A CONSIDERATION OF THE IDEAS AND INFLUENCES OF RUSKIN ON ART EDUCATION
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………. 3
PART 1: Precedents and Contemporary Support for Ruskin’s Views …………. 5
PART 2: The Condition of Art Education in the Nineteenth Century …………. 14
and Ruskin’s Responses To It
CONCLUSION: ………………………………………………………………… 22
BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………… 26
INTRODUCTION
This essay will critically review the body of knowledge left to us by John Ruskin, radical thinker, prolific writer, garrulous speaker, and man of action in the nineteenth century, a man who has had an influence on education, politics, and art, extending long after his death. It is his views on art education I wish to examine here, and to discover to what extent these views can be related to the condition of art education in schools in the present day.
Art education was an arena for much dispute during Ruskin’s lifetime – a dispute which still continues - and was recognised by the Government as being a necessary provision. Hence, it was provided; but the form of that provision and the aims of it were much contested by Ruskin, who waged a double-edged campaign upon public opinion, and by implication and direct assault, upon the government. The premise underlying his campaign was that the public needed to realise the value of art education as a medium, and, having established thus much, to bring to the attention of those with the authority to act, the view that the current provision for art education was directed upon the wrong set of priorities and educational philosophies. Ruskin’s views were analogous to those of other influential people, whose voices were united with his own. These people included Acland, Dyce, Matthew Arnold, and members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Most of Ruskin’s proposals involved changing attitudes to art education; this was necessarily a long-term aim, not one which could be realised overnight. It needed a person of clear sight to show the way through the labyrinth of issues it raised. Whilst a superficial modern reading of Ruskin might reveal primarily a dogmatic character with rigid views on teaching, a more illuminated reading discovers how radical those views were at the time and how the majority of them, in only slightly modified forms, have been absorbed or are still filtering, into our own educational methods and ideologies even now. Couched in its pompous phraseology, we often find Ruskin’s work difficult to chew and laborious to digest, yet it is often worth the discomfort in order to recognise what is valuable in his ideas.
PART 1:
PRECEDENTS AND CONTEMPORARY SUPPORT FOR RUSKIN’S VIEWS
Before considering the actual manoeuvres in the campaign which Ruskin waged on behalf of art education, it is necessary to examine his views in some kind of historical context. There can be no one person to whom we can say Ruskin owed his ideas on education; nor, of those few to whom he apparently stands in debt, can we be sure he was aware. However, it is still useful to compare his ideas with those of Jean Jacques Rousseau and of Frederich Froebel.
Education for All
One important difference between Rousseau’s philosophy and Ruskin’s, was that the former was definitely not interested in education of the masses, but only of the individual child, whereas Ruskin’s goal was the opposite. This development of the individual child was articulated in Rousseau’s famous book `Emile’, which was translated into English in 1763, a year after it was first published, and, despite its orientation towards the individual, lays claim to the exposition of some extremely revolutionary ideas which were later to be reiterated by Ruskin. Eventually, it was Ruskin’s own impetus which was required in order to root the slowly germinating seeds sown almost a century before by Rousseau.
Every Child Matters
It is worth mentioning a few important points here: the first of these is that it was `Emile’ which gave rise to the idea that teaching art could be used as a means of educating children rather than producing the incipient artist. In a letter to Henry Cole in 1853, Ruskin says:
`I think I could teach a boy to draw without setting any time apart
for drawing, and I would at the same time make him learn everything
else quicker by putting the graphic element into other studies.’
(Ruskin cited in Hicks: 1974)
Ruskin, in fact, took this notion a step further and also applied it to adults when speaking before a Royal Commission in 1857 about his work at the Working Men’s College, saying `My efforts are directed not to making a carpenter an artist, but to making him happier as a carpenter’ (Harrison 1954: 66). His aim, even here, was not to create artists as such, or even to improve their occupational skills in any direct way, but purely to educate. The readers of Rousseau’s `Emile’ were introduced to the concept that attuning and exercising a child’s senses is as important, educationally, as the acquisition of knowledge from books. To Ruskin this implied an evolution of artistic appreciation; he expresses his concern that through the teaching of art `young people and unprofessional students’ should gain an awareness of art and appreciate that of others, rather than strive towards the unattainable status of `artist’ themselves. Emile was taught art – or, at least, drawing – not so much for art’s sake, as to give him exactness of eye and flexibility of hand. This principle was one with which Ruskin’s concepts were in complete harmony. Education through art is the avenue through which to sharpen the sensibilities.
