORAL
AIMS.
To accomplish these high ends in Popular
Education, Ruskin tells the means. He holds
that—
" There should be training schools for youth,
established at government cost, and under
government discipline, over the whole country ;
that every child born in the country should, at
the parent's wish, be permitted (and in certain
cases be, under penalty, required) to pass
through them ; and that, in these schools, the
child should (with other minor pieces of know-
ledge) be taught, with the best skill of teaching
that the country could produce, the following
three things : —
" (a) The laws of health, and the exercises
enjoined by them ;
" (b) Habits of gentleness and justice ; and
"(c) The calling by which he is to live."
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I I Q
VI. — VIRTUES ON WHICH RUSKIN LAYS
STRESS.
There are certain virtues the cultivation of
which he emphasises as specially necessary in
this country, and as painfully and generally
neglected.
Summarising the habits he desires our
children to be specially trained in, he says
they ought to be taught to be " clean, active,
honest, and useful." He wishes to be estab-
lished all over the land, " Schools of History,
Natural History, and Art, such as may enable
children to know the meaning of the words,
Beauty, Courtesy, Compassion, Gladness, and
Religion."*
I. Cleanliness. — He thus places cleanli^
ness first in the order of merit. In Fors,
he repeats it : " The speedy abolition of all
abolishable filth is the first process of Educa-
tion." f All who know the habits of our
people, and the condition of our children in
this particular, will also set this neglected
* Fors Clavigera, vol. iv., p. 204.
t Ibid., vol. vi., p. 225.
120 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
virtue in the first rank. Carlyle's Gospel of
Soap still requires increasingly to be preached
over the length and breadth of the land.
2. Obedience. — On this intellectual and
moral habit of mind, Ruskin puts immense,
and, as some may deem it, excessive value.
Next to cleanliness, he always puts obedience.
Our children are to be trained to be " clean
and obedient," which is to be done " thoroughly
and at all cost," and even "with any kind of
compulsion." Indeed, he holds that Religion
itself " primarily means obedience"; and he
enters on an interesting etymological proof that
this is so — its chief function, according to its
name, being to bind mankind back from a re-
bellious use of its natural tendencies.*
3. Kindness to Animal Life. — Nothing-
secures the earnest pleadings of Ruskin's
heart and pen more than this neglected virtue
* From Lat. re, back, and ligo, to bind. See Fors Clavi-
gera, vol. iv., p. 204. In the Codes of the Education Depart-
ment, the grants for Discipline are made on condition that
the Inspector is satisfied with " the behaviour of the children,
their cleanliness and obedience, and their honesty under
examination."
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 2 I
— talked about, certainly, but little practised
in either town or country. He places it on
its true pedestal when he calls it "piety":
that is, he holds that love to God and love to
His lower creatures are truly the same, and
should be taught together as equally bind-
ing. The one should be made the best evi-
dence of the other, as much as love to our
fellow-men is of love of God. " Education,"
says he, "rightly apprehended, consists, half
of it, in making children familiar with natural
objects, and the other half in teaching the
practice of piety towards them (piety meaning-
kindness to living things and orderly use of
the lifeless)."*
4. Honesty. — In Ruskin's eyes, this seem-
ingly commonplace virtue is one of the very
rarest in character and social life ; although it
is the basis of all individual and national hap-
piness and amelioration of our condition. Its
want is, he thinks, the source of nine-tenths of
the social and economic miseries under which
we now groan ; and its teaching and practice
would go far to remove them. On these, he
* Fors Ctavigera, vol. viii., p. 253.
122 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
lays the strongest emphasis, and devotes large
space to expound the high position he gives
to the neglected virtue of Honesty, which
he always includes in his statement of the
grand aims of Moral Training.
He does this with special force in his cele-
brated preface to Unto this Last, — the papers
which embody more of his peculiar Political
Economy than any other, and which roused
such fierce antagonism that their publication
in the Conihill, in i860, w r as stopped :
" Their second object was to show that
the acquisition of wealth was finally pos-
sible only under certain moral conditions of
society, of which quite the first was a belief in
the existence, and even for practical purposes,
in the attainability of honesty. Without ven-
turing to pronounce, since on such a matter
human judgment is by no means conclusive,
what is, or is not the noblest of God's works,
we may yet admit so much of Pope's assertion
as that an honest man is among His best works
presently visible, and, as things stand, a some-
what rare, but not an incredible or miraculous,
work, still less an abnormal one.
" I have sometimes heard Pope condemned
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 23
for the lowness instead of the height of his
standard. Honesty is indeed a respectable
virtue, but how much higher may men attain !
Shall nothing more be asked of us than that
we be honest ? For the present, good friends,
nothing. It seems that, in our aspirations to
be more than that, we have, to some extent,
lost sight of the propriety of being so much
as that. What else we may have lost faith
in, there shall be here no question ; but, as-
suredly, we have lost faith in common honesty,
and in the working power of it. And this
faith, with the facts on which it may rest,
is quite our first business to recover and
keep."
<t *
VII. — VIRTUES SPECIALLY EMPHASISED BY
RUSKIN.
In carrying out the Moral Education of our
children, there are some elements in it which
Ruskin elaborates more fully, and on which it
behoves us, if we are wise, to bestow more
attention.
* But see the whole passage and argument in the Preface
to Unto this Last.
124 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION"
Several motives, for example, much em-
ployed in Education by teachers and others
as impulses to work, which are detrimental
to high moral life, Ruskin would have us
strenuously guard against.
i. Intellectual and Social Humility. —
He wisely counsels us to " enforce on every
scholar's heart, from the first to the last stage
of his instruction, the irrevocable -ordinance
that his mental rank among men is fixed from
the hour he was born ; that, by no temporary
or violent effort, can he train, though he may
seriously injure, the faculties he has; that, by
no manner of effort, can he increase them ;
and that his best happiness is to consist in
the admiration of powers by him for ever
unattainable, and of arts and deeds by him
for ever inimitable."
