Education was naturally a chief concern with St. George, and it occupies Letter XVI of Time and Tide.[88] His schools were to be in the fresh air of the country, and with large playing fields securely their own. “The Laws of Health and exercises enjoined by them” are the first feature of the curriculum; and riding, running, all the honest personal exercises of offence and defence, and music, are to be included under this head. Then come “the mental graces of reverence and compassion, which are to be developed by deliberate and constant exercise,"—which means, doubtless, that there is to be no girding at passers-by in the streets, and no rat-catching for amusement. Then, as the bond and guardian of reverence and compassion, comes “the truth of spirit and word, of thought and sight—truth earnest and compassionate, sought for like a treasure, and kept like a crown.” This is to be taught chiefly “by pressing for close accuracy of statement, as a principle of honour and as an accomplishment of language.” There is much sound advice about this in Letter XVI. Then, for the actual curriculum, there come, first, history; and then natural science and mathematics. But there are to be three alternative curricula, one for city children, one for country children, and one for seafaring children. The city children are to study mathematics and the arts, country children, natural history and agriculture, and the future sailors, astronomy, geography, and marine natural history. A beginning of variety of just this kind now exists in the elementary schools, as noted in the last chapter.
After this, all children are to be taught the calling whereby they are to live.
The curious whimsical paradox that reading and writing are to be optional subjects, does not, after such a curriculum, amount to much. It is part of a petulant reaction against merely inferior literary exercise, by a chief craftsman in it; as a professor of music is the first to tell you that it is no use teaching music to those who will do no good with it. Ruskin says that the teaching of the three R’s is of no use to people who will only read rubbish and write falsehood, and, put that way, one is bound to agree.
No school of St. George has ever been begun, though there are schools which have kindred aims. Such schools are away in the country with farm and garden, with little pressure of outside examinations, a varied curriculum, great attention to athletic exercise, to natural science and history, with classics and the study of grammar practically shelved, and the prime concern of the school management the inculcation of reverence and truthfulness and gentleness. The Natural History, the Arts and Handicrafts, the reading aloud and the committing scripture and poetry to memory would be after his own heart.
We recognize in this luminous and suggestive treatment of education that the right note is struck—the basal idea is that “you have not educated a boy when you have taught him to know what he did not know, but to be what he had not been, and to behave as he had not behaved.” And, with the present stiff system and starved appliances, human and material, with which we educate the citizens of the future, what a glorious vision Ruskin’s is, of what that education might so easily be. His protest against the three R’s is merely a humorous outcry against their insufficiency, their mechanical character, and their commercial end. How that much, and that much only, of mental outfit has worked, is printed large in the circulation of Illustrated Bits, Scraps, all sensational evening papers and the Bottomley, Harmsworth and Hulton presses. But clerks and pupil teachers are cheap.
Ruskin’s actual work as a University Professor was notable; and many are the men, now old or gone, whom he influenced at Oxford. To be one of the influences at Oxford or Cambridge is a worthy use of gifts of the highest kind. The present Drawing Schools at Oxford are a monument of his labour and his liberality.
It is easy indeed for the Philistine to laugh at the pageantry of the vision of the England of St. George. There were to be “Marshals” with great districts subject to them, “Landlords,” men of fortune devoting their gifts to the service of the Guild, and owing their lordship to the fact that “they could work as much better than their labourers, as a good knight than his soldiers.” These were all to be called Comites Ministrantes; under them the Comites Militantes were the rank and file of the workers on the Company’s lands. Finally the Comites Consilii, the only class who have materialized, were the companions contributing, but not residing on St. George’s lands.[89]
To sum up, then, the present public duty of a good Ruskinian:
He will support the labour colonies of the Salvation Army and Small Holdings Associations. He will invest in the stock of Garden City or other Garden Suburbs; he will work for the Minority Report on the Poor Law, and for all plans for strengthening and humanizing Education, for Town Planning and Smoke Abatement. He will labour to extend among the laity the duties of the clergy, and among the clergy the spirit of the layman, he will help all Peace Societies, and labour to promote good understanding with other countries through the League of Nations. He will clip the wings of capital seeking to use the British Flag as a business asset, and he will do this by a capital levy, the super-tax and the Death Duties. He will be a mild and reasonable Socialist, so far as to extend the scope of municipal action as it may be found practicable. He would support the principle of a minimum wage, co-operative partnerships, and collective bargaining; and he would probably give cautiously some power to segregate the feeble-minded. He would provide Art Galleries and Museums housed in noble buildings, and would religiously preserve the surviving beauty of the country side. Two possible changes may be treated at greater length.
I. The higher professional activities may be still further removed from competition and put under salaried service. There will be competition for posts; that is right; but if medical men and lawyers did not depend upon fees, we should be rid of many abuses; and the work would gain in dignity. I believe clergymen, professors and public schoolmasters do as good work as those who follow callings more directly dependent on the casual payments and goodwill of customers. With regard to education, there would be danger of loss as well as of gain, if private schools and private tutors were abolished. They should remain available for those who desire them. There will always be people who demand a special religious atmosphere or who wish to make experiments. And there will be pupils who from bad health, or neglect of early training, could not properly benefit from the schools of the State. It is not necessary that the public body in control should be either the State or the Municipality. In my view, neither the universities nor the public schools would benefit by such a change. Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly agreed that the nation should shoulder a larger part of the expense, and guarantee the quality of the teaching, more widely and liberally than it does at present. In this connection it is all the more necessary that the State should clear itself of militarism. For if military training were to become compulsory in schools, as is seriously threatened, the nation would be once more as acutely divided about it, as it has been, so long and so disastrously, over denominational schools. We should have conscientious objectors in permanence.