Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin as Educational Reformers in a European Context

Abstract

Although Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin shared a critical perspective on the commercial values of the Victorian middle classes, the two writers’ schemes for educational reform might seem to have little in common. Due to his first-hand observations of the deficiencies in elementary education as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of elementary schools in England and Wales, as well as his extensive consultations for parliamentary commissions investigating educational reform, Arnold favored the creation of a national system that would guarantee the standardization and centralization of education under state control. Rather than recommending such systemic institutional reforms, Ruskin presented himself as a teacher, both in his public lectures at the Working Men’s College and his writings directed at working-class readers. On the basis of his comparative educational researches, Arnold also put forward a positive idea of modernity that defined social progress in terms of a generalized intellectual progress of society that a more centralized educational system could encourage, as had been done in other European countries.