He strongly condemns li the personal con-
ceit and ambition in minds of selfish activity,
which lead to the disdain of manual labour,
and the desire of all sorts of unattainable
things, and fill the streets with discontented
and useless persons seeking some means of
living in town society by their wits. Every
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 2 5
reader's experience," he says, " must avow the
extent and increasing plague of this ferment-
ing imbecility, striving to make for itself what
it calls a 'position in life.'"
He tells us that one of the most difficult
questions connected with Education is " the
mode in which the chance of advancement in
life is to be extended to all, and yet made
compatible with contentment in the pursuit
of lower avocations by those whose abilities
do not qualify them for the higher."*
" What is chiefly needed in England at the
present day," he further explains, " is to show
the quantity of pleasure that may be obtained
by a consistent, well-administered competence,
modest, confessed and laborious. We need
examples of people who, leaving Heaven to
decide whether they are to rise in the world,
decide for themselves whether they will be
happy in it, and have resolved to seek, not
greater wealth, but simpler pleasure, not
higher fortune, but deeper felicity ; making
the first of possessions self-possession, and
honouring themselves in the harmless pride
and calm pursuits of peace." f
* A Joy for Ever, § 135. + Unto this Last, § 83.
126 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
He would specially teach " to all children,
of whatever gift, grade, or age, the virtue
of Humility, as including all the habits of
Obedience and instincts of Reverence," which
are dwelt on throughout Fors, and in all his
other books. "The aphorism cannot be too
often repeated," he urges, " that Moral Educa-
tion begins in making the creature we have
to educate clean and obedient. In after tine,
this ' virtue of humility ' is to be taught to a
child by gentleness to its failures, showing it
that by reason of its narrow powers it cannot
but fail."
ILLUSTRATION FROM HIS OWN SCHOOL
DAYS.
" I have seen my old clerical master, the
Rev. Thomas Dale," he tells us, in illustration,
" beating his son Tom hard over the head
with the edge of a grammar, because Tom
could not construe a Latin verse ; when the
reverend gentleman ought only with extreme
tenderness and pitifulness to have explained
to Tom that — he wasn't Thomas the Rhymer."
" But it is to be remembered," he goes on to
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS 127
point out, " that Humility can only be truly,
and therefore only effectively taught when the
master is swift to recognise the special faculties
of children, no less than their weaknesses ;
that it is his quite highest and most noble
function to discern these, and prevent their dis-
couragement or effacement in the vulgar press
for a common prize." *
2. Reverent Admiration. — We have seen
how, in taking Wordsworth as his guide in
the Education he wishes for all our boys and
girls, — " we live by admiration, hope, and
love ; " — Admiration comes first. He makes
it also his "final object," to teach "what to
admire." He further explains this, and re-
turns to it a hundred times in his writings.
"A man's happiness consists," he truly
says, " infinitely more in admiration of the
faculties of others than in confidence of his
own. Reverent admiration is the perfect
human gift in him ; all lower animals are
happy and noble in the degree they can
share it. A dog reverences you, a fly does
not ; the capacity of partly understanding a
* Fors Clavigera, vol. viii., p. 238.
128 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
creature above him is the dog's nobility.
Increase such admiration in human beings,
and you increase daily their happiness, peace,
and dignity; take it away, and you make
them wretched as well as vile. But for fifty
years back, modern education has devoted
itself simply to the teaching of impudence ;
and then we complain that we can no more
manage our mobs." *
As he elsewhere in Fors says, Moral educa-
tion cannot be efficiently carried out, " until
some degree of Intellectual education has been
given also."
What does this Intellectual education mainly
consist in, according to this educationist ?
Chiefly in certain moral elements !
" Intellectual Education," he continues, u con-
sists in giving the creatures the faculties of
admiration, hope, and love." f
Do let the country, and especially our
educationists, take careful note that both the
basis and means of Intellectual education
lie in the training of these Moral faculties ;
and that the foremost and most essential is
Admiration — perception of and joy in the
* Fors, vol. i. 9, p. 9. t Ibid., vol. vi. 225.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 29
greatness of others, in all in which they are
above us in faculty and achievement.
How is this training to be accomplished ?
According to the same teacher, in three special
fields, on which volumes could and should be
written, in correction of our present narrow
and barren procedure, but which can here be
only enumerated.
"These are to be taught by the study of
beautiful Nature ; the sight and history of
noble persons ; and the setting forth of noble
objects of action." *
The importance of Admiration in human
education and social progress is based on the
fact of the irreversible inequalities that exist
in the faculties of all creatures, and not less
of mankind.
" My continual aim," says Ruskin, empha-
sising Carlyle, " has been to show the eternal
superiority of some men to others, sometimes
even of one man to all others ; and to show also
the advisability of appointing such persons or
person to guide, to lead, or, on occasion, even
compel and subdue, their inferiors, according to
their better knowledge and wiser will."
* Fors, vol. vi., p. 225.
I3O ■ RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
3. Emulation Condemned. — There is one
test of capacity in children which, in common
with all true educationists, Ruskin emphati-
cally and indignantly repudiates and con-
demns — that is Emulation. He returns to
the subject repeatedly, and speaks with highest
wisdom.
