Why Classical?
Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. This classical pattern is called the trivium.
Summary
* The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study.
* In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments.
* In the high school year, they learn to express themselves.
Explanation
1. The years of schooling are called the “grammar stage” – not because you spend four years doing English, but because these are the years in which the building blocks for all other learning are laid, just as grammar is the foundation for language. In the elementary school years – what we commonly think of as grades one through four – the mind is ready to absorb information. Children at this age actually find memorization fun. So, during this period, education involves not self-expression and self-discovery, but rather the learning of facts. Rules of phonics and spelling, rules of grammar, poems, the vocabulary of foreign languages, the stories of history and literature, descriptions of plants and animals and the human body, the facts of mathematics – the list goes on. This information makes up the “grammar,” or the basic building blocks, for the second stage of education.
2. By fifth grade, a child’s mind begins to think more analytically. Middle-school students are less interested in finding out facts than in asking “Why?” The second phase of the classical education, the “Logic Stage,” is a time when the child begins to pay attention to cause and effect, to the relationships between different fields of knowledge, and to the way facts fit together into a logical framework.
3. The final phase of a classical education, the “Rhetoric Stage,” builds on the first two. At this point, the high school student learns to write and speak with force and originality. The student of rhetoric applies the rule logic learned in middle school to the foundational information learned in the early grades and expresses his conclusions in clear, forceful, elegant language. Students also begin to specialize in whatever branch of knowledge attracts them; these are the years for art camps, college courses, foreign travel, apprenticeships, and other forms of specialized training.
A classical education is more than simply a pattern of learning, through. Classical education is language-focused; learning is accomplished through words, written and spoken, rather than through images (pictures, videos, and television).
Conclusion
A classical education, then, has two important aspects. First, it is language-focused. Second, it follows a specific three-part pattern: the mind must be first supplied with facts and images, then given the logical tools for organization of facts, and finally equipped to express conclusions.