Rousseau demanded that teaching should be adapted to the individual child’s needs and abilities, rather than be entrenched in fixed criteria applied to all children alike. Children, he claimed, go through distinct stages of development, which must be recognised and catered for. Ruskin’s own argument here, although similar in process, is brought to the kind of conclusion which Rousseau’s is not; that is, Ruskin believes that a child’s capacities, which he or she is born with, and which cannot essentially be altered, must be discovered as soon as it is possible to do so, so that they may be utilised and developed in the best possible way for that child; the process of this development must be varied in accordance with each child’s temperament. His conclusion was this; that this educational process is for the purpose of putting every child to the exact work in life for which they are best fitted. In today’s parlance, `every child matters’.
However, Ruskin’s belief that what a child is born with is all there is to work with, runs counter to our educational beliefs today. We want children to have aspirations to a better-educated life for themselves; we recognise that there are various cognitive tools to learning (Donald Schon explores these in depth) and children learn in different ways; we also recognise that `intelligence’ is multi-faceted (Howard Gardiner’s research into `multiple intelligences’) so children cannot be stereotyped, but should be nurtured accordingly. Gardner originally identified seven intelligences: linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, musical intelligence, spatial intelligence, kinaesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence.
`They represent a point of departure for a more pluralistic view of
intellect. Each of these intelligences has sub-intelligences. There are
undoubtedly other kinds of intelligences, but I think this is a good
beginning to the development of a broader view of this very complicated
machine that we have inside our head.’ (Gardiner in Moody W.J (ed): 1990: 20)
Gardner has since identified other intelligences.
Art as a Tool for Education
It is easy to see some reflections of Rousseau’s philosophies in those of the educationalist Frederich Froebel, although these did not begin to reach this country until the 1850s. His ideas were founded on the belief, like Rousseau, that children pass through well-defined stages to which education must, at each stage, be adapted to the child’s real needs. Although Froebel’s ideas are of great interest and lasting value, few of them concern us here since he was primarily concerned with kindergartens, an age-group with which Ruskin seldom concerned himself. However, Ruskin would seem to be in agreement to a certain extent with Froebel, in that the latter believed in education through action, of which a large part consisted of artistic, including craft, activity. Kindergartens were to be rather like a workshop environment in which children moved around freely, learning by their activities. If, in our secondary schools, our aim now is to create more autonomous learners with the flexibility to use their skills in the workplace, as artists we should give pupils more workshop-based lessons in order to improve and gain skills that they could develop and use for all purposes. Although we refer here to art-specific workshops, the new, more cross-curricular National Curriculum could see an expansion of this idea. Making pupils more self-directed in this way would connect them more successfully to working life, therefore giving the Creative Industries more rounded and skill-based employees, as Ruskin hoped to achieve through his Working Men’s College. Ruskin, referring as usual to older children, puts forward a plan for education in `Time and Tide’ which is an only slightly distorted reflection of Froebel’s schemes:
`It would be part of my scheme of physical education that every
youth in the state – from the King’s son downwards – should
learn to do something finely and thoroughly with his hand, so
as to let him know what touch meant; and what stout craftsmanship
meant; and to inform him of many things besides … and (thus) he
has learned a multitude of other matters which no lips of man
could ever teach him.’ (Ruskin 1904: 160)
Ruskin found himself among educationally like minds with the founders of the Working Men’s College. The institution was concerned with adult education, although the term `adult’ in 1854, when the College was founded, encompassed youths who would, in our own time, be still at school. The founders of the College felt that the humanities were, educationally, a moral right of every working man. These were not envisaged as technical, nor directly vocational.
`The aim was not to enable bright young men from the working class
to get on in the world, but rather to provide the opportunities for
the enrichment of personal life for all who cared to make the necessary effort.’
(Harrison 1954: 26)
It was as a teacher that Ruskin offered to take part, giving his wholehearted support to those values of art teaching as a liberal educator. This was perhaps one of the most influential steps that Ruskin could have taken upon art education in general, insisting that,
`”I don’t teach anything special or technical. I teach drawing in general,
so that anyone learning from me would have the power of drawing any object that’s before him.’’ (Ruskin cited in Harrison: 1954: p66)
Recognition by Examination
Ruskin was certainly not without contemporary support for his philosophies. Thomas Dyke Acland was a friend of Ruskin’s, but his untiring efforts to gain recognition for art as an academic area of study were independent of Ruskin himself.