" In all trial of our children, I believe all
Emulation to be a false motive, and all giving
of prizes a false means. All that you can
depend upon in a boy, as significative of true
power, likely to issue in good fruit, is his will
to work for the work's sake, not his desire to
surpass his schoolfellows ; and the aim of the
teaching you give him ought to be to prove to
him, and strengthen in him, his own separate
gift, not to puff him into swollen rivalry with
those who are everlastingly greater than he :
still less ought you to hang favours and
ribands about the neck of the creature who is
the greatest, to make the rest envy him. Try
to make them love him and follow him, not
struggle with him.
" There must, of course, be examina-
tion, to ascertain and attest both progress
and relative capacity; but our aim should
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 3 I
be to make the students rather look upon
it as a means of ascertaining their own true
positions and powers in the world, than as
an arena in which to carry away a present
victory."*
NO COMPETITION TO BE ALLOWED.
Here is another of his telling utterances : —
" Of schools in all places, and for all ages,
the healthy working will depend on the total
e xclusion of the stimulus of Competition in
any form or disguise. Every child should be
measured by its own standard, trained to its
own duty, and rewarded by its just praise.
It is the effort that deserves praise, not the
success ; nor is it a question for any student
whether he is cleverer than others or duller,
but whether he has done the best he could
with the gifts he has."f
Righteously indignant, he exclaims : " The
madness of the modern cram and examination
system arises principally out of the struggle to
get lucrative places, but partly also out of the
* A Joy for Ever, §§ 135-6.
+ Fors Clavi^cra, vol. viii., p. 255.
132 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
radical blockheadism of supposing that all men
are naturally equal and can only make their
way by elbowing : the facts being that every
child is born with an accurately defined and
absolutely limited capacity ; that he is naturally
(if able at all) able for some things and unable
for others ; that no effort and no teaching can
add one particle to the granted ounces of his
available brains ; that by competition, he may
paralyse or pervert his faculties, but cannot
stretch them a line ; and that the entire grace,
happiness, and virtue of his life depend on his
contentment in doing what he can dutifully,
and in staying where he is peaceably. So far
as regards the less or more capacity of others,
his superiorities are to be used for their help,
not for his own pre-eminence; and his in-
feriorities to be no ground of mortification,
but of pleasure in the admiration of nobler
powers." *
" Over the door of every school, and the gate
of every college, I would fain see engraved in
their marble, the Absolute Forbidding,
\xi]hev Kara kpiOeiav r) /cevoSo^iav,
* Fors, vol. viii. , p. 255.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 3 3
— ' Let nothing be done through strife or vain
glory : ' and I would have fixed, for each age
of children and students, a certain standard
of pass in examination, so adapted to average
capacity and power of exertion that none need
fear who had attended to their lessons and
obeyed their masters ; while its variety of
trial should yet admit of the natural distinc-
tions attaching to progress in especial sub-
jects and skill in peculiar arts. Beyond such
indication or acknowledgment of merit, there
should be neither prizes nor honours ; these are
meant by Heaven to be the proper rewards of
a man's consistent and kindly life, not of a
youth's temporary and selfish exertion."*
THE TRUE PURPOSE OF EXAMINATIONS.
These are sound and suggestive counsels,
which wise lovers of their kind, whether edu-
cationists or not, have ever pleaded for, but to
which we have as yet turned deaf ears and
hard and selfish hearts, to the serious detri-
ment of our children and of national morality.
Our present almost universal practice ministers
Fors, vol. viii., p. 255.
134 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
painfully to vanity and selfishness. Moreover,
it results in maintaining a lower level of at-
tainment and work, because it is judged not
by absolute, but only relative, merit. As has
been wittily and wisely said, our aim ought to
be, to generate in our children " a desire for
excellence, not for excelling" Horace Mann,
the great American educationist, and one of
the most enlightened the world has seen, puts
this subject in a phrase — " We are all anti-
emulation men — that is, all against any
system of rewards and prizes designed to
withdraw the mind from the comparison of
itself with a standard of excellence, and to
substitute a rival for that standard."*
HOW SHOULD EMULATION BE USED?
The right use of Emulation, or the natural
Love of Approbation, which is possessed by
all human beings, is one of the most difficult
practical problems in the training of a child.
But there is no doubt whatever that, in our
past and present practice, we have abused its
[ " Education : its Principles and Practice as developed by
George Combe, edited by William Jolly (Macmillan), p. 389.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 3 5
potency, and fostered it to painful strength,
rather than wisely utilised its legitimate and
useful power ; and have £hus raised a crop of
dangerous moral weeds which it will take
generations to eradicate.
VIII. — EDUCATION SHOULD TEACH THE
TRUE MEANING OF WEALTH.
In endeavouring to realise a higher type of
personal and social existence, it is all important,
according to Ruskin, to understand clearly in
what Wealth really consists. On this subject,
he has done eminent service for the Educa-
tionist, the social reformer, and the economist,
by elaborately, earnestly, philosophically, and
eloquently giving its true definition. Wealth
does not mean mere possession ; much less
is it mere riches. Wealth consists in "the
possession of the valuable by the valiant."
"There is no wealth but life; life including all
its powers of love, joy, and admiration. That
country is the richest which nourishes the
greatest number of noble and happy human
beings; that man is the richest who, having
perfected the functions of his own life to the
I36 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
utmost, has also the widest helpful influence,
both personal and by means of his possessions,
over the lives of others."
