ABSTRACT
The purpose in this chapter is to firmly establish Ruskin as one of the most significant educators of the nineteenth century; it is also the author's hope that readers may be encouraged to consider what we might stand to learn, today, from Ruskin's educational ideals and to imagine the ways in which his understanding of education might productively modify our own. Ruskin emphasized his isolation by insisting that his work had been thrust upon him 'utterly against my will, utterly to my distress, utterly, in many things, to my shame. He had numerous detractors, but among those who responded to his message were many devoted to spreading it and to forwarding his work. Dinah Birch has rightly observed that 'the Victorians invented education as people understand it today our sense of what matters most in teaching and learning is shaped by legacies of nineteenth-century thought, and certainly the educational debt they owe to the Victorians is great.