It was not long before art educators tried to give the subject rigour and credibility by introducing examinations. Thomas Dyke Acland, in a bid to rescue art in secondary education, organised the Middle Class School Examination for the West of England, to be sponsored by the West of England Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture. The research underlying this proposal was to discover how much value the middle classes would attach to a certificate for education awarded by a competent examining body. In this respect, if in no other, it was a complete success. Writing from an American perspective in 1990, where Art was not tested, Newman wrote:
`That we don’t have testing in the arts does speak a great deal.
It says something about what we value and how we show what
we value. Based on this vacuum, one could conclude that we
don’t value the arts.’ (Newman cited in Moody: 1990: 52)
Clearly, the general public make value judgements based on examining a subject. In discussions leading up to this examinations project of Acland’s, importance was assumed by the appreciation of art as well as any technical or even artistic skill. Acland was anxious
`to bring about “a closer alliance between general education and art”.
He wanted art recognised “as a branch of liberal education by the side of
literature and science.” ’ (Acland cited in Carline: 1968: 88)
However, these wider issues were merely under discussion and, in practice, these examinations did nothing to assist the promotion of better art teaching.
Critical Analysis
Acland believed that an appreciation of art should contribute to the quality of life – a more important educational aim than the acquisition of skills. In support of the need for `art appreciation’, the schools where I have done my teaching practice and worked have looked superficially at the notion of `critical analysis’ of relevant artists – often an issue of time constraints. Researching the artist and the historical and social context that influence and indeed often initiate their work should, I believe, be done in more depth to support the acquisition of skills. Inevitably, Acland turned to his friend Ruskin for advice on how to further his aims through his examination. He also turned for advice to another contemporary who shared similar views. William Dyce had been the first director of the rather unsuccessful School of Design and in reply to Acland’s request for advice concerning the Exeter examinations, he wrote:
`”Instruction in art, as a matter of general education (as distinct from)
a certain amount of teaching in drawing, is a present blank in our system.”’
He held the view, so seldom advocated, that “if you merely content yourselves
with noticing approvingly the power of drawing … you will have done
nothing whatever for art as art … only encouraged a useful accomplishment.”’
(Dyce cited in Carline: 1968: 92)
Dyce wished art education to rely more heavily on the theory of art than on its practice, and in an examination, while not expecting children to possess or be able to express, original views, thought it useful to question what they had been given to understand about art.
Building on Dyce’s views, Art History as a discrete subject in schools could improve the standard of work and lead to a more informed view and connection to life and the outside world, since art reflects the society in which it was created. Whilst critical analysis of art is an expectation in our education system now, few schools in the state system teach Art History discretely due to issues raised by current curriculum planning.
Ruskin and Acland agreed with Dyce, insofar as children could not be expected to produce opinions of their own, but differed with him in their opinion that to retail the received opinions of others for the purposes of an examination is useless educationally, if not downright harmful. Ruskin was completely united with Dyce in stressing `art’ rather than the acquisition of techniques, but whereas the latter demanded the study of theory, Ruskin demanded practice as the way to understanding. However, in our current climate of target-setting and predictive analysis used to inform the achievements of both pupils and their teachers, it is not just opinions which are `received’. We may be guilty of preparing students not for life as an artist or designer, but to be assessed and to sit exams. Presently, we the teachers might only be teaching what is needed for exams or, in some cases, pupils are copying methods or outcomes without understanding why or what they are doing. In their different ways Ruskin and Dyce were educating for understanding.
PART 2
THE CONDITION OF ART EDUCATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND RUSKIN’S RESPONSES TO IT
Industry’s need for Designers
With mass industrialisation during the early part of the nineteenth century, the manufacturers and their buyers were becoming aware of the need for a provision within education for design, particularly since manufacturers were paying out an enormous amount of money to buy foreign designs in the absence of any suitable British ones. As Schon points out, learning is both individual and social, which he terms `public’ learning:
In public learning, government undertakes a continuing, directed inquiry
into the nature, causes and resolution of our problems. ….. If government
is to learn to solve new public problems, it must also learn to create
the systems for doing so and discard the structure and mechanisms
grown up around old problems.
