Unto This Last, and Other Essays on Political EconomyRuskin, John
General
Unto This Last, and Other Essays on Political Economy
Ruskin, John
Art; Economics
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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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