the pattern of classical education

[temporaryreality]

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):

The Study of Science in the Framework of History

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:

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:

Ancients
Medieval
Renaissance
Modernity

This may be refined or changed as I go along, but that's what I have for now.
___


*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.

Comments

[hearthspirit]

thank you for sharing your distillation as you go! I'm considering shifting to homeschooling, if work and child care scheduling can allow, and this framework would actually make me excited to do it.

[temporaryreality]

You're very welcome!

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!

[methylethyl]

Ditto! One of the main reasons we chose to homeschool was so the kids could have a LOT of time outside in the fresh air and sunshine. In the early years, at least, we can get through all the necessary schoolwork in 2-3 hours, if there's no dawdling. And we only put in four days a week. Kiddo is not lagging behind in anything. Ask me again when they're high-school age and perhaps it'll be different. ;) But I remember being in school, and resenting the way so much of the time was filled with box-checking, waiting, busywork... and then it all followed you home and monopolized your time outside school in the form of homework!