diff --git a/actionpack/lib/action_view/base.rb b/actionpack/lib/action_view/base.rb
index a8e6655bd6..14c42ce855 100644
--- a/actionpack/lib/action_view/base.rb
+++ b/actionpack/lib/action_view/base.rb
@@ -1,5 +1,15 @@
 require 'erb'
 
+class ERB
+  module Util
+    HTML_ESCAPE = { '&' => '&amp;', '"' => '&quot;', '>' => '&gt;', '<' => '&lt;' }
+
+    def html_escape(s)
+      s.to_s.gsub(/[&\"><]/) { |special| HTML_ESCAPE[special] }
+    end
+  end
+end
+
 module ActionView #:nodoc:
   class ActionViewError < StandardError #:nodoc:
   end