Classical Models...
1. Greco/Roman
2. The Trivium
3. The Progymnasmata
What, exactly, is the Christian Classical Model of Education?
There are several answers to this question. How can this be? It's about interpretation. Some read Dorothy Sayers article, The Lost Tools of Learning, and come away with one idea while others read it and see something quite different.
Or you might read a book about Classical Education and decide it's about literature, while others see it as a need to add languages, or humanities.
The truth is, there are quite a few methods becoming popular today and I will discuss them here and give you my philosophy of teaching as well. You must form your own opinions and decide how best to make the model fit your needs. You can try to mold your children into someone's theoretical idea of what is best for them, or you can realize that God gave these children to you and you are responsible for parenting and teaching them. For you there will be a model that is unique to your family needs and goals, worship style, and daily routine.
Many home educators (I have been guilty of this too) get excited over some new theory of teaching or curriculum and drop everything thinking this will fix everything! No program, curriculum, or theory of teaching can replace the daily investment of time and training that every home school requires. If it sounds too easy, it is. Home educating is hard and requires daily diligence and devotion (and lots of prayer).
When embarking on the road toward a Christian classical model of education, one should read extensively first. There are many pseudo-classical models out there and the last thing a parent wants to do is invest a year of time and money into a program that they later discover was based on surface knowledge or some vague impression of the idea of classical education. Your first goal should be to educate yourself with quality books written by those who have a proven track record in serving Christian classical educators whether in a home or private school setting.
The Classical Method According to the World: Ancient Greece and Rome
Many view any classical model of education simply as a study of Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, science, art and languages. When seeking a CHRISTIAN classical model of education, one can immediately see that this method will not be appropriate for our children without some careful choice of content, scope, and sequence.
If one were to pursue a degree in Classical Studies in university, one would find the course work to be much the same as those listed above. While this is an excellent choice of study for a college student who is grounded in sound Biblical teachings and has a complete sense of his or her identity in Christ, for the elementary student it is necessary to restrict the studies to those examples which are healthy topics for a child of that age to ingest.
Classical Model: The Trivium
Grammar, Dialectic, Rhetoric
Trivium is a Latin word that means "where three roads meet." The "roads" in this case, refer to Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric. An easier way to understand it would be to use the terms Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom.
These terms refer to the growth stages that children go through at various ages of life in their journey of learning.
The Grammar Stage
The Grammar stage represents the early learning period in a child’s life that includes language development and their capacity to gain knowledge. Here we are not speaking of a subject of learning such as History or Social Studies, instead we are focusing on a method of learning which allows a student to gain the knowledge of History or Social Studies. Dorothy Sayers puts it this way,
“Now the first thing we notice is that two at any rate of these "subjects" are
not what we should call "subjects" at all: they are only methods of dealing
with subjects. Grammar, indeed, is a "subject" in the sense that it does
mean definitely learning a language--at that period it meant learning Latin.
But language itself is simply the medium in which thought is expressed.
The whole of the Trivium was, in fact, intended to teach the pupil the
proper use of the tools of learning, before he began to apply them to
"subjects" at all.”
http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html
The Grammar Stage defines a time when the child is ready to gain knowledge about a variety of subjects despite how those subjects are specifically taught. As we know, some methods work better than others, but we are not ready to discuss teaching methods until we understand what the child is experiencing while in this stage of learning.
Laurie and Harvey Bluedorn in their book, Teaching the Trivium, describe the Grammar Stage this way, “When the child is at this level, we teach him the skill of comprehension - to accurately receive information - to gather the facts. Knowledge is imparted through telling, and demonstrating. It comes through the senses. We develop a vocabulary of facts and rules.”
So for any child from the age of two through the age of nine or ten, being in the Grammar Stage means to get new information - and lots of it. We know (because we’ve been told by numerous authorities) that this is the best time to teach them a foreign language, to read to them, to talk to them even though they may not understand all we say, to expose them to rich experiences like going to the zoo and attending a concert. We are encouraged to let them feel things and play in the mud, plant things and watch them grow, draw, color, mold, build, tear apart, jump, run, and so on - the list is endless.
It is during this period that they learn what acceptable behavior is and that wrong actions have negative results. It is now when we as parents should imprint the laws of life onto their brain so that they will have them at hand at a moments notice. This includes scripture memory and other books and literature you feel it is important to share with them.
The problem with our public schools and with many private schools as well, is that they start too much too soon. The Grammar Stage requires very little coursework at the outset because everything relates to language and processing skills at first (meaning language arts and math/science). Want to teach your 4 year old History? Get books that are age appropriate and read to them. They will remember stories and ask you questions about them that may send you running for the internet! Everything at this age relates to the spoken word or writing skills or conversely, to processing and measuring which leads us to counting and math.