We are, and have been, altogether wrong in
our estimate of Wealth, and the result has
been national and individual misery. We
have confounded Wealth with money-massing,
instead of realising that it truly and literally
signifies well-being ; and " the attraction of
riches is," in consequence of this false esti-
mate and false teaching, " too strong, as their
authority is too weighty for the reason of
mankind." This evil estimate influences and
corrupts not only the individual life but all
our social system ; it vitiates all our Political
and Social Economy, as at present taught in
our dominant treatises and schools. One of
Ruskin's chief aims, in his Economical works,
is to overturn this radical misconception in
regard to Wealth, and replace it by something
truer and higher. If our teaching in this
respect were what it ought to be —
" Perhaps it may even appear," as this
strange political economist says, " after some
consideration that the persons themselves are
the Wealth — that these pieces of gold with
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 37
which we are in the habit of guiding them
are, in fact, nothing more than a kind of
Byzantine harness or trappings, very glittering
and beautiful in barbaric sight, wherewith we
bridle the creatures; but that if these same
living creatures could be guided without the
fretting and jingling of the Byzants in their
mouths and ears, they might themselves be
more valuable than their bridles. In fact, it
may be discovered that the true veins of
Wealth are purple, and not in rock but in
flesh — perhaps even that the final outcome
and consummation of all Wealth is in produc-
ing as many as possible, full-breathed, bright-
eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures.
" Our modern Wealth I think has rather a
tendency the other way ; most political econo-
mists appearing to consider multitudes of human
creatures not conducive to Wealth, or at best
conducive to it only by remaining in a dim-
eyed and narrow-chested state of being.
" Nevertheless it is open, I repeat, to serious
question, which I leave to the reader's ponder-
ing, whether among national manufactures,
that of souls of a good quality may not at last
turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one ?
I38 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
''Nay, in some far away and yet undreamt of
hour, I can even imagine that England may
cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back
to the barbaric nations among whom they first
arose, and that, while the sands of the Indus
and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the
housings of the charger, and flash from the
turban of the slave, she, as a Christian mother,
may at last attain to the virtues and the
treasures of a heathen one, and be able to
lead forth her sons, saying, — "These are my
jewels." *
EDUCATION SHOULD FURNISH A CHILD
WITH A PLAN OF LIFE.
A root idea always present to Ruskin, in
speaking of Education, as to all true educators,
is, what life truly is, and how Education can
be so conducted as to enable us to take the
most out of it, by leading to Spencer's "com-
plete living." As Ruskin again and again
says : " Whatever advantages we possess in
the present day, in the diffusion of Education
and of literature, can only be rightly used by
* Unto this Last, §§ 40-41.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 39
any of us, when we have apprehended clearly
what Education is to lead to, and literature to
teach.*
Pestalozzi put the whole in a nut-shell, with
equal philosophy and point, when he said :
"The ultimate end of Education is, not per-
fection in the accomplishments of the school
(as they are most generally made), but fitness
for life."
Froebel did the same less briefly, but not
less wisely: "What is the purpose of Educa-
tion ? " he asks. His answer is : " Man lives
in a world of objects which influence him, and
which he desires to influence ; therefore, he
ought to know these objects in their nature,
in their conditions, and in their relations with
each other and with mankind." f
Huxley has an admirable passage in his
" Lay Sermons," in which life is compared to
a game of chess, on the winning or losing of
which our happiness wholly depends ; and
Education, to the learning of the rules of that
game.
George Combe long ago pleaded for and
expounded the need of giving children
if
Sesame and Lilies, § 51. t Froebel's Autob., p. 69.
140 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
" correct views of the real principles, machinery
and objects of life, and of training them to act
systematically in relation to them in their
habitual conduct," as an essential part of
Education, whatever else was given or omitted,
and he compared life to a voyage of adven-
ture, on which most of us at present embark
" without knowledge of its navigation, without
charts, and without any particular port of
destination in view ; " and he held that " by
correct and enlarged knowledge of human
nature and of the external world, the young
might be furnished with a chart and plan ot
life suited to their wants, desires, and capa-
cities as rational beings." *
Ruskin has a similar passage, in which he
characterises Education as the means of gain-
ing or losing an estate : f
" Suppose," says he, " I were able to call
at this moment to any one in the audience by
name, and to tell him positively that I knew
a large estate had been lately left to him on
some curious conditions ; but that, thougli I
• Education, See, by George Combe, in which the subject
is very fully treated. See Index,
t Sesame and Lilies, § ioS.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS 1 4 1
knew it was large, I did not know how large,
nor even where it was — whether in the East
Indies or the West, or in England, or at the
Antipodes. I only knew it was a vast estate,
and that there was a chance of his losing it
altogether if he did not soon find out on what
terms it had been left to him. Suppose I
were able to say this positively to any single
man in this audience, and he knew that I
did not speak without warrant, do you think
that he would rest content with that vague
knowledge, if it were anywise possible to
obtain more ? Would he not give every
energy to find some trace of the facts, and
never rest till he had ascertained where this
place was, and what it was like ? And sup-
pose he were a young man, and all he could
discover by his best endeavour was, that the
estate was never to be his at all, unless he
persevered, during certain years of probation,
in an orderly and industrious life ; but that,
according to the Tightness of his conduct, the
portion of the estate assigned to him would
be greater or less, so that it literally depended
on his behaviour from day to day whether he
got ten thousand a year, or thirty thousand a
I4 2 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
year, or nothing whatever — would you not
think it strange if the youth never troubled
himself to satisfy the conditions in any way,
nor even to know what was required of him,
but lived exactly as he chose, and never
enquired whether his chances of the estate
were increasing or passing away ? Well, you
know that this is actually and literally so with
the greater number of the educated persons
now living in Christian countries. Nearly
every man and woman in such a company as
this, outwardly professes to believe — and a
large number unquestionably think they be-
lieve — much more than this ; not only that a
quite unlimited estate is in prospect for them
if they please the Holder of it, but that the
infinite contrary of such a possession — an
estate of perpetual misery — is in store for
them if they displease this great Land-Holder,
this great Heaven-Holder. And yet there is
not one in a thousand of these human souls
that cares to think, for ten minutes of the
day, where this estate is, or how beautiful it
is, or what kind of life they are to lead in
it, or what kind of life they must lead to
obtain it."
