Focusing on John Ruskin as a teacher and on his greatest educational work, Fors Clavigera, Sara Atwood examines Ruskin's varied roles in education, the development of his teaching philosophy and style, and his vision for educational reform. Atwood maintains that the letters of Fors Clavigera constitute not only a treatise on education but a dynamic educational experiment, serving to set forth Ruskin's ideas about education while simultaneously educating his readers according to those very ideas. Closely examining Ruskin's life and writings, her argument traces the development of his moral aesthetic and increasing involvement in social reform; his methods and approach as an art instructor; and his dissatisfaction with contemporary educational practice. A chapter on Ruskin's legacy takes account of his influence on late Victorian and Edwardian educators, including J. H. Whitehouse and the Bembridge School; the Ruskin colonies in Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia; and the relevance of Ruskin's ideas to ongoing educational debates about teacher pay, state/national testing, retention, and the theory of the competent child. Historically well-grounded and forcefully argued, Atwood's study is not only a valuable contribution to scholarship on Ruskin and the Victorian period but an enjoinder for us to reconsider how Ruskin's educational philosophy might be of benefit today.

An art historian, cultural critic and political theorist, John Ruskin was, above all, a great educator. The inspiration behind William Morris, Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust and Mahatma Gandhi, Ruskin’s influence can be felt increasingly in every sphere education today. John Ruskin and Nineteenth-Century Education brings together top international Ruskin scholars, exploring Ruskin’s many-faceted writings, pointing to some of the key educational issues raised by his work, and concluding with a powerful rereading of his ecological writing and apocalyptic vision of the earth’s future. In anticipation of the bicentennial of Ruskin’s birth in 2019, this volume makes a fresh and significant contribution to Victorian studies in the twenty-first century. It is dedicated to Dinah Birch, a much-loved Victorian specialist and authority on John Ruskin.

Who was John Ruskin? What did he achieve--and how? Where is he today? One possible answer: almost everywhere. Ruskin was the Victorian age's best-known and most controversial intellectual and polymath--an artist, scientist, critic, polemicist, social crusader, philanthropist, and early environmentalist. Two hundred years since his birth in 1819, his ideas have a fierce modern relevance. In Ruskinland, Andrew Hill, the award-winning Financial Times columnist, builds on Ruskin's pin-sharp appreciation of art and architecture, his extraordinary draughtsmanship, and his insistence that to see and draw the world is the best way to understand it better. The book lays out how Ruskin envisaged radical solutions to social inequality, excessive executive pay, flawed economic orthodoxy, advancing automation, environmental disaster, and meaningless work. It explains the importance of his prescient view of our fragile, interconnected world, and shows how Ruskin's radical ideas can still help us run our governments, our museums, our galleries, our companies, and our lives. Part travelogue, part quest, part unconventional biography, Ruskinland retraces Ruskin's steps, telling his exceptional and tragic life story, unearthing his influence, talking to people and visiting places--from Venice to Florida's Gulf coast--where Ruskin's foresighted ideas are, sometimes unexpectedly, alive today.

Arthur Efland puts current debate and concerns in a well-researched historical perspective. He examines the institutional settings of art education throughout Western history, the social forces that have shaped it, and the evolution and impact of alternate streams of influence on present practice.A History of Art Education is the first book to treat the visual arts in relation to developments in general education. Particular emphasis is placed on the 19th and 20th centuries and on the social context that has affected our concept of art today. This book will be useful as a main text in history of art education courses, as a supplemental text in courses in art education methods and history of education, and as a valuable resource for students, professors, and researchers. “The book should become a standard reference tool for art educators at all levels of the field.” —The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism “Efland has filled a gap in historical research on art education and made an important contribution to scholarship in the field.” —Studies in Art Education

'To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, religion, all in one' John Ruskin - born 200 years ago, in February 1819 - was the greatest critic of his age: a critic not only of art and architecture but of society and life. But his writings - on beauty and truth, on work and leisure, on commerce and capitalism, on life and how to live it - can teach us more than ever about how to see the world around us clearly and how to live it. Dr Suzanne Fagence Cooper delves into Ruskin's writings and uncovers the dizzying beauty and clarity of his vision. Whether he was examining the exquisite carvings of a medieval cathedral or the mass-produced wares of Victorian industry, chronicling the beauties of Venice and Florence or his own descent into old age and infirmity, Ruskin saw vividly the glories and the contradictions of life, and taught us how to see them as well.