(Schon 1973: 109 cited in http://www.infed.org/thinkers: 2001 )
To solve the new problem in 1835, William Ewart M.P. moved for a Select Committee to investigate means of promoting art and design in this country. This Committee began the debates within art education which persist to this day and to which Ruskin’s voice was added in good time. The debate concerns the relationship of art to industry and the elitism of the academies of art – the `old’ problem. It was claimed by the Committee that these academies `give an artificial elevation to mediocrity, degenerate into mannerism, and fetter genius.’ (Bell 1963: 57)
The outcome of the debate was that a `normal school’ to train teachers for design was to be set up (South Kensington) and art schools were to be established to improve the pubic standard of `taste’ (Schools of Design 1837). The word `taste’ has different connotations today than it did to Victorians; we might today substitute the term `aesthetic appreciation’; in any case, the purpose of art schools was ill-defined. The members of the council set up for this project were positive about one point, however, and that was that these schools were definitely not to train artists. There was some justification for this decision – the realisation that the academies were turning out an over-abundance of unsuccessful painters.
The history of these schools is both complicated and interesting, but it suffices to say here that as an institution for educating designers they were failures. The students wanted to become artists and the manufacturers insisted that their purposes were better met by training inside the industry. Any connection between art and design was denied. Ruskin’s voice was raised, unfortunately too late to alter anything. He believed that the aims of the schools were false and their methods wrong and that the whole system of art teaching in this country had been corrupted at its birth by them. For many years he lectured, taught and wrote in opposition to so-called art teaching, which had become included in the curriculum of national schools in 1851, for the purpose of supplying would-be designers to the Schools of Design. A cast-iron system was imposed on art teaching in schools. This was implemented by the mass training of teachers at South Kensington, who were shown how to teach by methods of copying to a standard, low as it was, acceptable for entry to the Schools of Design. This method may have developed a certain level of accuracy, but had little to do with `art’ in those terms which Ruskin regarded it.
`It turned its back upon nature and rejected fantasy. It was perfectly adapted
to the needs of South Kensington, for anyone could teach it to children.
Any, that is, who was not an artist. The fault was one of intention. The
curriculum had nothing to do with aesthetic feeling, nothing to do with
nature or the imagination. It was established not for the benefit of the pupils
but for that of their prospective employers.’ (Bell 1963: 261)
The government had identified the problem and had come up with its ill-advised answer. We can apply Agyris and Schon’s model of the processes involved in `theory-in-use’:
Governing Variables: those dimensions that people are trying to
keep within acceptable limits …
Action strategies: the moves and plans used by people to keep their
Governing values within the acceptable range.
Consequences: what happens as a result of an action.
(Anderson 1997 cited in Smith, M.K. www.infed.org/thinkers 2001)
The government had given goals, given values from industry, and enforced strict rules as governing variables to create a workforce of teachers who, it seems, did not understand education in or through art, only the rules to get pupils into the Schools of Design. This was a fine example of Argyris and Schon’s `single-loop learning’ (Smith M. K. http://www.infed.org/thinkers 2001), which
… seems to be present when goals, values, frameworks and, to a
significant extent, strategies, are taken for granted. The emphasis
is on techniques … (Smith M. K. http://www.infed.org/thinkers : 2001)
Ruskin’s Views on Art Education
The Schools Of Design clearly contradicted in intention everything Ruskin preached and believed in. Art itself, he considered a life-enhancing experience for those interested in it, and practising it, and this is how he taught it at the Working Men’s College, definitely not for the purposes of increasing technical skills or employment prospects although, indirectly, there was every chance of this happening. Ruskin’s own indignation at the profanity he recognised in art teaching in his own time he expressed in his `Laws of Fesole’;
`The tap-root of all this mischief is in the endeavour to produce some ability
in the student to make money by designing for manufacture. No
student who makes this his primary object will ever be able to design at all;
and the very words “School of Design” involve the profoundest of Art
fallacies. Drawing may be taught by tutors; but design only in Heaven; and
to every scholar who thinks to sell his inspiration, Heaven refuses its help.’
(Ruskin, cited in Bell 1963: 344)
Ruskin believed that the artistic gift should be discovered early, in what he called Trial Schools, by those kinds of methods used in Renaissance times, when a master had apprentices in his studio, working under his direction:
… only this school of trial must not be entirely regulated by formal
laws of art education, but must ultimately be the workshop of a good
master painter, who will try the lads with one kind of art and another,
till he finds out what they are fit for. (Ruskin, 1907: 27)
Ruskin avoids the trap of slavish copying which as art educationalists we so abhor now. As Dreyfus and Dreyfus point out, `Someone at a particular stage of skill acquisition can always imitate the thought processes characteristic of a higher stage ...’ (1986 : 35).
