Teaching the Trivium: Christian Homeschooling in a Classical Style

How can you give your children the tools they need to teach themselves? Long ago, students were first taught how to learn. Today, students are taught an encyclopedia of subjects--trivia--but they are not taught the basic skills of learning: to discover, to reason, to apply. They are not taught the Trivium.

Can you homeschool in a classical style without compromising your Christian principles? Because we are Christians, we do not want to pursue non-Christian goals. Classical Education must be sifted through the critical screen of the Scriptures to be transformed into a biblical model.

Can you homeschool in a classical style without buckling under the burden? There is only so much time in a day. For every subject, and for every age, we have a workable plan--which leaves you free to breathe. You can continue to use other approaches to homeschooling within the framework of Classical Education.

Is homeschooling about renewing family vision? The family is at the heart of God's plan for restoring Christian culture. Homeschooling is not alternative education. Homeschooling was here first. We want to restore biblical order to education.


Interview with the Bluedorns on ?Classical Education

Christine: One of your recent projects is the book Teaching the Trivium. Can you tell us a little
about why you wrote the book?
Bluedorns: Fourteen years ago when we were first invited to speak to homeschoolers on
classical education, there was very little literature, beyond the Dorothy Sayers essay, which
would be useful to homeschoolers desiring to pursue a more "classical" approach. We were busy raising a family of five and we had little time for writing, but we began to punch out little articles here and there. We published a little magazine for seven years, all in an attempt to develop a bit
of literature on the subject. When the children were older, we began to travel and to speak all
over the country, gaining experience with regard to other homeschoolers' situations and needs.

Then we made the big leap and went full time, gained more experience, and finally decided to
gather together and revise what we'd written, fill in many of the holes, and offer our
development of ideas and our practical experience to homeschoolers in a comprehensive and, hopefully, comprehensible [guide]. We certainly can improve upon our book (and in time, Lord
willing, we will), but it seems to have filled a hole for Christian homeschoolers who desired to follow a classical approach.

Christine: What do you mean by a "classical education," and how do you define it differently
from other homeschoolers?

Bluedorns: We commonly understand the term classical as referring to everything which the world highly esteems of ancient Greek and Roman culture, especially the literature. We broaden our definition of classical to include what is of good form and of lasting value, regardless of the specific time period. We then put these things to the test of what conforms to a biblical standard within a biblical worldview. In other words, we don't limit ourselves to Greek and Roman culture, and we pass everything through the critical screen of Scripture.

When we narrow our discussion down to classical education, we are speaking of ancient Greek
and Roman-and some Medieval and Renaissance-practices in education. One of the
prevailing concepts among them was that of the trivium. Scholars can only speculate as to
whether the ancients inherited the trivium from earlier sources, borrowed it from contemporary
sources, or stumbled upon it themselves through natural observation, or all three. We say the ancients stole it, and by that we only mean that they took what is properly God's order and they appropriated parts of it to pursue their own glorious ends instead of pursuing the glory of God.

The trivium was used by pagans just as the alphabet and the wheel and architecture were used by pagans, but there was nothing inherently pagan in the alphabet, wheels, and architecture. They
may have used these things in pagan ways, but the things themselves were not inherently pagan.

Christine: So it truly is a biblical model for education. Can you flesh that concept out for us a bit more?

Bluedorns: The basic paradigm of learning is (1) learn the basic facts, (2) analyze the relation
between the facts, (3) creatively express and practically apply the facts and their relation. This
paradigm is inherent in the very nature of things. The ancients formulated what we now call the
trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In modern times, we speak of "reading, writing, ?n'
?rithmetic." But these are simply different formulations of the same basic paradigm of learning.
This paradigm is recognized and reflected throughout Scripture. We prefer to move back to the
scriptural formulation and terminology; hence, we speak of the scriptural trivium of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. Here are some examples:
"And I have filled him (Bezaleel) with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, in
knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship." -Exodus 31:3

"For the LORD gives wisdom; From His mouth come knowledge and understanding." -Proverbs 2:6

"? that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual
understanding." - Colossians 1:9

The classical style of education is built upon these three mental or intellectual capacities:

Knowledge: the capacity for receiving and gathering information. (Compare: Grammar)

Understanding: the capacity for arranging and connecting the information in a logical
order. (Compare: Logic).

Wisdom: the capacity for putting this gathered and ordered information into practical
expression. (Compare: Rhetoric).

We expand upon this in our book Teaching the Trivium. All three capacities mutually depend
upon each other, but they do not develop at the same rates. A child develops much of his simple
capacity for knowledge at an early age. By age 10, there is a physical change in his brain which
allows him to develop more complex or interconnected knowledge. By age 13, he is principally developing his capacity for understanding. By age 16, he is principally developing his capacity
for wisdom. By age 19 or 20, all three capacities should be well developed, balanced, and in
continuous use.

We develop individual subjects by this same progression. We first master the facts (knowledge), then we master the connection between the facts (understanding), then we master
creative ways of expressing and applying the facts and their connections (wisdom).

We may attribute many of the failures of modern education - particularly with outcome-based
education - to the failure to follow the basic progression of learning. If we leave some of the
parts out, then things don't often work well. We will create a learning dysfunction. For example,
when we fail to teach basic phonics skills, then we will artificially induce dyslexia - the inability to read well. The only efficient remedy is to go back and fill in the parts which, for whatever the reason, were shortchanged.

Christine: Why would parents want to follow a classical style for education?

Bluedorns: They already are, whether they know it or not. If we ever learn anything, we learn it by the simple trivium progression of learning. Though we all intuitively follow the trivium, there are advantages to self-consciously knowing what we're doing. The trivium offers an accounting system to evaluate how well we're covering the learning process.

However, you're probably referring more to the subject matter - the study of the three formal trivium subjects: grammar (classical languages), logic, and rhetoric.

Studying classical languages - Greek, Latin, Hebrew - helps to develop capacity and skills in
knowledge. We learn to accurately receive and retain information. Studying classical languages
will develop skills in mental discipline, will provide useful familiarity with professional and
scholarly terminology, and will open access to ancient literature, particularly the Scriptures.

Studying logic helps to develop capacity and skills in understanding. We learn to critically analyze, arrange, and combine information in an orderly and consistent manner. Knowing logic won't prevent us from ever making mistakes in reasoning, but it will give us the skills to avoid many mistakes and to recognize and correct the ones we do make.

Studying rhetoric helps to develop capacity and skills in wisdom. We learn to draw
conclusions and applications and express them in creative, comprehensible, and effective ways. Communication skills are important in everything we do.

So the three subjects of grammar, logic, and rhetoric emerge, not only as very useful in developing skill in the three mental capacities, but as very useful in everyday life.