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS 1 43
Thirteen years ago I pressed this idea of
our so conducting the education of a child
as to enable him to know himself and his
environment — and the duties thence arising,
as a necessary preparation for life — in these
terms:* — " Here is man, a delicately organised
being, possessing a certain physical and mental
constitution, ushered into a wonderful system
of beings, objects, and forces, of countless
variety and intricacy, which are governed by
certain irrevocable laws dispensing to him
happiness or misery with absolute certainty
and without compunction, according to the
obedience he renders to them, from which
ignorance is no safeguard, and with which
suffering is no plea. These laws are universal,
irreversible, and undiscriminating; and the
systems of things regulated by them are ever
around him, press upon him, and pervade him
in social and mental, as certainly as in physical,
matters, and deal out pleasure or pain to him,
whether he knows them intelligently or not ;
and his whole life, from the innermost recesses
of his personal and domestic relations to the
most distant influences of the stars, is swayed
* Education Review (Boston, U.S.A., July 1SS1).
144 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
by them with omnipotent power from the
cradle to the grave. In such circumstances,
in view of the plain facts of the case, what
would seem to be the wise and sensible course
for parents and teachers to pursue in regard
to the child ? Surely to give him some know-
ledge of himself and his all-regulating sur-
roundings, in order to prepare him as fully
as possible for entering into this great system
of things, so pregnant with his bliss or bane ;
that he may know, as far as he can, the con-
ditions of his existence, the rules of the mighty
game he has to play. Surely he ought to be
prepared for the voyage of life, — have a chart
of the course to be steered, the rocks and
shoals to be avoided, the winds and storms
to be encountered ; that he may escape danger
or shipwreck for himself and those he holds
dearest, and damage and wrong to others.
" Such a preparation for life seems at once
dictated by common sense, sound philosophy,
enlightened selfishness, and the highest sanc-
tions."
Hence Ruskin recommends that we should
know ourselves "the cunning of our right hand,
the capabilities of our brain, the excellencies
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS 1 45
and ailments of our moral nature, and the
existing state of things we have to do with."
No matter how difficult, this knowledge should
be gained : " ignorance is death." On this
knowledge of our surroundings, rests the possi-
bility of improvement and the possession of
permanent happiness and peace.
IX. — THE TEACHING OF SOCIAL AND POLI-
TICAL ECONOMY.
Our happiness is determined by the state
of the society in which we have to live, the
Social and Political elements that form the
Commonwealth in which we are placed. To
make the most of these, to escape the evils
and to win the possible pleasures of the case,
we ought to be taught the nature of the social
system we enter into; we ought to know
" the existing state of things we have to do
with," as Ruskin puts it. He holds that the
great evil of life is threefold, in —
" First — Man's ignorance of himself and the
existing state of things he has to do with.
" Second — Man's misery in himself and the
existing things he has to do with.
K
I46 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
"Third — Man's inclination to let himself
and the existing state of things he has to do
with alone ; at least in the way of correction.
"To rectify these, the future man must know
himself and his surroundings ; with all this
knowledge, he will have no guarantee for suc-
cess or happiness in his work. Therefore, an
essential portion of his preparatory education
is careful instruction in Social and Political
Economy."
ITS PAST NEGLECT.
He says that "the want of this instruction
which hitherto has disgraced our Schools and
Universities, has indeed been the cause of ruin
or total inutility of life to multitudes of our
men of estate. This deficiency in our public
Education," he assures us, "cannot exist much
longer. Only we must see that our rich men
take their standing more firmly than they have
done hitherto, as to the right use of wealth;
for the position of a rich man is generally
contemplated by Political Economists as being
precisely the reverse of what it ought to be." *
* A Joy for Ever, § 143.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 47
ruskin's political economy.
This " Moral and Political teaching " should,
of course, be founded on " the most perfect pos-
sible analysis of the results of human conduct."
Ruskin's analysis diners radically from that
of our recognised and dominant teachers,
and forms the burden of " The New Political
Economy " which it has been the main business
of his life to preach, in season and out of
season, and for which he has received such
vituperation on the one side, and admiration
on the other. He has fullest confidence in the
wisdom of his own teaching, and holds that it
contains " the first true system of Political
Economy which has been published in Eng-
land," as originally given in his Munera
Pulveris.
WILLIAM ELLIS'S WORK IN THIS EDUCA-
TIONAL FIELD.
The most enlightened and systematic at-
tempt ever tried in this country towards
basing education on the teaching of Moral and
Social Science, was made by the late William
I48 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
Ellis, the founder of the Birkbeck Schools
in London, whose " Life " * has lately been
published, and who spent more than half-a-
million in a life- long endeavour to reduce
it to practice in school teaching; of which
I have elsewhere given some account. f His
utterances are finely akin to those of Ruskin.
Education with him meant, " An earnest
application of well -selected means to impart
to all, such a knowledge of the laws of the
universe, especially of their practical bear-
ing upon the daily wants and business of
life, as that all may be clearly convinced
that their happiness is only to be attained
by placing themselves in harmony with those
laws; to communicate to all, such manual,
muscular, and intellectual dexterity as may
qualify them to gain, extend, add to, and
improve their knowledge, and appropriate
and apply it ; and also to implant those habits
of observation, application, and forethought,
* See Life of William Ellis, by E. K. Blythe — an im-
portant work, too little known.
