the pattern of classical education
Jul. 31st, 2020 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
From the second portion of the prologue of The Well-Trained Mind, we are given a basic idea of what a (traditional) classical education provides and the way it's organized, as viewed by someone who was educated in this manner and who subsequently became an educator herself. I note here that the book's co-author, Susan Wise Bauer, has written another book that is probably a better fit for what I'm undertaking here: The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had.* Regardless, the book I do have is providing some groundwork for ways I can approach (re)investigating several subjects
The trivium is composed of three portions. The first, called grammar, has to do with learning the fundamental "building blocks" of various systems. It includes facts, rules (of math and language), vocabulary, classifications, and descriptions. I'm unsure why poetry is in this category, but perhaps it's because grammar includes information that is frequently memorized. Poetry, particularly for children, can function as a kind of condensed, memorized, conveyor of meaning that only gets sussed out later, so this makes some sense. The second part of the trivium is logic. In this context, logic is typically more abstract than grammar, and is applied to all academic topics. It allows for the organization of information. The third "leg" of the trivium is rhetoric, the skill of using the facts and information one has learned, organized logically, to express conclusions.
Ultimately, this framework is applied to (or used to access) topics systematically, with a focus that is language-based, and that follows the above-mentioned three-part pattern to interrelate all knowledge. It takes "history as its organizing outline, beginning with the ancients and progressing forward to the moderns in history, science, literature, art, and music." (p.15) With such an "organizing outline," each historical era is linked (when it's reasonable to do so) to history (whether human or geological), mythology, religions, literature, fairy tales, philosophy, astronomy, science (biology, astronomy, classification, anatomy/physiology, earth sciences), and math.
Here's how The Well-Trained Mind (TWTM) conceptualizes this system in relation to studying science (p. 16):
As I hinted at with my reference to geological ages, I'm intending to expand my timeline. Right now it looks like this:
Cosmologies Cosmogonies (origin/creation stories)
Geological eras (the forming of the earth and its metamorphoses that eventually allowed for life to "occur")
Evolution of life
Prehistory and early Neolithic
Recorded human history:
___
*I don't happen to have that book so for now I'll just continue with The Well-Trained Mind, but I think I'd like to at least take a look at it to see if it can help me in this endeavor. I'll post what I find if my library has a copy.
The trivium is composed of three portions. The first, called grammar, has to do with learning the fundamental "building blocks" of various systems. It includes facts, rules (of math and language), vocabulary, classifications, and descriptions. I'm unsure why poetry is in this category, but perhaps it's because grammar includes information that is frequently memorized. Poetry, particularly for children, can function as a kind of condensed, memorized, conveyor of meaning that only gets sussed out later, so this makes some sense. The second part of the trivium is logic. In this context, logic is typically more abstract than grammar, and is applied to all academic topics. It allows for the organization of information. The third "leg" of the trivium is rhetoric, the skill of using the facts and information one has learned, organized logically, to express conclusions.
Ultimately, this framework is applied to (or used to access) topics systematically, with a focus that is language-based, and that follows the above-mentioned three-part pattern to interrelate all knowledge. It takes "history as its organizing outline, beginning with the ancients and progressing forward to the moderns in history, science, literature, art, and music." (p.15) With such an "organizing outline," each historical era is linked (when it's reasonable to do so) to history (whether human or geological), mythology, religions, literature, fairy tales, philosophy, astronomy, science (biology, astronomy, classification, anatomy/physiology, earth sciences), and math.
Here's how The Well-Trained Mind (TWTM) conceptualizes this system in relation to studying science (p. 16):
Name of Period | Years Covered | Scientific Subjects | |
Ancients | 5,000 B.C. - 400 A.D | Biology, Classification, Anatomy/Physio (Human Body) | |
Medieval - early Renaissance | 400 - 1600 | Earth Science, Astronomy | |
Late Renaissance - early modern | 1600 - 1850 | Chemistry (incl. alchemy?) | |
Modern | 1850 - present | Physics, Computer Science |
As I hinted at with my reference to geological ages, I'm intending to expand my timeline. Right now it looks like this:
Geological eras (the forming of the earth and its metamorphoses that eventually allowed for life to "occur")
Evolution of life
Prehistory and early Neolithic
Recorded human history:
Ancients
Medieval
Renaissance
Modernity
This may be refined or changed as I go along, but that's what I have for now.Medieval
Renaissance
Modernity
___
*I don't happen to have that book so for now I'll just continue with The Well-Trained Mind, but I think I'd like to at least take a look at it to see if it can help me in this endeavor. I'll post what I find if my library has a copy.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-02 05:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-02 03:08 pm (UTC)The authors point out that home education doesn't require a school-day's worth of time. School is defacto babysitting for all ages. So once your kids are old enough to read and on this path, they learn to learn, actively. You don't have to spend hours pouring information into their heads or bringing anyone up to speed and your kids don't have to wait until anyone else catches up.
I homeschooled for a year while we lived overseas (kids were 8 and 12) and we were much freer, timewise (so much so that we took all of November that year and all 3 of us wrote novels for NaNoWriMo).
I hope it works out for you!
no subject
Date: 2020-08-07 01:28 am (UTC)