The Bluedorns write, “Our goal is to develop competence in the tools of inquiry: reading, listening, writing, observing, measuring.” Teaching the Trivium, pg. 101. So how do we start with our only goal defined as teaching the tools of inquiry? Think of it this way. Each child is born with a blank hard drive that has no limit on memory, just a blank slate ready to be filled with information to help them understand their world. First and foremost we learn to name things so that we can communicate. This naming of things leads us to an understanding of their usefulness as tools. Language is a tool we use to communicate, teach, express opinion, etc. If we do not learn it well, we are hindered for the rest of our lifetime.
So here is your precious little hard drive that has just managed to learn the English language in a mere 2 years and has also gained a sense of self, can express their preference for certain types of foods and fabrics, clearly has a well-defined personality, and is ready to embark on the journey of learning. Many parents find that the electronic babysitter provides hours of dinner time entertainment while their adorable children recite jingles, quotes, and commercials that they have listened to repeatedly via DVD’s or Nickelodeon. This ability to easily memorize reflects their joy in “knowing.” To know is the human condition and it got us into trouble in the Garden of Eden. We are curious creatures and without a discipline of well-thought out curriculum, we may find our children spouting nonsense which the media and other instigators hope you will not unplug from the little outlet on the wall.
However, if you can muster enough strength to actually pull the plug on the TV, computer games, DVD’s, etc. and open up that most sacred of sources - a book - and read it to your child your world will explode with wonder and imagination. And the curriculum begins with reading. Read about everything! Start with scripture. Read it in English, Spanish, French, Latin, Greek, or any other language you can pronounce - you may not understand it but they will listen attentively long enough for it to imprint it’s syntax briefly for later recall.
Read about birds, bugs, rivers, architecture, colors, fables, folk tales, classic literature suitable for their age and more. Instill in them a love for reading because later, the only way to self-teach is to read and study on one’s own. If the example is set early, your work is made much easier - even if they struggle in their learning to read as happened with my own daughter (once she achieved the skill at a belated age of 7, I couldn’t get her to stop!).
Your next task is to count and measure everything. Count cars on the road (the red ones, or the trucks), count how many times I stop at a red light, count your beans as you eat them. How many spoonfuls until you are full? Is this a lot or a little? Let them cook and bake with you and stress the importance of measuring correctly - let them help bake a batch of cookies with too much flour or too little just to see what happens!
Chart and diagram (science/math). Make lists of all the colors of butterflies in your yard. Plant a seed and chart it’s growth. Grow vegetables. Press flowers.
Knowledge comes from doing or experiencing something. The hard drive has to be filled up with vocabulary and cause/effect knowledge. If I water the plant and give it sunlight, it grows. If I forget to water it the plant will not grow or will die. Young children will talk about death often. Plant science will help you to teach them to value life.
At the earliest stages of the Grammarians education, the focus should be on less structure in a curriculum and more exposure to a variety of topics and opportunities. Once the child reaches the age of five or six, the focus then may change somewhat to include a phonics, writing, and math program. Still, the previous must continue and each year of maturity can bring the opportunity for more in-depth study of a topic.
At the Grammar Stage, you are driving the bus. What you want them to know, teach them. You want them to listen to Japanese fairy tales? So read them. You want them to learn sign language? Teach it to them. You want them to memorize poetry? Help them to learn it. You are the principal and no one will question your reasons for learning a subject if you, yourself have a reason for doing so. This reason can simply be, “I want to.”
The Grammar Stage is joyous and fun. Less structure and more experience mean lots of field trips and outings, lots of art projects and messes. It goes fast so embrace it and recognize that this is a time of sweetness and wonder.
The Dialectic Stage
As students grow they enter the Dialectic or Logic Stage of learning at around age ten or eleven. Some may start sooner, some later. Every child is a unique individual and will not conform to any scale or model, so these are merely guidelines.
This stage is identifiable because the student will begin to exhibit a desire to understand the information they are learning on a deeper level and will question facts they feel are not in concert with their own understanding of the world. They ask why and impart their teacher to explain and give reasons to prove the truth of the fact or to be sure a concept will actually work.
Students at this stage like puzzles and problem solving. For the classical educator the transition will be from teaching fact based courses to exercises in formal logic. Critical thinking and clear reasoning begin in this study and will eventually result in an individual who can explain why they believe what they believe and a person who can clearly communicate their thoughts and ideas.
This may seem a daunting task when we are discussing teaching a twelve year-old clear reasoning when most adults can’t explain themselves beyond a statement of mundane cliche. Yet this must be our goal as Christian classical home educators. A twelve year-old can begin to understand faulty reasoning and can learn to question an authority that violates their values and faith.