+ In Education : its Principles and Practice as developed
by George Combe, edited by William Jolly (Macmillan),
(see Index — Ellis ; and p. 236 for list of his works) ; and
in Good Words, 18S7.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS 1 49
without which the soundest intellectual ac-
quirements are comparatively useless." *
According to Ellis, "A people so educated
would be inspired, not with the mere vulgar
notion of 'getting on,' not with the vain
illusory desire of ' rising in the world/ but
with a solemn sense of the sacredness of
every duty undertaken, of every contract
entered into. And thus the desire of happi-
ness and gratification, the motive force of
our conduct, and exertion would be subju-
gated and regulated by an all-pervading sense
of duty, and thereby be rendered more capable
of gaining its end."f
Ellis's great and peculiar contribution to
educational philosophy was his advocacy of
the need of imparting to the young in school,
a knowledge of the principles of combined
Moral and Social Science, which he called
" the Conditions of Human Well-being." On
these, he wrote and published a long and
important series, the last being called Re-
ligion in Common Life, after Principal Caird's
celebrated sermon. This subject is a daily,
integral part of the teaching in the schools
* See Ellis's " Life." + Ibid.
I50 R-USKIN ON EDUCATION
he established, the Birkbeck Schools, in Lon-
don, and others founded on their model. One
of these is conducted away down in Dorset, in
the country town of Blandford, by a friend
of Ellis's, and George Combe's, Mr. Horlock
Bastard, in whose school, among other things,
corporal punishment is unknown.*
THE SUBJECT BEGINS TO BE RECOGNISED.
A sign of the times, in this combined Moral
and Economic direction, by which such instruc-
tion is coming more and more to be systemati-
cally given in many schools, is the recent
publication of the Citizen Reader and Laws
of Every Day Life, by Arnold-Foster, and
similar works, in which these topics, which are
generally thought abstruse, are treated with
simplicity and interest.
A still more encouraging fact is that
the subject is recognised and paid for, ac-
cording to a well-put programme, in the
new Code recently issued for Evening and
* See Combe's Education, &c, chap. vii. , for an ac-
count of the pioneer educational efforts of these and like-
minded workers, including that very remarkable man,
William Lovett.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 5 1
Continuation Schools, under the Education
Department.*
Though the doctrines in most of such books
are not according to the mind of Ruskin, their
very use in schools is a practical acknowledg-
ment of the truth of Ruskin's contention, that
Education should furnish the child with " the
conditions of his existence, the rules of the
mighty game he has to play."
X. — THE SYSTEMATIC TEACHING OF MORAL
DUTY SHOULD BE UNIVERSAL.
The foregoing are but fragments of Ruskin's
powerful and eloquent utterances regarding
the need and primary importance of Moral
Training in all school life and teaching. If
these were all gathered and classified, they
would form a large and valuable addition to
our educational literature, all the more valuable
that they emphasise, and give admirable sug-
gestions on, comparatively neglected elements
in our common school teaching.
Surely, therefore, in view of all that has
* Under the National Home Reading Union, the study
of the " Life and Duties of the Citizen" is also fostered.
152 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
been said, Moral Duty, the Conduct of Life,
the Rules of Right Living — by whatever name
the subject may be called — ought to be taught
in all our schools, and ought to be taught regu-
larly and systematically.
THE MEANS OF DOING IT.
The teacher should himself traverse the
whole field and select the portions suitable to
his pupils. A part of every day ought to be
spent at the subject; at least, it should be
taught several times a week. Each lesson
should be short, and it should be given
clearly and pleasantly, and chiefly by well-
selected examples, told or read, and set in
their true light. False or low opinions on any
portion should be carefully pointed out. A
high, but not Utopian, standard should be
maintained. Lecturing is, of course, to be
avoided : the subject cannot be made to influ-
ence life by didactic and moral sermonising,
but by teaching and explaining in a loving,
earnest spirit, that speaks through accent,
word, manner, and mode of treatment.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS 15 3
THE INFLUENCE OF SUCH TEACHING.
The influence of such a course on the
school tone would be very great. It would
create a sweeter and higher moral atmosphere.
It would certainly lessen punishment ; for
with such a standard, with such grand and
kindly themes, mere corporal pain would be
less, if at all, required. The results of such a
scheme, rightly taught, would be, the formation
in the children of true opinion on moral
action, good habits of life, and high tone.
It should generate in the hearts of the
young a supreme and ardent love of truth
and goodness, which would go with them
for ever, and be a central impulse through-
out life, impelling towards noble character.
Can we estimate the extent and strength of
the influence a good teacher could wield in
this way, in the daily school life, home life,
world life, of his pupils, and, through them,
on society and on the coming generations ?
The great possibility of being the centre of
such influence is not the inheritance of every
man — it is that of the teacher. Can any
true and good teacher hesitate to try to
154 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
become something of this ? " If life be a
battle, then let the teacher be a bard, in-
spiring his boys for it with martial music,"
as Jean Paul Richter says.
IT IS PARTIALLY RECOGNISED BY THE
EDUCATION DEPARTMENT.
In the Codes of the Education Depart-
ment, this subject has been tacitly, if not ex-
pressly, recognised and encouraged. In both
the Scotch and English Codes, these important
and well-put suggestions occur : " To meet
the requirement respecting discipline, the
managers and teachers will be expected to
satisfy the inspector that all reasonable
care is taken in the ordinary management
of the school, to bring up the children in
the habits of punctuality, of good manners
and language, of cleanliness and neatness,
and also to impress upon the children the
importance of cheerful obedience to duty, of
consideration and respect for others, and of
honour and truthfulness in word and act."
* Art. 19, A.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS 1 5 5
IT SHOULD BE EXTENDED AND SYSTE-
MATICALLY TAUGHT.
