There are numerous passages in Ruskin which might have led Sturt to
despise his work as a schoolteacher, but
he refers refers (The Wheelwright's Shop chapter 3) to Fors
Clavigera in particular, and it's interesting that the two issues of
Fors Clavigera
immediately prior to Sturt's taking over the wheelwright's shop contain
passages relevant to his decision.
What constitutes true work?
From Fors Clavigera letter 93 December 1883
One of our lately admitted Companions wrote
joyfully and proudly to me the other day that she was "making her own
living," meaning that she was no burden to her family, but supported
herself by teaching. To whom I answered -- and be the answer now
generally understood by all our Companions,-- that nobody can live
by teaching, any more than by learning: that both teaching and learning
are proper duties of human life, or pleasures of it, but have nothing
whatever to do with the support of it.
Food can only be got out of the ground, or the air, or the sea. What you
have done in fishing, fowling, digging, sowing, watering, reaping,
milling, shepherding, shearing, spinning, weaving, building,
carpentering, slating, coal-carrying, cooking, coster-mongering, and the
like -- that is St George's work, and means of power. All the
rest is St George's play, or his devotion -- not his labour.
Companions: the letters in Fors
Clavigera
were addressed to members of a group of Ruskin's followers known as the
Companions of the Guild of St George, of which Ruskin was the "Master".
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Attack on the three Rs
In letter 94 of Fors Clavigera (March 1884) Ruskin describes a
visit to the
village school at Coniston, which gives rise to an attack on the subject
matter of popular education. He says that schools should leave the
arithmentic, reading and writing to parents to teach as and
when it is necessary. Schools should teach what parents usually can't
teach: music, astronomy, botany, zoology, the history and traditions of
their country. He is particularly scornful of reading which he blames
for the widespread disdain for manual labour, and for filling the streets
"with discontented and useless persons, seeking some means of living in
town society by their wits, striving to make a 'position in life'."
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