Editing John Ruskin (section)

===Ruskin and education===
The [[Oxford University Museum of Natural History|Museum]] was part of a wider plan to improve science provision at Oxford, something the University initially resisted. Ruskin's first formal teaching role came about in the mid-1850s,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.infed.org/thinkers/john_ruskin.htm |title=John Ruskin on education |website=Infed.org |access-date=18 July 2017 |archive-date=29 October 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121029115422/http://www.infed.org/thinkers/john_ruskin.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> when he taught drawing classes (assisted by [[Dante Gabriel Rossetti]]) at the [[Working Men's College]], established by the [[Christian socialists]], [[Frederick James Furnivall]] and [[Frederick Denison Maurice]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.infed.org/walking/wa-wmenc.htm |title=The Working Men's College |access-date=5 September 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110805231329/http://www.infed.org/walking/wa-wmenc.htm |archive-date=5 August 2011  }}</ref> Although Ruskin did not share the founders' politics, he strongly supported the idea that through education workers could achieve a crucially important sense of (self-)fulfilment.{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=13.553}} One result of this involvement was Ruskin's ''Elements of Drawing'' (1857).{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=15.23-232}} He had taught several women drawing, by means of correspondence, and his book represented both a response and a challenge to contemporary drawing manuals.<ref>''ODNB''.</ref> The WMC was also a useful recruiting ground for assistants, on some of whom Ruskin would later come to rely, such as his future publisher, [[George Allen (publisher)|George Allen]].<ref>Robert Hewison, ''Ruskin and Oxford: The Art of Education'' (Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 226.</ref>

From 1859 until 1868, Ruskin was involved with the progressive school for girls at [[Winnington Hall]] in Cheshire. A frequent visitor, letter-writer, and donor of pictures and geological specimens to the school, Ruskin approved of the mixture of sports, handicrafts, music and dancing encouraged by its principal, Miss Bell.<ref>''The Winnington Letters: John Ruskin's correspondence with Margaret Alexis Bell and the children at Winnington Hall,'' ed. Van Akin Burd (Harvard University Press, 1969) {{page needed|date=August 2012}}</ref> The association led to Ruskin's sub-Socratic work, ''The Ethics of the Dust'' (1866), an imagined conversation with Winnington's girls in which he cast himself as the "Old Lecturer".{{sfn|Cook and Wedderburn|loc=18.197–372}} On the surface a discourse on crystallography, it is a metaphorical exploration of social and political ideals. In the 1880s, Ruskin became involved with another educational institution, [[Whitelands College]], a training college for teachers, where he instituted a [[May Queen]] festival that endures today.<ref>Malcolm Cole, ''"Be Like Daisies": John Ruskin and the Cultivation of Beauty at Whitelands College (Guild of St George Ruskin Lecture 1992)'' (Brentham Press for The Guild of St George, 1992).</ref> (It was also replicated in the 19th century at the [[Cork (city)|Cork]] High School for Girls.) Ruskin also bestowed books and gemstones upon [[Somerville College]], one of [[University of Oxford|Oxford]]'s first two [[women's college]]s, which he visited regularly, and was similarly generous to other educational institutions for women.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Manuel|first1=Anne|title=Breaking New Ground: A History of Somerville College as seen through its Buildings|page=12|date=2013|publisher=Somerville College|location=Oxford}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/4054/History%20of%20the%20library.html |title=History of the Library – Somerville College |access-date=15 September 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150108093838/http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/4054/History%20of%20the%20library.html |archive-date=8 January 2015 }}</ref>