What I here plead for is, that managers
and teachers, thus addressed, should take up
the subject more earnestly and systematically
than they have yet done, and make it an in-
tegral and daily portion of the teaching and
training of the school ; at least, as much and
as carefully done as any one of the staple
subjects of school training and instruction.
They have in many cases risen admirably to
the occasion in other subjects recommended ;
and if they did the same with this, the results
would be delightful and gratifying to all con-
cerned, and would initiate a new Reformation.
TEXT-BOOKS FOR THE TEACHING OF THE
SUBJECT.
Such a course can be given with ease
and pleasure, and with little trouble to the
teacher ; though, surely, its nature and in-
fluence are more than enough to repay much
trouble and study, if required. Text-books
are needed on this subject, as in all others ;
156 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
but, I am sorry to say, they are fewer in
number in this all-important field than in
any other. While thousands of class-books
have been produced for the " beggarly ele-
ments " of instruction, they are sparse, and
many of them more or less imperfect, in
regard to this the highest object of all train-
ing. We require two classes of books for
efficient teaching — one for the teacher's use,
and one for his pupils' ; a fact true of all sub-
jects, though too little acted on by purveyors
of school-books.
For the use of teachers, I would mention
Ruskin's own works, which are invaluable for
this purpose ; Professor Blackie's Self Culture,
fresh, attractive, and inspiring ; and Charles
Bray's Education of the Feelings, full of wise
counsel and direction regarding the cultivation
of all the elements of character — both of these
last being cheap and simple, thoroughly good
and helpful. Books of illustrative examples are
also needed by the teacher. The common read-
ing-books often supply these ; and abundant
materials may be found in Smiles' Self Help
and Character ; Miss Yonge's Book of Golden
Deeds and Book of Worthies ; Chambers'
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 57
Moral Class Book ; the Percy Anecdotes ; Hack-
wood's Lessons on Moral Subjects (Nelson), and
Prescott's Moral Education.
Of books to be put into the children's hands,
there are, alas, few, and these often objection-
able. Out of sight, the best in the field is
Mrs. Charles Bray's Elements of Morality
(Longmans), in which the chief duties are
traversed, in principle and detail, in small
space, with winning simplicity, elevated tone,
and admirable style. It is a book that ought
daily to be in the hands of every parent,
teacher, and child in the land. I would also
recommend Helps for the Young in their
Efforts at Self- Guidance, edited by the Rev.
W. Jowitt (Longmans), which was written by
William Ellis, and a small and simple hand-
book by the Rev. R. Lawson of Maybole,
Good Manners for Boys and Girls, in School,
at Home, and Out of Doors*
XI. — AUXILIARY AIDS TO MORAL TRAINING
IN SCHOOL.
There are certain auxiliaries to the Moral
Training of our children, which might be more
* Published by Parlane, Paisley (^d. each or 4c!. per dozen).
I58 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
looked on in that light, and utilised for that
purpose in schools. Some of these I would
briefly refer to : —
1. Poetry for Recitation. — The selection
made is often paltry and thin, if it does not
embody sentiments that are beyond children's
possible experience ; introducing them pre-
maturely to emotions that should be barred
from youthful thoughts, or appealing to feel-
ings that are objectionable in a moral point of
view.
PIECES TO BE AVOIDED.
For example, to take a mild case, the
" Combat between Fitz-James and Roderick
Dhu,"* once universal in schools, is a poetical
and powerful presentation of a duel to the
death, with an all too vivid and realistic
picture of fierce blood-thirstiness, and, in
the end, a tiger-like struggle to kill, in a
pool of human gore. I ask all to consider
if such representations of the brutal passions,
here made all the more intense through the
* In Sir Walter Scott's Lady of (he Lake,
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 5 O,
skill of the poet, is desirable reading for
young children. To learn it and prepare it
minutely in meaning and association, is it not
still more objectionable, to say the least of it ?
Surely, surely something better can be chosen
than this powerful but repellent theme. We
have, however, become so accustomed to it
that we have ceased to see the matter in its
true moral relations. Happily, of late years,
this passage, savouring too much of the sensa-
tionalism of modern " penny dreadfuls," is less
frequently presented for recitation.
I give this as an example, on the one
hand, of a kind of poetry to be avoided —
any poetry that appeals to the lower propen-
sities, which are already far too potent for
evil to require to be strengthened by the arts
of the poet and the impress of genius. On
the other hand, the pieces selected are often
paltry in sentiment, and appeal to and rouse
self-esteem and other emotions that are re-
prehensible in other directions, especially in
some of our infant-room songs; though, one
is delighted to observe, rapid improvement in
these last.
The line of thought to be pursued by
l60 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
teachers should be one that rigorously ex-
cludes all matter violating in any degree the
training of our children in moral life, which
ought to be as high and pure and ennobling
as possible.
PIECES TO BE SELECTED.
But our aim in this direction should not
only be the negative one of avoiding what
is evil, but the positive one of selecting
poems that will contribute to the moral
development of the children entrusted to our
care. The pieces should be gems for life,
the best flowers in the wide and wonderful
garden of English poesy, which our poets
have so richly and sweetly produced — poems
which our children will ever bless us to
have learnt under our guidance, and which,
in times of trial or temptation, that come to
all, may strengthen the falling, and preserve
the conscience from many a stain. This is
surely a strain I need not further pursue, to
create increased watchfulness among teachers,
in the selection of the poetry their pupils
commit to memory.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 6 I
Happily, I am delighted to observe, in most
cases, a rising perception of the importance of
this subject of Recitation, and, in a lesser
degree, of Reading, among our teachers, as
valuable elements in moral training.
