Educational Approach: Classical

The classical model is about understanding how to learn effectively. This model breaks down learning into three components called the grammar, the dialectic and the rhetoric stages, which together make up the Trivium. One simple way to define these three stages is:

• What are the facts? (Grammar)
• What do you understand about those facts? (Dialectic or Logic) and
• What can you go and do with it? (Rhetoric)

Let’s take one subject and break it down into these stages provides an example of how this model functions. What is the Grammar of writing? It would include such things as:

The goal of the Grammar stage is the mastery of a broad base and exposure of facts, definitions, etc., in order to build a database of knowledge.

What about the Dialectic stage of writing? It would include things such as:

The goal of the Dialectic stage is learning to apply logic skills to discover the relationship of data and facts in order to develop the understanding of the “why” and “how” of subjects.

And finally, what aspects are included in the Rhetoric stage of writing? This stage would include:

The goal of the Rhetoric stage is the practice of applying and integrating subjects in order to recall data and apply it correctly to grow in wisdom.

The key is that all learning, even for us as adults, goes through these three stages. For example, if a person wants to be able to do computer programming, first you would have to learn about computer code (the Grammar – what are the facts), then you would have to learn how the code works together (the Dialectic – what do you understand about those facts), and then you would use that information to actually write a computer program (the Rhetoric – what can you go and do with it).

The problem is that modern American education is about survey and move on, survey and move on, survey and move on. The textbooks and classrooms focus on the grammar of each subject – the facts, but they rarely move on to the dialectic and rhetoric processes. The goal should not be the memorization of facts and formulas so that you can pass a test, and then forget the information a day later. The goal should be to understand the subject matter well enough that you can teach it to someone else. That is true mastery.

This model is a process for training the mind. And children’s learning propensities are naturally suited for these three stages of learning. When they are young, children readily absorb and retain information. As they grow in maturity, children begin to think more analytically. During this stage, they no longer simply accept information, but begin to question the “why” of things. The final stage of brain training builds on the others as the information learned early on is utilized within the acquired skills of analysis and logic to write and speak effectively. Older children and adults move through these same stages of learning new information, only more quickly.

When you understand how learning effectively occurs, then you realize that someone has to give you data you don’t know (Grammar), you have to do some tasks to process it and practice it (Dialectic), and then you have to be able to go teach it to someone else and do something with what you’ve learned (Rhetoric). This is the classical model.

Pros:

• Classical Education can be done inexpensively. You don’t need lots of geography workbooks, gadgets, or resources, for example. Simply work with a child on being able to draw 5 or 6 world or continent maps by the time the child gets to junior high.
• Teaching our children classically helps to redeem our own education as well. In working hard alongside our children to learn Latin, or Euclidean Geometry, or read War and Peace, we are recovering the lost tools of learning for ourselves as adults.
• Learning classically enables the learner to understand how subject areas interrelate because they are not taught as distinct subjects.
• Topics can be taught more efficiently since they are overlapped. While studying the details of volcanoes (magma, vents, craters, lava, gases, etc.), you can be drawing, copying, or tracing a picture of a volcano with those features.
• All the children in a family can work on the same topic at the same time, save possibly for math and reading. Each child learns about the topic at his level.
• By teaching children the tools of learning, they can then go forward to learn anything for themselves. It is the premise of: “Give a man a fish today, and he eats for today. Teach a man how to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.”

Cons:

• Classical Education is not how we, as parents, were educated, which means we are learning a new way of approaching material.
• Educating this way may seem intimidating at first, but it doesn’t have to be.
• Classically educating takes work on the part of the parents to be willing to recover the tools of learning for themselves and to impart those tools to their children. Classical Education is not a workbook type approach.

Prepared by Leah Bromen, Classical Conversations Ohio State Manager

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