Ruskin’s main argument for a trial school system rather than the production-line type of elementary schooling prevalent the time, was that many young men mistake their vocations, having had no chance to experiment or learn in a wider sense; they try to be great artists when their talent is mediocre, or become clerks, or persons in other unimaginative employment, when, given the right nourishment, they may have become great.
`The principle (educational question) is the mode in which the choice 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 satisfy them for the higher.’ (Ruskin, 1907: 178)
It is the process of education, not the end result, and the effort not the success of learning, which, says Ruskin, should be rewarded, thus removing the element of competition. `Every child should be measured by its own standard, trained to its own duty, and rewarded by its just praise.’(Arnold cited in Beales et al 1969: 227). Again, we should reflect on our `Every Child Matters’ policy. A cause of constant sorrow to him was the inability to accept the individual on his or her own terms, on the part of society and particularly on the part of parents. Education, to Ruskin, was viewed far too mechanically, as a means to a particular end, rather than a joy in itself:
… I receive many letters from parents respecting the education of their children.
In the mass of these letters I am 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, the object, always. They
never seek, as far as I can make out, an education good in itself.
(Ruskin; 1871: 2)
Ruskin believed that the station in life to which the child is best fitted is revealed by education; education should not force the child into that station to which its parents, teachers and society think it ought to be fitted. Hence Ruskin’s anger, in 1851, when Cole’s rigid system of so-called art teaching was enforced in schools, because children were made to follow this course whether they were interested in doing so or not.
`I do not think it advisable to engage a child in any but the most
voluntary practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be
continually scrawling on what paper it can get and should be
allowed to scrawl at its own free will.’ (Ruskin 1892, pref. ix)
It was also the training of children towards positions of artists in industry which so frustrated Ruskin. The whole confusion of art with manufacture was an evil to which he could not reconcile his philosophies. `It is surely inexpedient that any references to purposes of manufacture should interfere with the education of the artist himself’ (Ruskin 1892 pref. xiv). The method of teaching these unfortunates in school was that to which Ruskin felt such aversion – copying. His own methods of teaching relied on refining the perceptions; to Ruskin, nature was the mother of art. The only way of achieving this refinement was, he believed, to learn to work by the eye not by the rules; rules of perspective, for instance, had a limited value only in rudimentary work, but beyond that, the eye must take over: `an arm cannot be foreshortened by perspective rules’, (Ruskin 1892 pref. xxi) he claimed. With the perceptions sharpened through the training of the eye, and the hand skilled through constant practice, the pupil thus educated is more than able to apply his powers to industry, supposing he is not made for fine art.
From personal experience there are more skills that could be taught to pupils, by which I do not mean `rules’; in order to meet targets, schemes-of-learning may be structured to cover the National Curriculum or examination (QCA) requirements. In fact, time constraints operate in relation to skills-based activities in order that the curriculum may be covered. In accordance with Ruskin, there may be a need to get more perceptual skills into the curriculum; these skills build ideas and form a solid foundation to work from.
Ruskin saw the failure of the Schools of Design as the inevitable consequence of their non-art practices and error of intent. In Elementary Schools, although Ruskin felt that art should be a purely voluntary activity, he was not unaware that it could be insidiously introduced to all by teaching it in concurrence with other subjects. In a letter to Cole, Ruskin wrote:
`Geography, for instance, ought to introduce drawing maps and shapes of
mountains. Botany, shapes of leaves. History, shapes of domestic
utensils etc.’ (1853 cited in Hicks 1974)
If art is only of use in that it promotes a greater understanding and love of other areas of learning, then it has value indeed. Ruskin conceded this point readily: `I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love Nature, than teach the looking at Nature that they may learn to draw’. (Ruskin 1892: pref. iv). In a lecture at Oxford during his Slade Professorship there, he expressed the idea that, in drawing, one seeks `the clue to the laws which regulate all industries, and in better obedience to which we shall actually have henceforward to live.’ (Ruskin 1890: 34)
Ruskin foreshadowed what we should welcome concerning the `Bigger Picture’ of the new National Curriculum. This proposes more cross-curricular work and opens up exciting opportunities to put Art in its historical and social context by working with, for instance, History, RE and English departments; or working with science, ICT and History on the development of techniques, materials and technology to extend ways of working. Prior to the introduction of the National Curriculum, Primary education worked very much in accordance with Ruskin’s principle.