In selecting pieces, however, the moral ele-
ment should not be obtruded as didactic moral
teaching, which neither men nor children like
much of; but the moral effects should be
always present, and will prove the more
powerful if they are produced rather than
preached.*
2. Pieces for Music — The same prin-
ciple should guide us in the selection of
Songs to be sung in school. This should
be done all the more carefully, because, in
these, the charm of melody has been wedded
* Among those of a good type which I have had presented
for Recitation and Meaning may be mentioned : Charles
Swain's "What is Noble?" Lowell's "Heritage," and
"The Fatherland," Whittier's "The Problem," Caroline
F. Orne's "Labour," beginning "Ho ! ye who at the anvil
toil," Burns' "A man's a man for a' that," "The Daisy"
of Chaucer and Burns, Charles Mackay's "There's a good
time coming, boys," "Better than gold," "Dare to do
right," "The power of gentleness," "Drive the nail aright,"
and many more of high tone.
L
I 62 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
to the potency of poetry. The pieces should
be such as do not, on the one side, violate pro-
priety or purity; and, on the other, have direct
and active moral impulse.
CONVIVIAL SONGS TO BE AVOIDED.
Judged by this standard, for instance, that
clever biographical song, with its fetching air,
one of the most popular of the Scotch national
bard's, " There was a lad was born in Kyle,"
will not bear criticism. You may be surprised
that a lover, like myself, of Scotch poetry in
general, and of Burns in particular, should
object to such a poem. For children, I
not only object to it, but protest against its
use in schools. Is it desirable, is it right,
is it conducive to the higher path along
which we would guide the tottering feet of
our little ones, that they should be asked
to sing, in rousing chorus, about " Rantin'
rovin' Robin " ?
I am far from being any high and dry
puritan in such matters. The song is splen-
did in special circumstances, but only for
older folk, who can understand and appreciate
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS I 63
its beauty and exquisite humour, and who
know that the poet was even doing him-
self injustice by proclaiming that he was the
" rantin' and rovin' " boy here described. But
that is a very different thing from asking our
children to sing, in their tender years, about
" rantin' and rovin'." Is that not so ? Is
the subject not more serious than teachers
have generally esteemed it ? A like objec-
tion may be taken to many others, such
as " Willie brewed a peck o' maut," to
which young children are prematurely, and,
I would add, perniciously, introduced even in
school. The galaxy of Scottish and English
Song has a thousand stars, as bright and
pure as ever sparkled in the heavenly hyaline,
without our having to choose such earthly
glow-worms as these.
LOVE SONGS OBJECTIONABLE.
One word on another class of songs that
should be avoided in our schools, and all
the more carefully in the upper classes,
when our children enter their teens and
new impulses begin unconsciously to waken
I 64 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
in their constitution — Love Songs, even if
delicate in sentiment and winsome in melody.
When used at all, these require to be
selected with utmost caution, because they
appeal, it is to be hoped, to emotions they
have not experimentally felt.
Yet one sometimes hears Love Songs given
in school, which the children cannot under-
stand, as beyond their experience, and which
therefore violate the principles of educational
science ; or which, if they do understand them,
they should not have introduced to them
during school life. I could mention many
pieces thus unfit for school purposes, which
are often sung in school ; including such a
mild example as " Ilka lassie has her laddie ;
ne'er a one ha'e I."
I need not further pursue the subject; but can-
not dismiss it without earnestly drawing atten-
tion to possible abuses in this direction, to which
custom or tradition, or want of consideration
of all its relations, or all these together, have
in no small degree blunted the perceptions of
teachers and parents, who should be, not least
in this seductive field, the guides and guardians
of the minds and hearts of our children.
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS l6 5
XIL — THE RELATION OF MORAL TRAINING
TO RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION.
But we have heard not un frequently more
than echoes — loud clamours — that such Moral
teaching and training are, somehow and some-
where, antagonistic to Religion. If it is, so
much the worse for the religion to which
it is said to be antagonistic. The cry,
where it is made, is at once narrow and
senseless. Strangely and inexplicably, Moral
teaching, apart from Creed-conning, would
seem to be viewed by some earnest men
with latent if not active suspicion, as, in
some unknown way, antipathetic or harmful
to Godliness and True Religion. Infinitely
otherwise, it is Religion's chiefest friend, its
best assistance, an intimate and essential
portion of its life and mission ; systematising
that part of the wide religious field which
deals with our work in daily life, and shed-
ding on it all the light and interest and
attractiveness it can cull from all sources
at its command ; pointing out the duties we
ought to perform in all the daily relations
of life, which duties should be performed
I 66 RUSKIN ON EDUCATION
with all the impulse and emotion of religious
principle. The words " Religion in Common
Life," which briefly and happily epitomise
all moral training and instruction, put their
nature and purpose in one phrase, and should
attract the most apprehensive to their syste-
matic and regular treatment in school.
"To consider it a religious duty to study
these questions," as William Ellis well says,
" with the intention of regulating conduct by
the convictions formed, is a great step towards
religious excellence."
THE GENERAL TEACHING OF MORAL DUTY
IS SURELY NOW NEAR AT HAND.
So pure, so high, so entirely productive of
truest gain in the priceless riches of life, so
capable of lifting our future men and women
from sad ignorance of their duties in daily
life — ignorance for which their educators
are culpably responsible — is this vital part
of Education, that it is to be hoped not many
years will pass before we shall see it daily
and systematically taught in all our schools.
If we are not wise or religious enough to
MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS \6j
do it, our posterity will, with surprise and
indignation at our disastrous delay.
" Public Schools," as once more and finally
pleaded for and prophesied by Ruskin, " in
which the aim was to form character faithfully,
would return the children in due time to their
parents, worth more than their weight in
gold."
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