A Joy For Ever (and Its Price in the Market)Ruskin, John
Philosophy
A Joy For Ever (and Its Price in the Market)
Ruskin, John
Art
135. It is not, of course, in my power here to enter into details of
schemes of education; and it will be long before the results of
experiments now in progress will give data for the solution of the most
difficult questions connected with the subject, of which the principal
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 discipline enforced shall be all a part of a great assay of the
human soul, and in which the one shall be increased, the other directed,
as the tried heart and brain will best bear, and no otherwise. One
thing, however, I must say, that in this trial 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 school-fellows; 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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