Dorothy Sayers says,
“The disrepute into which Formal Logic has fallen is entirely unjustified; and its neglect is the root cause of nearly all those disquieting symptoms which we have noted in the modern intellectual constitution. Logic has been discredited, partly because we have come to suppose that we are conditioned almost entirely by the intuitive and the unconscious. There is no time to argue whether this is true; I will simply observe that to neglect the proper training of the reason is the best possible way to make it true.”
http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html
How we pursue the instruction of formal logic determines how serious we truly are about classical education. One can begin by adding the typical strategies of instruction which Ms. Sayers outlines far better than I could...
“On the Language side, we shall now have our vocabulary and morphology at our fingertips; henceforward we can concentrate on syntax and analysis (i.e., the logical construction of speech) and the history of language (i.e., how we came to arrange our speech as we do in order to convey our thoughts).
Our Reading will proceed from narrative and lyric to essays, argument and criticism, and the pupil will learn to try his own hand at writing this kind of thing. Many lessons--on whatever subject--will take the form of debates; and the place of individual or choral recitation will be taken by dramatic performances, with special attention to plays in which an argument is stated in dramatic form.
Mathematics--algebra, geometry, and the more advanced kinds of arithmetic--will now enter into the syllabus and take its place as what it really is: not a separate "subject" but a sub- department of Logic.
History, aided by a simple system of ethics derived from the grammar of theology, will provide much suitable material for discussion: Was the behavior of this statesman justified? What was the effect of such an enactment? What are the arguments for and against this or that form of government? We shall thus get an introduction to constitutional history--a subject meaningless to the young child, but of absorbing interest to those who are prepared to argue and debate. Theology itself will furnish material for argument about conduct and morals; and should have its scope extended by a simplified course of dogmatic theology (i.e., the rational structure of Christian thought), clarifying the relations between the dogma and the ethics, and lending itself to that application of ethical principles in particular instances which is properly called casuistry. Geography and the Sciences will likewise provide material for Dialectic.”
http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html
Assuming that one can reasonably find curriculum to teach the above outlined courses (if not see my curriculum pages), there is the importance of the course that many loathe to tackle but is the foundation of dialectic study - Formal Logic itself. Ms. Sayers says, “Criticism must not be merely destructive; though at the same time both teacher and pupils must be ready to detect fallacy, slipshod reasoning, ambiguity, irrelevance, and redundancy, and to pounce upon them like rats.”
http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html
What an excellent visual image to describe how to attack an invalid argument! Yet one must learn what an argument is and what a fallacy is before one can even consider pouncing upon an invalid one. In the world we live in today, relativism seems to subordinate logic and clear reasoning skills. If everyone’s opinion is right because they are entitled to it, then what do we need logic for anyway? The challenge for us is to teach logic well and create a new generation that subordinates relativism in favor of a Christian values system, including right and wrong.
The Bluedorn’s state, “The intensive knowledge period lasts about three years, and when it is over, Knowledge, of course, continues to grow and develop, but the capacity for Understanding - which has been developing all along - emerges as a forerunner in this race.” Teaching the Trivium pg. 101
Many parents balk at this stage because their darling little sponges begin to question everything and are willing to argue into the night. Embrace their love for learning and participate actively in the discussion. Buy The Fallacy Detective (Bluedorns) and read it and keep it with you to find the holes in their logic. No one said you will be smarter than they on every issue and catch every mistake in reasoning. Our goal here is a review ourselves of a subject that is difficult to master yet important to practice daily, and become ourselves equipped for the task of living.
The Dialectic Stage is the path to a love for learning. Many students are shushed for their inquisitive nature and persistence at knowing the details of the “why.” As educators, it is our job to endure with patience and love their constant need for answers, and to realize that that exuberance is exactly what we have been waiting for. To squelch it is to kill the joy of the process of finding out things.
Our public schools have completely deleted this kind of learning and students are expected to interact only with a pencil and paper or a computer screen. While both have their merits (and demerits), neither can truly help a child to enter into a dialectic discussion that trains the brain to process reasoning skills practiced through expository argument.
Again, consider Dorothy Sayers comments, “It will, doubtless, be objected that to encourage young persons at the Pert age (Dialectic Stage) to browbeat, correct, and argue with their elders will render them perfectly intolerable. My answer is that children of that age are intolerable anyhow; and that their natural argumentativeness may just as well be canalized to good purpose as allowed to run away into the sands.”
http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html
Finally, the Dialectic Stage reveals a young person who knows that they do not know everything nor can they. As Socrates is famed for noting that his ignorance was what made him wise, our own offspring begin to see that the scope of knowledge is too vast to conquer so we must content ourselves to learn what we can the best that we can.