CONCLUSION
A LONG-TERM ASSESSMENT OF RUSKIN’S INFLUENCE
During the Twentieth Century and now into the Twenty-first, there has been, at first, hesitating development towards the implementation of several of Ruskin’s ideas, while others are still the subject of debate or rejected in our modern education system. Many art-educational ideas are in many cases inhibited by the system of examinations, a system welcomed at first as the big breakthrough to recognition for art as an area of serious study, but subsequently recognised by many as being, at the same time, a barrier to teacher and student. Examinations have perpetuated and emphasised that competitive element denounced by Ruskin. The very standards found necessary for the purposes of examining a subject perceived as subjective and therefore un-examinable have been the cause of stagnation and the inhibition of the growth of the expressive arts in schools. As government targets tighten around teachers’ methods, pressurising them to get ever-higher results from a similar cohort of pupils year on year, so there is less opportunity to ask ourselves if the work before us is generated by the pupil or if they truly understand what art is about. Ruskin’s contention that art should not be competitive and that `every child matters’ in that we should value what they can do, has, in a way, been sacrificed, whilst we believe now, unlike Ruskin, that it is in the plurality of teaching approaches that we make every child matter.
In the twentieth century Sir Herbert Reed took up the cause and is now recognised as the advocate of education through art, taking Ruskin’s argument to its ultimate conclusion. Herbert Reed saw art as the means of education rather than a separate subject area. This philosophy overlaps, of course, with the heuristic approach to education which has much support now. Ruskin, in his desire for a practical education for all, `from the king’s son downwards’ (Ruskin 1904: 160), was a key to a much wider understanding; Rousseau before him, intent on exercising and attuning the child’s senses through art, and Froebel who truly formulated and practised an heuristic approach to education, all supported this concept. A more integrated curriculum is one towards which we are moving, in thought at least, more and more, and our new National Curriculum expects cross-curricular work as a stimulus to learning.
We can claim, at least, that our adult education provision and the catch-phrase, if not the reality, `Learning for Life’, is a direct descendant of Ruskin’s values and his Working Men’s College. Art and Design is now gaining ground – still challenged by many in the education system - in the very way that Ruskin opposed: the New Labour government under Gordon Brown (2008) acknowledges that it is the Creative Industries that will be the key to our country’s economic recovery and that designers in all areas, especially the digital media area, have been well-trained in Britain. This is something we, as a country, were perceived to be good at. Until relatively recently, Ruskin would have been proud to know that those training in areas of design needed to be selected largely on the basis of being somewhat accomplished as artists. This prerequisite, however, stemmed possibly more from the philosophies of the Bauhaus in Germany in the 1920s and 30s than from the, by now, unfashionable and neglected Ruskin.
Our current training of pupils/students for the Creative Industries, however, would
have been anathema to Ruskin. A plethora of `vocational’ courses, all assessed (competitive) and most examined, now confronts schools. There are BTECs, NVQs, and Applied GCSEs, all at different levels, to choose from. University Art departments have expanded exponentially to accommodate the huge increase of students demanded by government. Can we continue to maintain standards and our standing as good trainers of designers worldwide? Ruskin would think not.
The appreciation of art through the study of its history, emphasised by both Ruskin and Dyce, can present logistical problems as the topic is so vast. Curriculum time puts constraints on how teachers approach what we now refer to as `Critical Studies’, although both the National Curriculum and the examination syllabuses at all levels require pupils and students to show knowledge and understanding of relevant artists, craftspersons and designers and to use them as inspiration for their own development. Not, perhaps, quite as Ruskin envisaged things so long ago, yet the necessity that we contextualise art and artists and understand the work of individuals and movements in art is now enshrined in government art educational strategy. It is now generally agreed that practical art and critical studies in art are mutually dependent, that the one improves the appreciation and study of the other.
Ruskin, while being a product of his time and place, Victorian England, was nevertheless a creative and radical thinker for his time, not standing alone, not always original, but a man who was prepared to defend his beliefs, and speak and write about them to the widest possible audience. His was a voice to be heard; it is only a pity that those in positions of influence did not have the courage to act upon the advice they heard. Had they done so, art education would have advanced at a rapid speed which would, perhaps, have put it in the strong position in schools that it deserves, much sooner.
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JOURNALS:
Hicks, J. (1974): The Educational Theories of John Ruskin: A Reappraisal: British
Journal of Educational Studies: 22 (1) 56-77
WEBSITES:
Atwood S.E.: (2008): John Ruskin on Education: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/john_ruskin.htm [2009]
Smith M.K.: (2001): Donald Schon: Learning, Reflection and Change http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-schon.htm [2009]
