MR RUSKIN ON THE THREE R’S.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1275, 9 June 1884, Page 2

MR RUSKIN ON THE THREE R’S.

In the new numberof “Fora Clavigera'’ (which has one of Miss Greenaway’s little ladies to introduce! it this mouth, and another to curtsey it out) Mr Buskin ret urns to a subject which has always excited his wrath—the subject of modern education. “ The main thing which we ought to teach our youth,” Mr Buskin said long ago in “ Modern Painters,” is to see something, all that the eyes which God has given them are capable of seeing. The aura of what we do teach them is to say something to give an epigrammatic turn to nothing, to invent blankness in speech for breathingtirae, andslippperiness in speech for hiding time, to polish malice to the deadliest edge, shape profession to the seemliest shadow, and mask selfinterest under the fairest pretext.” In his earlier books Mr Buskin attacked the evil from the top, and protested against the systems of education in vogue at the public schools and universities—against the neglect of physical science, for instance, or the adoption of Aristotle’s “Legerdemain of Human Speech” as a text-book. But now that Mr Buskin’s work has reached the constructive'stage, and he is busy drawing up a new code for “St George’s cichoola," he has determined to strike at the root of the matter, and the new number of “ Fors Olavigera” is a vindication of his omission of the three B’s. For one thing Mr Buskin is determined to have no over-pressure, and as he chooses to teach the elements of music, astronomy, botany and zoology, there will be no time to “-waste ” on anything else. But it is a matter of principle as well that “St George’s children ” should not learn either reading or writing, for there are very few people in the world who get any good by either. Whatever foolish people read does them harm, whatever they write does other people harm ; and nothing can ever prevent this, for a fool attracts folly as decayed meat attracts flies. ” One need not go the whole length of Mr Buskin’s horror of the “ pestilence of popular literature ’’ to enjoy his condemnation of “ chopping up formerly loved authors, now too hard for the understanding of an enlightened public and too pure for its appetite, into crammed sausages or blood puddings swiftly gorgeable.” “ Think,” Mr Uuskiu exclaims, “ of Miss Braddon’s greasy mince pie of Scott 1 and buy, for subject of awedr meditation, ‘ No 1, one penny, complete in itself,’ the story of Oliver Twist, rearranged and sublimed into Elixir of Dickens and Otto of Oliver.” But Mr Raskin carries the war farther that this. Not only do most people use the power of reading and writing for unworthy objects, but “ the arts of literature and arithmetic continually hinder children in the acquisition of ideas.” The illustration of this, point is very characteristic and charming. Mr Buskin went into the Oonistoa school the other day during the hour for arithmetic and, “ inserting myself on the nearest bench, learned, with the rest of the class, how much 271 b of bacon would come to at 9|d per lb, with sundry the |like marvellous consequences of the laws of number ; until, feeling myself a little shy in remaining always, though undetectedly, at the bottom of the class, I begged .the master to let us all rest a little ; and in this breathing interval, taking a sovereign from my pocket, asked the children if they had ever been shown the Queen’s arms on it.” Not one of this roomful of

mgliah boys and girls, it seems, knew what the arms of England were, or remembered seeing such a thing as a harp oh them, or a lion 1 n his bind legs, or three little beasts running in each corner. And yet, “ suppose the children were to be accurately and explicitly told all about the Queen’s arms, what the Irish harp meant, and what a Bard was and ought to be; what the Scottish Lion meant, and how he got caged by the pressure of Charlemagne, and who Charlemagne was; what the English Leopards meant; and who the Black Prince was, and how he reigned in Aquitaine. Would not all this be more useful, in all true senses, to the children, than being able, in two seconds quicker than the children outside, to say how much 27Ibs of bacon came to a 9jd a pound ?” All this, one might reply, a good teacher ought to do and not to leave the rest undone But Mr Rtiskin again objects to the three R’s that they confuse and encumber the memory. Reading and writing (in Plato’s words) are “ not medicine to give the power of divine memory, but a quack’s drugs for memorandum, leaving the memory idle.” Mr Ruskin himself, for instance, “ has written down memoranda of many skies, but has forgotten the skies themselves.” Turner, on the other hand, “ wrote nothing, but remembered all.” The best powers of minstrel, bard and troubadour, again, always depended on' the memory and voice, as distinct from writing; and “ Correggio’s most perfect picture of ‘ Mercury teaching Cupid to read’ ought really to be called (as you will see if you look at the picture wisely) ‘ Mercury trying and failing to teach -Cupid to read,’ for, indeed, from the beginning to the end of time, Love reads without letters and counts without arithmetic.” It was in sight and thought of

all 'these sources of evil in our present staples of education that Mr Raskin drew out the scheme of schooling incidentally defined in various passages of “Fora Clavigera,” and now summed up in this last number. Mr Raskin's new code had best be given in his own words : —“ Every parish school to 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 without troubling the master ; a sufficient laboratory always, in which shall be specimens or all common elements of natural substances, and where simple chemical, optical, and pneumatic experiments may be shown ; and according 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. In the school itself, the things taught will be music, geometry, astronomy, botany, zoology to all ; drawing and history to children who have gift for either, and finally to ail children of whatever gift, vrade, or age, the laws of Honour, the habit of Truth, the virtue of Humility, and the happiness of Love.” —Pall Mall Gazette.