Classical Education

Classical education is what existed in America and the western World in General, prior to the system that was established in the post WWII Era. It really began in Ancient Greece and Rome, was lost in the Dark Ages, then resurrected with the advent of the renaissance.

Classical education has a very, very high view of humanity and human potential. This makes perfect sense, considering that what we now call classical education was first developed by the Greeks who believed “Man is the Measure of All Things” and later adopted by Jewish and Christian Communities who believe as a foundational part of their world view that humankind is created in the divine image of God.

To the Classical Humanist, the world makes sense and the job of the educator is to equip the student with the skills and the knowledge foundation to discover that sense for themselves.

For that reason, Classical education emphasizes learning for learning’s sake, unlike modern public education, which focuses on assessment.

Classical Education places large emphasis on the liberal arts, language, literature, history, art, music, rhetoric, and philosophy, are key areas of study in any classical education curriculum, BUT math and science are also considered very, very important.

Another key hallmark of Classical education is that all subjects are taught with the connections between them acknowledged. Unlike in public schools, where beyond the most basic skills taught in the first few years, subjects are, for the most part, treated as wholly separate and having little or nothing to do with each other. This of course is simply not the reality. For this reason, classical students are not permitted to simply ignore one or more “non-essential” areas of study, but must gain a strong and stable foundation from all subjects on which they can build the rest of their educational lives beyond secondary school.

Classical students start learning foreign languages, often Latin and Greek, as early as first grade, not in high school.

The essential methodology of a classical education hinges on the Trivium

The Trivium was the foundation of classical education. The Latin word “trivium” refers to “the three paths,” which are grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

Grammar teaches us how to read and how to understand what we are reading, and it teaches us the rules for writing intelligibly, according to the rules of a particular language. The grammar stage, is applied to all subjects. This is when the bare necessities are taught, for reading, the grammar stage is when they are taught phonics and learning how to use context clues and other skills the students will need throughout the road ahead,

Logic teaches us how to think, how to reason analytically, so that we are not misled by fallacious arguments. As Aristotle said, “Some reasoning is genuine, while some seems to be so but is not” despite that there is “a certain likeness between the genuine and the sham.” The study of logic enables us to distinguish between the two. Logic, is the stage at which not only, do classical students continue to expand upon the facts and skills they acquired during the grammar stage, but this is the stage at which they begin to see connections and cause and effect relationships between facts and between subjects.

Rhetoric teaches us how to express ourselves, to convey information accurately and, most especially, to be persuasive in discussions. Aristotle put it in the following words: “Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.” And so, the Trivium arms the student with a thoroughgoing understanding of his language, the ability to reason critically, and the ability to express thoughts convincingly. Rhetoric is essentially the art of writing and speaking eloquently, of forming, presenting, understanding, and responding to arguments.