Ms. Sayers concludes, “Towards the close of this stage, the pupils will probably be beginning to discover for themselves that their knowledge and experience are insufficient, and that their trained intelligences need a great deal more material to chew upon.” http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html
The Rhetoric Stage
The rhetoric stage is really a transition into adulthood. In the previous stage students have been engaging the BIG questions and entering into the great conversations. By this I mean things such as “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?” and also the defining points of their faith. In the late dialectic and on into the rhetoric stage young people will continue to explore these questions and fine-tune their Biblical Worldview and their vision of their role in our society.
While emotions still run high on sensitive topics, with rhetoric also comes the calm of knowing something beyond the shadow of doubt. It is at this moment that the pupil can become the teacher and the cycle of education has come full circle.
For instance, while I would not employ a sixteen year-old to teach my children the art of speech and debate, I would certainly consider their ability to teach the younger student basic mathematics. They have learned that math facts are grounded in truth; four plus three will always be seven and nothing will ever change that. If they are skilled at doing math, they might just be able to teach it. Now, not all students are ready for this step at sixteen. Some can do it at fourteen or even earlier. The point is, if a student has grasped the art of doing the work skillfully and consistently, it may be a good time to let them have a part in the teaching of it.
The art of teaching is really the art of communicating. How can I explain to the student that 4+3=7? I have never thought about it, well - not since 2nd grade. If I memorized the doubles, which for some reason just seem to be easier to memorize, then I know that 3+3=6. So then, if I add 1 more, I get 7. So now the child who is teaching is reviewing in their own mind the process by which they learned that 4+3=7. Their learning is reinforced and they will NEVER forget that 4+3=7, and in fact will be able to explain why 4+3=7 using various examples after they’ve taught it to someone else enough times.
Here is another example. In 1987 I auditioned for an opportunity to become a ballroom dance instructor. The process involved an initial interview and dance evaluation, and then a two week class which met for four hours five nights a week. It was exhausting and intense as I was still working my full-time day job. At the end of the two weeks I was hired part-time and given my first student, while I was required to attend four more weeks of evening training. I approached my boss in a state of complete exasperation worried that I couldn’t possibly know enough to take on a student at that point.
Patiently and with kindness, my boss reminded me that I already knew much more than a student who had never danced before. She pointed out that in one 45 minute lesson I couldn’t possibly teach everything I knew, and that the student only needed to learn the very first lesson. Before his next lesson which came a week later, I would have had another full week’s training and be way beyond him in my knowledge.
Then something amazing happened. Because I was teaching what I had learned, I became better myself. My dancing improved. I was given another student. They were learning. I was learning and we all succeeded together as good ballroom dancers. My next student was a lawyer and could only understand very technical instructions. I learned to speak about dance technically. My dancing improved. His dancing improved. The long and short of it is, I became an excellent teacher, and my students became good dancers. I became a rhetorician in the art of ballroom dancing.
Our society has so disguised what it takes to be a good teacher that the general public usually balks at the idea that a child could teach another child, or that someone not fully trained with PhD in hand could teach anything. The idea that a child could sit down with another child and show them the basics of place value or concepts of addition and subtraction, is thwarted by a desire to control belief systems. So students in the rhetoric stage are denied the opportunity to grow through the experience of teaching which is the tool that refines rhetoric.
On the other hand, in some cases the “world” (meaning those who either do not apply a Biblical worldview to their life and trade or simply those who reject Christ) employs children to teach a skill that they are not qualified to teach yet as a means of providing cheap labor to those demanding classes for their children regardless of the quality of teaching. So we have children ready to teach some skills that are rejected based solely on age or accomplishment, and we have others hired to teach because it feeds the economy.
The rhetoric stage is being postponed in our children and the result is that they never learn the art of rhetoric! Not to mention their brain spends so much time disengaged in the learning process that by the time they get out of college they have basically been programmed to learn a skill to get a job to feed the economy. They have never practiced the art of teaching yet now they are expected to go out and do it.
Rhetoric requires trust. Once your students are consistently demonstrating mastery of a skill, make them teach it to someone else! Watch as their own understanding blossoms and their confidence swells. Rhetoric is about the journey into responsible adulthood. One cannot consider themselves a learned individual without the ability to share the knowledge with others. As Christians, we are told in scripture to not put our light under a bushel but let it shine before the world. Rhetoric is the art of practicing our “shine.”
Trivium Summary:
Grammar Stage: Students can absorb vast amounts of information quickly with consistent teaching and review.
Dialectic Stage: Students begin to practice the art of reasoning through asking questions and drawing conclusions.
Rhetoric Stage: Students show signs of mastery and can model, expound, or teach learned concepts and ideas.
The Progymnasmata
Please click the link on the main menu to go to the page titled Progymnasmata.